Dropcard Adds Features, Rate Plans

Remember Dropcard, the free service that lets you exchange contact information using just your cell phone? It's a favorite here at Business Hacks, and now it's even better thanks to some new features that just rolled out.

As you may recall, Dropcard works like this: To send someone your contact information, you simply text that person's e-mail address to 77950. Then Dropcard shoots your deets to the person, complete with a VCF attachment for easy addition to Outlook.

So, what's new? For starters, you no longer have to prefix e-mail addresses with "drop." Not an earth-shattering development, true, but certainly a time-saver.

Dropcard has also implemented shortcuts for common e-mail suffixes (aol.com, gmail.com, etc.). So instead of tapping out businesshacks@gmail.com, for instance, you can enter businesshacks@g.

Although Dropcard is still free, you're now limited to five drops per month unless you bump up to the Premium plan ($4.99 monthly), which raises your limit to 25 and lets you add your logo or photo to the recipients' message. Need more? The $9.99/month Elite plan lets you send unlimited cards. Both plans also entitle you to five user profiles instead of just two, card analytics, and file attachments.

Of course, unless you're a trade-show regular, you can probably get by with the free plan. I am, and I'm still loving Dropcard.