Adobe Express vs Zazzle: Which Business Card Tool Actually Delivers?

Adobe Express provides access to thousands of professionally designed business card templates created by experienced graphic designers. Each template follows current design trends and is built with proper typography, spacing, and visual hierarchy. You can customize every element, swap colors, change fonts, rearrange layouts, and pull from Adobe Stock's massive image library to enhance your design.

Zazzle's template library is large, but it skews toward marketplace-style designs that are often contributed by independent sellers. Quality varies significantly from one template to the next. Some look professional, while others feel dated or amateurish. Customization is limited to what the template creator allows, which often means you can change text and colors but cannot move elements or adjust the overall layout.

Adobe Express was designed from the ground up to be accessible to non-designers. The interface is clean, modern, and intuitive, with drag-and-drop editing, real-time previews, and contextual toolbars that appear exactly when you need them. Starting from a template gets you to a finished design in minutes, and the learning curve is essentially flat. Even advanced features like background removal and text effects are available through simple one-click actions.

Zazzle's design experience is secondary to its marketplace functionality. The editor is embedded within a product ordering page, which means you are simultaneously navigating product options, pricing tiers, and quantity selectors while trying to focus on your design. The interface feels cluttered, and the design tools themselves are basic. For users who just want to pick a template and type in their information, Zazzle works, but anyone who wants to do more will quickly feel constrained.

Adobe Express exports designs at 300 DPI in print-ready PDF format with proper bleed and trim marks. This means you can take your file to any professional printer and get consistent, high-quality results. The color accuracy is excellent because Adobe has decades of experience with color management and print workflows. You are not locked into any single printing service, so you can shop around for the best price and quality.

Zazzle handles printing in-house, which sounds convenient but introduces variability. Print quality depends on the specific production facility that handles your order, and user reviews report inconsistent results. Colors sometimes shift from what the preview showed, and the paper stock options are limited compared to what you would find at a dedicated print shop. Because you cannot download your design file in a usable format, you are locked into Zazzle's printing pipeline whether the results satisfy you or not.

Adobe Express leverages Adobe's industry-leading AI technology, including Firefly generative AI. You get one-click background removal, intelligent text effects, automatic layout suggestions, generative fill capabilities, and smart resize features that adapt your design to different formats. These tools genuinely save time and produce results that would normally require professional design skills. The AI features continue to improve with regular updates, making the platform more capable over time.

Zazzle has essentially no AI or smart design features. The editor provides basic text and image tools, but nothing that could be considered intelligent or automated. There is no background removal, no layout suggestion engine, no text effects beyond basic formatting, and no generative capabilities. If you need to remove a background from a photo or create a visual effect, you will need to do that work in a separate tool before uploading to Zazzle.

Adobe Express includes a comprehensive Brand Kit feature that lets you save your brand colors, custom fonts, logos, and other visual assets in one place. When you start a new design, your brand elements are instantly accessible, ensuring every business card, flyer, social post, or presentation looks consistent. You can apply your entire brand palette to a template with a single click. This is not a nice-to-have feature; for businesses that care about professional presentation, it is essential.

Zazzle has no brand management tools whatsoever. Each design starts from scratch. If you want to match your brand colors, you need to manually enter hex codes every time. There is no way to save custom fonts, and logo placement depends on what the template allows. For a one-off card order this might be acceptable, but for any business that needs consistency across materials, Zazzle's lack of brand tools is a significant limitation.

Adobe Express offers a generous free tier that includes access to thousands of templates, basic design tools, AI features, and high-resolution downloads. The Premium plan at $9.99/month unlocks the full template library, Brand Kit, advanced AI features, 100GB of cloud storage, and premium Adobe Stock assets. Critically, your design file belongs to you: download it and print wherever you want, as many times as you want, with no additional per-card fees from Adobe.

Zazzle's design tool is free to use, but you pay for every print order with marketplace markup built into the price. A pack of 100 standard business cards typically runs $20-40 depending on options, but prices fluctuate based on sales, promotions, and the specific template designer's markup. Reordering costs the same amount each time. Over multiple orders, the total cost adds up quickly compared to designing once in Adobe Express and printing through a competitive print service.