so ive been licensed about 8 months now and ive been making contacts here and there, mostly on 40m and some 2m local stuff. i keep seeing references to LoTW and eQSL and honestly i still dont fully understand the difference or which one i should be bothering with. like i know LoTW is the ARRL thing and its for awards and stuff but setting it up seemed really complicated when i looked at it last time so i kind of put it off.

a guy at my club meeting mentioned eQSL and said its easier but then someone else said it doesnt count for as many awards so now im even more confused. and then theres just mailing physical cards which seems like a lot of work but also kind of cool? i got one card in the mail last week from a station in germany and it was genuinely exciting to hold it, not gonna lie.

anyway what do most people actually use day to day, do i need to sign up for all three or is there like a sensible approach here. using WSJT-X mostly if that matters, not sure if that changes anything

yeah so the short version is they all serve slightly different purposes and honestly most active HF guys use at least LoTW plus one of the others. LoTW is the gold standard if you ever want to chase DXCC or WAS through ARRL, eQSL wont count for those. setup for LoTW is a bit of a pain the first time — you have to request a certificate and it takes a few days — but once its done you basically just upload your log file and it handles itself. TQSL is the software you need, its free.

eQSL is way simpler to get started and a lot of casual operators use it, plus some awards programs do accept it. i use both personally. and yeah paper cards — theres still a real charm to them, i have a shoebox full and i look through them sometimes. for FT8 contacts specifically most people just do LoTW since the contact volumes are high and mailing cards for every FT8 QSO would get expensive fast. but if someone sends you a card it's always nice to send one back.

i was in the exact same boat like a year ago lol. what finally made LoTW click for me was watching a youtube video that walked through the whole TQSL certificate thing step by step, i think it was from the ARRL channel or maybe W1AW. once i actually sat down and did it it wasnt as bad as i thought. took maybe 20 minutes.

eQSL i use too mostly because a lot of european stations seem to be on there and it confirms pretty fast. havent actually sent many physical cards just because stamps and printing add up, but i do have a design ready if someone specifically requests one via QRZ. the german card you got sounds awesome, those are always cool to receive