Please Do QR Codes Properly
QR codes do not expire. QR codes do not have a limit on total scans. QR codes do not allow their creators to track you when you use them, or monetize that process.
QR code creation websites, on the other hand, do all of these things.
The usual way that they do this is by creating QR codes for their own URLs, rather than the ones to which you actually want to redirect your users. If you want to make a QR code for example.com, the site will instead give you a code for a URL hosted on one of their servers, which will potentially harvest user data, potentially carry out some slow and inefficient further processing, and then, if the company is still in existence and the servers aren’t down, redirect to example.com like you actually wanted. This is not a good state of affairs, but it is too often the default.
Luckily, QR codes are an open standard. This kind of useless middlemanship is not baked into them. In theory, you can make them by hand. In practice, you can make them using dedicated software written by people who are more interested in making QR codes than making money. The best place for it that I’ve found is, somewhat surprisingly, Wolfram|Alpha. Just go there, type in “QR code for <url>”, and you’ll get one. Right-click it to save. That’s all you need to do.
So: please stop letting useless firms insert themselves into your QR codes and start using them as the easily-scannable, quickly-readable, humble and universal tool that they were always meant to be.
Thank you.