okay so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep seeing people talk about confirming contacts and i kind of get the basics but im genuinely confused about when you use what. like i uploaded my log to LoTW last week and got a handful of confirmations back which was exciting, but then someone at the club mentioned eQSL is different and some awards dont accept it? and then theres still people mailing actual paper cards which honestly i love the idea of but it seems like a lot of work

my main question is do i need to be doing all three of these or can i just pick one and stick with it. im not chasing any specific awards right now just kind of building up my log and having fun but i dont want to miss out on confirmations if the other station is only using one method. hope this makes sense, im sure theres an obvious answer im missing

you're not missing anything obvious, it's genuinely a bit of a mess the way the ecosystem evolved. short answer is LoTW is the gold standard if you care about ARRL awards like DXCC or WAS - those pretty much require LoTW confirmations now, or physical cards sent to the ARRL card checker. eQSL is its own thing and some awards accept it but a lot of the big ones dont, so its kind of a secondary system. paper cards are... well they're tradition and some people love them and some DX stations still only confirm that way, especially rare ones where the operator is doing a one-time expedition.

what i'd suggest is just keep uploading to LoTW regularly, thats the most important one for awards down the road even if you dont care now. eQSL is free and easy so no harm setting up an account and uploading there too. paper cards - you can request them via the bureau which is slow but cheap, or direct QSL which costs a couple bucks in postage and an IRC or green stamp for return postage. i still send cards for anything i find personally exciting, just because i like getting them back. but you dont HAVE to do any of it really unless you want the awards credit

same boat as you were not long ago honestly. what clicked for me was thinking of LoTW as the "official" one for serious award chasing, eQSL as the casual fun one where you get a nice looking digital card, and paper as the collector/nostalgia route. i do all three now but i started with just LoTW and added the others later once i figured out how everything worked. the LoTW setup process is a little annoying with the certificates and stuff but once its running it kind of just works in the background