Home Dynamic QR An Alternative
An Alternative to Subscription QR
You have been renting a DNS record. Here it is a one-time slot.
Quinta do Vale prints one back label for the whole run. Bottles sold into the EU need the e-label with ingredients, nutrition and the health warning. The same bottle sold elsewhere does not, and the estate would rather those visitors landed somewhere useful.
The rule engine
What the scanner gets
Inside the EU, so the code opens the e-label: ingredients, nutrition per 100ml, and the health warning the regulation requires on the label or behind it.
Country is resolved by the edge network from the connecting address on the scan itself. It is not asked for, not stored against a person, and never a cookie. Groups are matched in order, so an ungrouped country is predictable rather than approximated.
Get this wrong and a bottle on a shelf in Lyon carries no e-label. The back label is already printed; the rule is the only part still editable.
no subscription · pay per scan · nothing to cancel
The expensive tier is the one with your own name on it
Across this category the branded domain is what sits behind the price step, and it is billed again every year. In the link-in-bio lane one platform cannot sell you one at any price, and another keeps legal ownership of the domain you bring.
- The feature behind the price step is a DNS record, and it is rented by the year.
- A monthly fee continues through the quarters when nothing is scanned.
- A tier limit on how many codes may exist turns archiving old campaigns into deleting them.
- A scan allowance that resets monthly means an unexpectedly good campaign costs an upgrade mid-flight.
What moving across actually involves
Print new codes here
Codes already printed elsewhere name that provider short domain and cannot be moved, because the printed payload belongs to them. Anything you print from now on can be yours.
Or bridge the old ones while they still resolve
If the old code still works, its destination can usually be set to a taproute URL. That is a bridge rather than a migration, and it lasts exactly as long as their account does.
Bring a subdomain you already own
Point one CNAME at us and we run the SSL and the routing at no charge. The slot is bought once rather than rented, and we never supply the domain.
qr.yourbrand.com CNAME → taproute
What is different about the model
- The domain is a one-time slot
40,000 credits, once for an extra hostname, bought once, and one is included from the Growth pack up. Never a yearly fee.
- Prepaid, not recurring
Credits stay valid 18 months and any top-up rolls the whole balance forward. A quiet quarter costs nothing.
- No tier limit on codes
Each code costs 1 credit once, so old campaigns stay where they are instead of being deleted to free a slot.
- Scans priced, not rationed
1 credit per scan with no monthly allowance to exceed, so a campaign doing better than expected does not force an upgrade.
- GS1 Digital Link included
The resolver is part of the product rather than an enterprise add-on, conformant to the GS1 resolver standard and verified with GS1 official test suite.
- Nothing on file to renew
We hold no charging authority, so we are structurally incapable of surprise-billing you.
Against the usual subscription model
| Capability | taproute | A typical subscription QR platform |
|---|---|---|
| Billing model A category comparison. Individual vendors vary and their terms change without notice. | Prepaid credits, no renewal | Monthly or annual plan |
| Your own branded domain | 40,000 credits, once, once. Included from Growth up. | A yearly fee, on the higher tier |
| Cost when nothing is scanned | Nothing | The plan fee continues |
| Limit on how many dynamic codes | None; 1 credit each | Commonly capped by tier |
| Scan volume | Priced per scan at 1 credit | Commonly a monthly allowance |
| If the account lapses | 14 day grace, then a branded paused page on the same URL | Varies; published deactivation is common |
| Credit or plan validity | 18 months, rolled forward on top-up | Tied to the billing period |
Questions
Is taproute cheaper than my current platform?
It depends on your volume, and we would rather give you the shape than a percentage. The model wins against a domain-bearing tier up to roughly eighteen thousand scans a month, and against an entry tier only up to roughly two thousand. Above that a flat monthly plan can beat us on raw price. The honest frame is the domain plus what happens when you stop paying, not the unit price.
Can I move QR codes that are already printed?
Not the printed payload. That string names the other provider domain and belongs to them. What you can often do, while their account still works, is repoint their destination at a taproute URL · a bridge rather than a migration, lasting as long as their service does.
Is the routing here the same as a subscription platform offers?
The conditions are country, language, device, region, city, schedule, one-time switch, weighted split, scan count and campaign source, composable as a graph. That covers what these products are usually bought for. Feature-by-feature parity with any specific vendor is not something we would claim without checking their current documentation.
Why compare against a category instead of naming vendors?
Because vendor terms change without notice and their own pages sometimes disagree with each other. A row naming a company is only worth printing with a first-hand source and a date attached, and this table would rather compare honestly against a model than precisely against a guess.
What is the catch with prepaid credits?
They expire after 18 months, and a very high-volume single code costs more here than a flat monthly plan would. The model suits print runs whose scan volume is uneven or unknown.