Self-host the email template builder.

What you need

• Static build: a current LTS release of Node.js and pnpm — only at build time.
• Docker: just Docker. The image builds Card and serves it with nginx.

Nothing else. There is no database to provision and no environment variables to configure — the app runs entirely in the visitor's browser.

Option 1 — static build

Clone the repository, install dependencies and build. The result is a dist/ folder of plain static assets:

git clone https://github.com/mysigmail/card.git
cd card
pnpm install
pnpm build
# → static files in dist/

Point any web server at that folder. With nginx, a fallback to index.html keeps client-side routing working:

server {
  listen 80;
  server_name builder.example.com;
  root /var/www/card/dist;
  index index.html;

  location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;
  }
}

builder.example.com {
  root * /var/www/card/dist
  file_server
  try_files {path} /index.html
}

The same build deploys to any static host — Cloudflare Pages, Netlify or GitHub Pages. Set the build command to pnpm build and the output directory to dist. For a GitHub Pages project site such as https://user.github.io/card/, build with the repository path so asset URLs resolve correctly:

VITE_APP_BASE_PATH=/card/ pnpm build

Replace /card/ with your repository name. A custom domain served from its root can keep the default / base path.

Option 2 — Docker

There is no official image yet, so the container is built from source. A two-stage Dockerfile keeps the final image small: Node builds the static files, nginx serves them.

FROM node:22-alpine AS build
WORKDIR /app
RUN npm install -g pnpm
COPY package.json pnpm-lock.yaml ./
RUN pnpm install --frozen-lockfile
COPY . .
RUN pnpm build

FROM nginx:alpine
COPY --from=build /app/dist /usr/share/nginx/html
EXPOSE 80

docker build -t mysigmail-card .
docker run -d --name card -p 8080:80 mysigmail-card
# → http://localhost:8080

Or with Docker Compose, if Card joins an existing stack:

services:
  card:
    build: .
    ports:
      - "8080:80"
    restart: unless-stopped

Updating

Updates are a pull and a rebuild — there is no migration step, because there is no server-side state. Versions and changelogs are published on the GitHub releases page.

cd card
git pull
pnpm install && pnpm build
# Docker: docker compose up -d --build

What you're actually running

A self-hosted Card deployment is deliberately boring to operate. Everything a template touches stays in the browser of the person editing it:

Licensing for self-hosters

Card is distributed under AGPL-3.0. In practice, for a self-hosted deployment:

• Running Card for yourself or inside your company is free, including commercial use.
• If you modify Card and serve it to users over a network, those users must be able to get the source of your modified version.
• Embedding the editor in a closed-source product requires a commercial licence.