If you run a small café, restaurant, or bar in Australia, an NFC review plate is one of the highest-ROI tools you can put on a table. But the options vary wildly in price — and for a small business owner watching every dollar, that gap matters. Here's the honest comparison.

The price gap is the story

At face value, Dockt is the only product with an ongoing subscription — and that's the criticism you'll hear first. But it evaporates the moment you do the maths on hardware costs.

A single Digifeel plate costs around $79 AUD. A Review Boost Card plaque is $69 AUD. One Dockt plate is $17. That's a saving of $52–$62 per plate before you've even thought about the subscription.

Kit out a venue with 10 tables: Dockt costs $120 in hardware (bulk rate of $12/plate at 10+ units) + $25/yr on the annual plan. The same 10 Digifeel plates cost $790. 10 Review Boost Cards cost $690. Dockt wins on year one by over $500 — and the gap widens every year after.

All three can link to anything

A common question is whether these plates are locked to Google Reviews. They're not — any of them. You can point the tap to your menu, your Instagram, a Tripadvisor listing, a booking page, weekend specials, whatever you need. The difference between Traditional (static) and Smart (updatable) is whether you can change that destination after the plate ships.

Both Digifeel and Review Boost Card include remote URL management in their platform, as does Dockt Smart. If you order Dockt Traditional, the URL is fixed at the time of programming.

Digifeel

Digifeel is the most internationally recognised name in this space — used by over 100,000 businesses across 115 countries. Their hardware is a solid 3mm plexiglass plate with NFC and QR, and their platform includes a dashboard with URL management and analytics.

The main drawback for Australian small businesses is the per-plate cost. At around $79 AUD a unit, it's simply not practical for a venue owner trying to cover 8–15 tables. There's no bulk pricing, and because it's an international product, Australian support is minimal.

Review Boost Card

Review Boost Card has a genuinely useful addition: free AI-powered reputation management software that helps you monitor and respond to reviews. If you're a solo operator who finds it hard to keep up with review replies, that's worth something.

At $69 AUD per plaque it's the second-cheapest hardware option — though still four times the cost of a Dockt plate. There's no bulk pricing. For a small venue with 10 tables, hardware alone is $690 before any setup.

Dockt

Dockt is built around one core belief: that small Aussie venues shouldn't have to choose between quality branding and affordability. Plates start at $17 each — and drop to $10 at 25+ units. A full venue rollout that would cost $790+ with Digifeel costs under $200 with Dockt.

The $3/month subscription (or $25/year) unlocks remote URL management, tap analytics, and multi-destination tools. But even on the free Traditional tier, you get a fully custom-branded plate shipped and programmed to your URL — for $17.

What's genuinely different about Dockt is the support model. You're not submitting a ticket into a global queue. There's a dedicated Dockt team member who knows your setup and is available when you need help. For a small business owner who doesn't have time to troubleshoot, that matters.

The honest tradeoff: Digifeel and Review Boost Card have no ongoing cost once you've bought the hardware. If your venue is a single-location business with 2–3 tables and budget isn't a concern, either could work. But if you're watching your margins — or you have more than a couple of tables — the maths points one way.

Which one is right for you?