Explainer·four minutes
Before you send your first card it helps to know exactly what lands: what the message says, what they tap, whether anything asks them to sign up, and what they can keep afterwards. Nothing here needs an app.
They get a link. They tap it. The card opens in whatever browser they already use, the photos come out of it, and there is a button to download them. That is the entire experience.
No app, no account, no free trial, no email harvesting. If the person you are sending to has ever opened a link from you before, they can open this. The only exceptions are ones you choose yourself: a PIN, or a check that they are the person you addressed it to.
However you sent it — text message, WhatsApp, email, Messenger — it shows up as a normal message from you, not from us. The preview shows the card’s cover and your name, so it does not read like something to be suspicious of.
If you chose email, the subject line says who it is from and that a card is waiting. It is worth sending yourself one first if you want to see the wording.
Sending to someone cautious about links? Text them first to say a card is coming. It removes the only real friction in the whole process.
The cover appears closed, the way a card sitting on a table would. One tap and it opens: your greeting, your message, your signature, in the fonts you chose. If you recorded a voice message there is a play button, and it is usually the first thing they press.
Cards made with a Card Pack arrive inside a sealed digital envelope, with their name on the front — that opens first, then the card behind it.
It works on a phone, a tablet, a laptop, an old iPad in a kitchen drawer. There is nothing to install and nothing to update.
This is the moment the whole thing is built around. The photos come out of the card and lay out on screen — not as a slideshow they have to wait through, but as a set they can look at in any order, tap to enlarge, and go back to.
Open any photo full screen and a Download button saves it at the size you uploaded. The file that comes down is the file you sent, not a screen-sized copy of it, so a photo can go straight to a print shop or a frame. Most services quietly hand over the screen-sized version instead — why that matters.
What it looks like once the card is open, on a phone.
Two ways, and they can do both. Download the photos as files onto their own device. Or save the whole card — cover, message, voice note, photos — as one file that opens later with no internet and no account. A card that outlives the link.
That second one is the part people do not expect. A link eventually dies; a file on a hard drive does not. More on keeping a card forever. If you would rather they only looked, marking the card view-only takes that button away.
You can edit the card any time before it is opened, and the same link shows the change. Once it has been opened it locks, and any copy they saved stays as it was.
A real card arrives in a paper envelope: the design on the front, your message printed inside, in a size that stands on a mantelpiece. The photos are not printed on it — there is a QR code on the back instead.
Pointing a phone camera at it opens the digital card, photos and all. So the paper is the object that gets kept on display, and the code is how the pictures get downloaded. How printed cards work.
No sign-up wall in front of the card — the link opens it. Only a card you have locked to a named address asks them to sign in.
It runs in the browser already on the device. No app store, no update prompt.
Receiving is always free. Whatever you paid, if anything, covers the whole card.
Nothing asks them for an address to open the card. The only one involved is the one you sent to, and we never write to it again.
Yes — your dashboard shows when the card was first opened, so you are not left wondering whether the link went through. That first open is also what closes editing on the card.
The link works for anyone who has it, so a card sent to one sibling can be passed round the family. Treat it as shareable rather than private — a Card Pack adds a PIN or an email check if you need it kept to one person.
The card itself is light and loads first; full-size photos download only when asked for. On a weak connection the card still opens and reads fine.
Tap a photo to open it full screen — the download button sits in that view. If you are walking someone through it over the phone, the grandparents guide is written to be read aloud.
Free cards stay up for 60 days; a card made with a Card Pack stays for the life of your account, and ordering a printed copy pins it indefinitely. The reliable answer is the downloaded copy — once saved, it does not depend on us at all.
It is the fastest way to see all of this from the other side. Free, no account needed to start.
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