OwnCardly: A Free Open-Source Alternative to Overpriced Digital Business Card SaaS

Every digital business card tool sucks, so I built my own and open-sourced it

Developer Kevin Wielander built OwnCardly to solve the problem of digital business card platforms charging up to €2 per card monthly. The project is an MIT-licensed, self-hostable alternative that replaces rigid form-based designers with a full drag-and-drop canvas for small teams.

Why This Matters

The digital business card market currently commoditizes basic HTML/CSS templates by locking user data behind proprietary platforms and recurring subscription models. OwnCardly challenges this by providing a standalone, dependency-free HTML export and a local-first Guest mode, proving that contact sharing should function as a utility rather than a gated SaaS service.

Key Insights

• Cost Disparity: Commercial tools often charge €2 per card monthly, which scales to €500 per year for a team of 20 for simple HTML delivery.
• Data Sovereignty: OwnCardly exports cards as standalone HTML files with no JavaScript calling home or external CDN dependencies.
• Canvas vs. Form: The tool utilizes a real drag-and-drop canvas with layers and smart guides, moving beyond the standard form-filling template model used by competitors.
• Tech Stack: Built with Next.js App Router, Supabase for auth/database, Tailwind CSS, and react-rnd for the canvas interface.
• Zero-Account Onboarding: Guest mode utilizes localStorage to allow full feature testing with automatic data migration upon account creation.

Practical Applications

• Small Team Management: Use CSV import to bulk-generate cards for 5-10 employees without enterprise-tier sales calls or per-seat costs. Pitfall: Using per-seat SaaS for small teams leads to unnecessary recurring overhead for static assets.
• Self-Hosted Deployment: Deploy the Docker image to a private server to keep employee contact data entirely within internal infrastructure. Pitfall: Proprietary platforms often trap team data, making it difficult to export or switch vendors without manual re-entry.

References:

• https://dev.to/kevinwielander/every-digital-business-card-tool-sucks-so-i-built-my-own-and-open-sourced-it-2m32
• https://owncardly.com
• https://github.com/kevinwielander/digital-business-cards