Beaconstac became Uniqode in 2024 — here's what that means in 2026
You searched "Beaconstac" because of a digital business card someone scanned, a QR generator review from 2022, or a tool a coworker mentioned. The link sent you to a different brand. That brand is Uniqode.
Beaconstac was acquired by Mobstac and rebranded as Uniqode in 2024. Same engineering team, same product line, new name, sharper enterprise focus. Existing Beaconstac accounts transferred over automatically. The codes kept working. The dashboards stayed live. What changed was the pricing.
The entry tier moved from roughly $5/mo to $7/mo. The mid-tier moved from $15/mo to $49/mo. Reddit and G2 reviews document the backlash from customers who were not grandfathered into the old pricing at renewal. If you read a "Beaconstac is affordable" review from 2022, that pricing no longer exists.
This post compares EZQR against Beaconstac as it exists today — meaning the live Uniqode product, but framed around the searches and use cases people still type as "Beaconstac." For the deeper Uniqode-specific feature breakdown, see our EZQR vs Uniqode comparison. This post focuses on the rebrand context, the NFC digital business card slice of what Beaconstac sold, and the practical "which one do I pick" question for SMBs and mid-market teams.
What Beaconstac sold, and which half you probably came here about
Beaconstac was unusual because it sold two related-but-distinct products under one brand:
The QR code generator. Dynamic codes, scan analytics, A/B testing, geo-targeting, bulk creation, custom landing pages. The bread-and-butter SaaS QR platform that competes with QR Tiger, Flowcode, and ME-QR.
The NFC digital business card. A physical NFC-enabled card or sticker that, when tapped to a phone, opens a hosted profile page with contact info, social links, calendar booking, and lead capture. This product competed with Blinq, Mobilo, Popl, and Linq — and it's why "beaconstac vs blinq" and "beaconstac vs mobilo" still pull thousands of searches a month even after the rebrand.
Which half you came here about changes the comparison. If you want the QR generator, your real question is "EZQR vs Uniqode for QR codes" — covered in detail in the Uniqode comparison post. The short answer is below in the feature table.
If you want a digital business card, EZQR's answer is different: instead of selling NFC cards, EZQR ships a free vCard QR generator that does the same job through a scannable QR on a printed card. No NFC chips to manage, no per-card subscription, no shipping logistics. The contact gets imported to the scanner's phone identically. The trade-off is one extra second of scanning a QR vs tapping NFC — for most use cases, that's a fine trade.
Feature comparison
Pulled and verified 2026-06-16 from each vendor's public pricing page.
| Feature | EZQR | Beaconstac (Uniqode) |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Yes — unlimited static, 3 dynamic, no credit card | No — credit card required to start |
| Entry price | $5/mo (Lite, monthly billing) | $7/mo (Personal, annual billing) |
| Mid-tier price | $10/mo (Pro, monthly) | $49/mo (Pro, annual-only) |
| Annual lock-in | No (monthly only on every tier) | Yes (every paid plan) |
| Codes survive cancellation | Yes — static permanent, dynamic 30-day grace | Subject to plan retention rules |
| QR types supported | 50+ | 20+ |
| Dynamic QR codes (mid-tier) | 100 | Unlimited (at $49/mo) |
| NFC digital business card | No (vCard QR alternative, free) | Yes — paid, monthly per-card |
| Scannability validation (ISO/IEC 18004) | Yes — checked before download | No |
| Bulk CSV import | Yes (Max plan, $20/mo) | Yes (higher tiers) |
| REST API | Yes (Max plan) | Yes (Business+) |
| Compliance certifications | GDPR self-declaration, SSL/TLS | GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2, ISO 27001 |
| Pre-built integrations | Zapier-friendly via API | 1,000+ (Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack) |
| Time to first code | ~30 seconds, no signup | 15-30 minutes with signup + credit card |
| Pricing transparency | Full — every tier on /pricing | Enterprise tier requires a sales call |
Pricing comparison
Beaconstac (now Uniqode) requires annual billing on every paid plan. There is no monthly option. EZQR is monthly-only on every paid plan. That single difference shapes the total cost more than any feature row.
| Plan tier | EZQR | Beaconstac (Uniqode) |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 — unlimited static, 3 dynamic, no credit card | None — credit card required to start |
| Entry | $5/mo Lite (monthly) — 25 dynamic, 30-day analytics | $7/mo Personal — annual billing ($84/yr), limited codes |
| Mid | $10/mo Pro (monthly) — 100 dynamic, A/B testing, geo rules, full analytics | $49/mo Pro — annual billing ($588/yr), unlimited dynamic |
| Top | $20/mo Max (monthly) — unlimited dynamic, API, white-label, teams | $65+/mo Business — annual, sales call for enterprise quote |
The three-year cost — the number that actually decides this
Monthly-versus-annual sounds like a billing detail until you run it across the life of a print campaign. A QR program you set up in 2026 is usually still running in 2029 — the codes are printed, the cards are in wallets, the signage is up. Priced over three years at the tier most teams actually buy, the gap stops looking like a rounding difference.
The difference is almost entirely structural, not feature-driven. At the SMB and mid-market tier, you are not paying Uniqode an extra $1,400 over three years for $1,400 of extra QR capability — you are paying for annual prepayment, enterprise compliance you may never invoke, and an integration catalog most small teams never open. If your buying criteria includes HIPAA or a Salesforce sync, that premium buys something real. If it does not, it is the price of skipping the billing-model check before you signed.
| Tier most teams buy | EZQR (monthly) | Beaconstac / Uniqode (annual-only) | 3-year difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry | $180 — Lite, $5/mo | $252 — Personal, $7/mo billed yearly | $72 |
| Mid (the common buy) | $360 — Pro, $10/mo | $1,764 — Pro, $49/mo billed yearly | $1,404 |
| Top | $720 — Max, $20/mo | $2,340+ — Business, $65+/mo billed yearly | $1,620+ |
The Beaconstac NFC card alternative — Blinq, Mobilo, Popl, and how vCard QR compares
A real chunk of Beaconstac's buyer search ends up at "Beaconstac vs Blinq," "Beaconstac vs Mobilo," and "Beaconstac vs Popl." All four built the same product: an NFC-enabled card you tap to a phone to share contact info. The differences are pricing, branding flexibility, and CRM integration. Blinq leans free-tier-first. Mobilo leans enterprise. Popl leans creator economy. Beaconstac leaned mid-market with the QR + NFC bundle. All four require ongoing payment for the cards to function — the NFC chip is dumb hardware; the magic is the hosted profile page on the vendor's servers, and that page disappears when you stop paying.
Here's what most posts in this space won't tell you. The job an NFC card does — open my contact info on someone's phone when they meet me — can be done with a printed QR code on a paper business card for free. The contact lands in the scanner's phone via the standard vCard format (defined in RFC 6350), and every iOS and Android camera recognizes it. EZQR ships a free vCard QR generator that produces exactly this — no NFC chips, no per-card monthly fee, no hosted profile page that vanishes on cancellation.
The trade-offs are real and worth naming. NFC tap is faster than QR scan by about one second. NFC cards in plastic or metal feel premium in a way paper cards do not. And NFC cards can update remotely if the vendor keeps the hosted page live — useful when your role changes. The counter-trade: NFC requires the vendor's subscription to stay alive, the cards cost real money per unit (typically $20-50 each), and most scanners read vCard QR codes faster than they tap NFC the first time because the camera is already open.
For freelancers, consultants, real estate agents, and event marketing teams handing out a few dozen cards a year, the vCard QR approach wins on total cost. For C-suite execs at a 500-person company where the brand impression of a metal NFC card matters more than the per-card cost, the NFC route is defensible. The honest answer is which of those two buyer profiles you fit.
Where Beaconstac (Uniqode) wins
We're not going to pretend EZQR is the right answer for every team. Three categories where Beaconstac/Uniqode is the call:
Regulated industries that need certified compliance. HIPAA for healthcare, SOC 2 for finance and B2B SaaS vendor reviews, ISO 27001 for government and large enterprise procurement. EZQR ships GDPR self-declaration and standard SSL/TLS, but does not carry paid third-party audits. If a procurement team is going to ask for your QR vendor's SOC 2 report, EZQR will be filtered out at the questionnaire stage. Uniqode passes.
Pre-built integrations into Salesforce, HubSpot, Marketo, or Slack. Uniqode ships ~1,000 pre-built integrations through their integration catalog. If your team's campaign reporting flows through HubSpot dashboards and you want every QR scan to land on a contact record automatically without writing a Zapier flow, that's real engineering time saved. EZQR exposes the same data through its REST API on the Max plan, but the integration is your build, not pre-canned.
Branded NFC digital business cards at scale. A 200-person sales team that hands out NFC cards as part of standard onboarding kit can't replicate that with a free vCard QR. The buyer is the head of sales operations, the budget line item is per-rep, and the visual + tactile signal of a metal NFC card matters in some sales conversations. That's Uniqode's home turf.
If none of those three describes your team, EZQR is almost certainly the better economic call. If one of them does, Uniqode is the right tool.
Where EZQR wins
EZQR's wins cluster around one idea: you keep control, and you keep your money. None of these is an exotic feature. They are the line items that quietly cost you with most vendors and don't here.
Tips
- Free tier is genuinely free — unlimited static codes, 3 dynamic, no signup wall, no credit card. Most users never pay.
- Monthly billing on every paid tier — $5, $10, $20/mo, cancel in one click. Beaconstac/Uniqode requires annual prepayment.
- Codes survive cancellation — static codes work forever, dynamic codes stay scannable for 30 days post-cancel. See the [permanent QR code guide](/blog/permanent-qr-code-generator-2026).
- Scannability validation against ISO/IEC 18004 before you download — catches broken codes before you print 5,000 menus.
- Pricing transparency — every tier and every limit on [/pricing](/pricing). No "contact sales" tier on the way to the answer.
- ~30 seconds from landing on the homepage to a downloaded QR. No signup, no credit card prompt, no demo call.
How to switch from Beaconstac/Uniqode to EZQR
If the math above sent you here ready to migrate, the practical steps are three:
Step 1 — Export your code inventory. From the Uniqode dashboard, download your active QR codes and their destination URLs. Keep the campaign names and analytics history for reference.
Step 2 — Decide static vs dynamic per code. Codes pointed at permanent URLs (your homepage, a stable product page, a fixed location) can become free static URL QR codes on EZQR — no monthly fee, no reprint risk if you cancel. Codes pointed at campaign-specific URLs you might rotate need to stay dynamic — EZQR's Lite at $5/mo covers 25 dynamic, Pro at $10/mo covers 100.
Step 3 — Recreate and replace. Generate each code on EZQR with the same destination URL, apply your brand colors and logo (the scannability check flags low-contrast designs before export), download PNG or SVG, and swap into your print materials. Existing Uniqode dynamic codes can't be transferred — the redirect URLs are on their servers — so the new EZQR codes go onto the next print run. Codes already in the field keep working on the Uniqode side until you cancel or downgrade per their retention policy.
For the cancellation context that matters most after a migration like this, see our QR code subscription traps guide and the hidden costs breakdown — both explicitly cover what to verify in writing before you cancel an existing vendor.
More EZQR comparisons across the QR market
Beaconstac's QR generator competed with the same tools EZQR is measured against, so if you're weighing the broader market these head-to-heads help.
QR Tiger is the API-first enterprise default; Flowcode is the design-led option at $250/mo with deletion-on-cancel; ME-QR advertises free unlimited codes but injects ads on every scan. For the QR-only deep dive against the live product, the EZQR vs Uniqode comparison goes feature by feature.
To see where every major tool lands on pricing, free-tier honesty, and code survival after cancellation, read our tested comparison of the best QR code generators.
