QRSalt Reviews and Details

Questions & Answers

1. How would you describe the primary audience of QRSalt?

   People who print things and cannot cheaply reprint them.

   Restaurants and cafes with a code on every table, estate agents running a code per listing, shops with a window sticker that has to work when the place is shut, event organisers whose programme moves, and small teams who print a flyer and then need the link behind it to change. The common thread is artwork that is already at the printer, or already on a wall.

   There is a developer audience too - a REST API and an MCP server for AI clients like Claude and Cursor - but that is the second reader, not the first.

2. Which are the primary technologies used for building QRSalt?

   Next.js and React with TypeScript, Postgres through Prisma, served behind Caddy with Cloudflare in front. Files go to object storage; Turnstile guards anything anonymous.

   The QR rendering is our own code rather than a hosted service - matrix, styling, logo well, error correction and the print exports. That is why static codes can be free, and why nothing about a static scan passes through us at all: the code is drawn in your browser and the phone goes straight to your address.

   The GS1 Digital Link handling has been pulled out as a separate MIT package, since that standard is the same for everyone.

3. Why should a person choose QRSalt over its competitors?

   Three things people usually discover only after something is printed.

   A custom domain starts at $5 a month rather than sitting behind an enterprise quote. Scans are not counted against a quota, so the code that works hardest never becomes the expensive one. And the free tier is genuinely usable with no account: unlimited static codes, 500 out of one spreadsheet, and a reader that decodes a code from a screenshot.

   Where the others win: if you want a mobile app, a big team with roles and SSO, or a landing-page builder with a designer behind it, buy the larger product. QRSalt is built narrowly around the printed square and what happens to it after the artwork has gone to the printer.

4. What makes QRSalt unique?

   Scans are never metered. A dynamic code answers every scan on every plan, including the free one - the plans limit how many codes you keep, not how often they get used. That matters because the placement working hardest is exactly the one a scan quota would switch off or charge you for.

   Static codes are free, need no account and carry no watermark, and 500 of them come out of one spreadsheet in the browser. The QR reader takes no key either.

   And if a paid plan ends, printed codes keep working for at least 90 days instead of dying the day a card fails. After that, a code stops only if it goes 90 days without a scan, and nothing is deleted.

5. What's the story behind QRSalt?

   It started from a dull, specific annoyance: printed QR codes outlive the pages they point at. A menu gets reprinted, a campaign ends, a site moves - and the square on the table tent keeps sending people to a dead address, because the address is baked into the pattern itself.

   The fix is old and simple. Print a short link, not the destination. What was missing was a version of that which did not meter the scans, did not put your own domain behind an enterprise quote, and did not hold your printed codes hostage the moment a subscription lapsed.

   So the rules came first and the product was built to them: static codes free and account-free, scans never counted against you, your own domain on the cheapest paid plan, and codes that keep working for at least 90 days after a plan ends - and after that stop only once nobody has scanned them for 90 days. Most decisions since have been arguments with those four lines.