so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and ive been making contacts pretty regularly, mostly on 40m and some 2m stuff locally. the whole QSL card thing is starting to confuse me a little. like i understand the basic idea, you confirm you made a contact with someone, but i dont really understand why there are so many different ways to do it and whether i need to do all of them or just pick one.

i signed up for LoTW because someone at my club said thats the one you need for DXCC and i uploaded my logs and some stuff matched up which was cool. but then someone else mentioned eQSL and said its totally different and some people only use that one. and then theres still actual physical cards which honestly i kind of love the idea of but it seems like a lot of work to manage.

do most people just do LoTW and call it day, or is there a reason to do all three? also does it cost money to get cards printed and send them internationally because that seems like it could add up fast

yeah the short answer is you dont have to do all three but a lot of us end up doing at least two of them over time. LoTW is really the one you want if you're chasing any ARRL awards like DXCC or WAS, the ARRL runs it and its free to use once you get your certificate set up which admittedly is kind of a pain the first time but you only do it once.

eQSL is separate and some people swear by it, its a little more casual and has its own awards system but a lot of serious DXers dont bother with it. i use it mainly because some of the guys i work dont do LoTW and at least i can get something confirmed that way.

physical cards are honestly kind of a hobby within the hobby if that makes sense. i still send and receive them for special contacts, like if i work someone rare or a nice /P operation or whatever. but i stopped doing it for every single contact years ago, the postage especially internationally gets expensive yeah. a lot of people use the bureau system through their national society which is way cheaper but slower, can take a year or more to get a card back sometimes. if you're just starting out id say get comfortable with LoTW first and worry about cards later for the ones that actually mean something to you

i was in the same boat when i started lol. what got me was i spent like two weeks trying to figure out the LoTW certificate thing and almost gave up. there are some youtube videos that walk through it step by step which helped me way more than the ARRL documentation honestly.

the physical cards thing is real though, i got my first card in the mail from a guy in Japan and it was just really cool to hold it. i have a little pile of them now. i dont send them to everyone but for DX contacts i usually try to at least send one out, i got a batch printed from one of those online services for like 20 bucks for 100 cards which wasnt bad at all