Krane vs HiHello

HiHello is built around your own card. You make a digital card, share it by QR code, NFC, link or Wallet pass, and add a matching email signature. Its Universal Contact Scanner is part of the same app: it reads paper cards, badges and QR codes into your HiHello account, and each plan allows a set number of scans a month. Business and Enterprise plans add team admin, a company directory and SSO.

Krane is a business card scanner. One shot reads a card or badge into a contact with every field filled: name, title, company, labeled phones, emails, websites, social profiles and street address. It files scans by event, adds tags, notes and follow-up reminders, and with Krane Pro sends them to HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive or a webhook. Krane has no card of yours to share; a scanned contact can be passed on as a vCard.

HiHello is a digital card app that also scans. Krane is a scanner for the cards you’re handed.

HiHello’s App Store listing says it uses AI to turn paper cards into contacts. Scanning needs a network connection. Scans are metered by plan: 5 a month on the free Personal plan, 20 a month on Professional (unlimited with a paid add-on), 50 per user a month, pooled, on Business, and unlimited on Enterprise. You can scan a stack of up to roughly 100 cards in one sitting or upload existing photos in bulk on any plan; each card counts against the month’s quota. HiHello’s pages don’t say which card languages it reads, or whether it reads the back of a card.

Krane reads the card on your iPhone right away and checks it again when you’re back online. Hold the phone over the table and lay cards down one at a time: Krane shoots each card as soon as it is still and reads it while you lay down the next. The free plan allows 10 scans in any rolling seven-day week and three cards in a row per session. Krane Pro removes both limits and adds group scan, which reads a whole spread of cards from one photo. Krane reads cards in almost any language and script, including Japanese, Chinese and Korean, and adds a Latin spelling to names in another script. Add the back of a card and both sides go into one contact.

Krane reads badges as well as cards. Point the camera at a badge and it saves the printed name, title, company and event, the badge role and the badge number. If the badge carries a QR, PDF417 or Aztec code, Krane decodes it and merges the contact data in the code with the printed details into one contact. Some shows encrypt their badge codes so only the official lead retrieval app can read them. Krane can’t decode those, but it still saves the printed name, title, company and event. Start an event when you arrive and every scan is filed under it, with “Met at” and the event’s tags filled in. On a show floor with no usable Wi-Fi, each card or badge is read on your iPhone right away and checked again when you’re back online. The badge scanner and trade show lead capture pages cover this in detail.

HiHello scans event badges and QR codes too, and badge scans share the paper-card quota of your plan. Its event lead capture auto-tags contacts by event, and lead capture forms are listed on the Business plan. Scanning a paper card needs a connection, per HiHello’s help center; sharing your own card by QR code works offline.

HiHello syncs natively with Salesforce, HubSpot and Microsoft Dynamics 365 on its Business and Enterprise plans; Business has a 5-seat minimum. Its FAQ adds Marketo on Enterprise. Google Contacts and Outlook sync are listed. Zapier has one trigger, “New Contact”, and a real-time contact webhook is an Enterprise feature. Contacts export as a spreadsheet emailed to you; the file format isn’t stated. Pipedrive isn’t among the native CRMs.

Krane Pro syncs with HubSpot, Salesforce and Pipedrive for one person. HubSpot gets a contact with name, email, phones, company, title, website and address, updated if one with the same email exists. Salesforce gets a Lead or a Contact, your choice, with LeadSource set to “Krane” and the event, where you met, tags and notes in the Description field. Pipedrive gets a person linked to their organization, plus a note carrying the position, event, tags and notes. Send one card, a selection, a whole event, or every new scan automatically. A signed webhook posts each card as JSON to Zapier, Make, n8n or your own server. CSV export covers one event or all cards and opens in Excel, Numbers and Google Sheets. Tokens stay on your iPhone, and the app talks to your CRM directly.

HiHello’s prices are as listed on hihello.com on November 8, 2026; its App Store in-app prices differ (Professional $9.00 a month or $84.00 a year). Business has a 14-day trial. Krane Pro has no trial and no team plans; the free plan is the way to try it. The App Store shows the price for your account and country. See pricing.

HiHello keeps your contacts in your HiHello account, which you sign into with Google, Microsoft or Apple. That is what puts them on the web and on Android as well as your phone. HiHello’s FAQ lists SOC 2 Type II, GDPR and the EU-US, UK and Swiss-US Data Privacy Frameworks, and says it does not sell customer data. Where the data is stored isn’t stated.

Krane has no account or sign-up. Cards and CRM tokens are stored on your iPhone, and you can back everything up to one file and restore it any time. A Krane Pro subscription on the same Apple Account works on your iPhone and iPad. Each card is read on your iPhone first, right away, and checked again when you’re back online. The saved card stays on your device.