so ive been on the air for about 6 months now and made maybe 40 contacts or so. keep hearing about these digital qsl things but honestly its a bit confusing. seems like theres lotw and eqsl and probably others? i got some paper qsl cards printed but they cost like $50 for 100 cards plus postage is getting crazy expensive these days. wondering if i should just go digital or do both or what. also not really sure how the whole process works - do i need to upload every single contact or does it sync with my logging software somehow? using ham radio deluxe if that matters

I've been using both for years and honestly LoTW is the gold standard if you care about awards like DXCC. Most serious DXers use it and ARRL endorses it so your confirmations actually count for awards. eQSL is more social and has a nice web interface but not all contests accept it for credit. If you're just starting out id say get on LoTW first - yeah the setup is a pain with the certificate stuff but once its done your logging program can upload automatically. I use N1MM+ and it just pushes contacts right up after each session.

dont forget about clublog too, its not technically a qsl service but lots of dx expeditions use it and you can see if your contact made it into their log. as for the certificate thing with lotw - yeah its confusing at first but theres good tutorials on youtube that walk you through it step by step. took me like an hour to figure out but now i just forget about it and everything uploads automatically from my logger