Free digital business card: what "free" means from one service to the next

A limited trial, a tier with a logo, or actually free? The four models behind "free" digital business cards, and the questions to ask before handing out an address.

Four meanings of "free"

Almost every digital business card service calls itself free. The word covers four different realities, and the difference rarely shows before the QR code is printed on two hundred cards.

The trial. Free for fourteen or thirty days, then paid. Past the deadline the page is locked or deleted. The QR code already printed then leads to a payment page, yours, but for you.

The limited tier. Free forever, with limits: a number of links, no photo, the service's logo at the bottom, or a long, impersonal address. Every limit is a reminder that a subscription exists.

The loss leader. The page is free, the object that leads to it is paid: an NFC card, a badge, a stand. The model is honest as long as the page stays open when you buy nothing.

The actually free. Everything open, nothing expires, nothing is throttled. It is rare, and asking why is fair.

Why Vizy is free

Because a business card costs very little to serve. A page, an image, a contact file of a few kilobytes: the server hosting thousands of cards costs less than a single monthly subscription at the competition. We chose not to build tiers, not to hold back features, and not to sell data, which would have been the only other way to fund a "free" service.

The service is made by a small team, for Swiss freelancers, and it is free with no conditions. Should that ever change, existing accounts would be told thirty days ahead and could export their data; it is written in our terms.

The questions to ask before choosing

1. What happens if I stop paying, or if the service shuts down? The right answer: the page stays reachable, and your contacts have a contact file saved in their phone anyway, which depends on nobody.
2. Is the address mine? vizy.me/your-name can be read, dictated and printed. A thirty-character address with an identifier is remembered by nobody.
3. Who sees my visitors? Some free services live off the data of those who scan. Read the privacy policy, not the home page.
4. Can I leave? A button that deletes the account, and the data with it, in one go.
5. Is the QR code mine? A code routed through the service's domain to be "counted" dies with your account. A code that points at your page directly belongs to you.

What you get, concretely

At Vizy: your address, your photo, your details, your links, five themes in light and dark, a QR code as SVG and PNG, an "Add to contacts" button with the photo, and a counter of opens. Four languages. No credit card, no trial, no logo to buy back.

What you do not get: per-link statistics, team management, a custom domain. Those are open work, not paid options.

A word about paper

Free or not, a digital card does not replace the paper one: it extends it. A QR code on the back of a plain card is, to date, the combination that works best. And it is the paper that costs.