A real card, not a coaster
Standard CR80 stock — 0.76 mm thick, the exact size and rigidity of a bank card, with rounded corners and an NFC chip laminated inside. It survives a wallet.
About
Dote is a card that plays a memory.
A real card, the size and weight of a credit card, with a chip inside it. Someone holds a phone near the card and the video you chose starts playing. They need no app or account. You use a free Dote account to add memories and change what your card opens.
Why it exists
Photographs prove it happened. They don’t let you live it again.
Everybody has thousands of videos and nobody watches them. They sit in a phone, behind a search box, in an album nobody opens. The moments worth keeping are the ones you would actually re-watch, and the reason you don’t is that nothing in your house reminds you they exist.
A card does. It sits in a drawer, in a wallet, propped on a shelf with the photograph facing out — and every time somebody picks it up, the video is one tap away. That is the entire idea. We did not invent the chip; we made it something you would want to keep.
It works the same way for the hardest moments as the happiest ones. Families order memorial cards so people at a service can hear a voice again. Couples order wedding favors guests still have years later. Same object, either end of a life.
doteverb — to love someone so much that it shows in what you do for them.
Which is roughly what handing somebody a card with your video inside it amounts to. Hence the name. It has not always meant that — for three hundred years it meant almost the opposite.
How they’re made
Made by hand, one at a time, in San Diego.
Dye-sublimation, edge to edge
Your photograph goes into the card surface rather than onto it, so it cannot peel or scuff off. There is no plate and no minimum, which is why a set of ten is worth printing at all.
Every card is tapped
Before a card goes in the box somebody holds a phone to it and watches the video open. Not a sample from the batch — every card.
Out the door fast
Printed and shipped within 24 hours. If you have a date, say so at checkout and we make sure it lands before it.
Straight with you
Tap one before you order two hundred.
If you are weighing up a large order, email me and I will put a single card in the post for you to tap. It is a strange object to judge from a screen, and I would rather you held one first.
A few things I will not do, written down so you can hold me to them: no fabricated reviews, no invented five-star average, no advertising against your video, no selling your files or your email to anybody. If a card turns up wrong or does not play, reply to your receipt and I will replace it.
— Dote, San Diego · [email protected]
Fair questions
What people ask about us
Who makes these?
A small operation in San Diego. Cards are printed here, tapped on a real phone to check they work, and mailed by hand. There is no warehouse and no call center — the address on your receipt reaches the person who printed it.
Is Dote a subscription?
No. You pay once for the cards. The page your card opens stays up and stays yours, and swapping the video costs nothing. There is no monthly fee and no card on file.
What happens to my video?
It is stored privately and served only to whoever taps your card. If you password-protect a memory we show nothing publicly — not the title, not the photo, nothing. We do not use it in advertising, and we do not sell it.
What if Dote goes away?
A fair question to ask a new company, and the honest answer is that a card pointing at a dead site is a dead card. Keep your original video file. If we ever wind down we will say so with notice, not quietly.
Can I hand a card I manage over to somebody else?
Yes. Every card has a "Hand it over" option that transfers control of it, by email, to somebody else's account — useful for a wedding card the parents set up but the couple should own afterwards, or a card you are minding for someone who was not ready to make an account yet.
How do I reach a person?
[email protected]. It reaches someone who can actually fix the thing you are writing about — not a ticket queue.
Before you order
What happens to your card if we disappear?The fair thing to worry about, and the commitment we can actually keepWhite, bamboo or metal: which card to chooseWhat each is made of, what it weighs, and which can carry a photographNFC or a QR code: which should go on a card?What a tap asks of somebody that a printed code does not
Make the first one tonight.
Four minutes, and you see exactly what arrives before you pay for it.
See the cards — from $30Ships in 24 hours · Free tracked shipping · Change the video any time