The difference in one sentence
An image card is a real image that the bot draws at the moment of sending, with background, avatar, its own font and freely placed text. An embed is Discord's own message format: a colored frame with title, text, fields and footer.
When each format makes sense
| Image card | Embed |
|---|---|
| Looks more polished and stands out in the channel. Good for welcome messages, level-ups and giveaway announcements, everything that is meant to be seen. | Can be copied, searched and read out by screen readers. Good for logs, moderation notices and everything you will want to look something up in later. |
| Text inside an image is invisible to Discord's search. | Text stays text and can be found. |
| Loads as an image, a moment later on slow connections. | Appears immediately. |
Three settings per area
Every area · welcome, level-up, ticket message, log entry and so on · has the same choice:
- Image card only, only the rendered image appears.
- Embed only, only the embed appears.
- Both, embed with the image card underneath. Useful when the text should stay searchable but the card may still catch the eye.
You will find the choice at the very top of every panel, in the Appearance block. From there a button leads to a separate page where you set the look in detail.
What you can change about the image card
- Background image, an image of your own, 1160 × 616 pixels recommended. The bot darkens it automatically so the text stays readable.
- Accent color, determines borders, lines and highlights.
- Font, choose from the supplied fonts or upload your own
.ttf/.otf. - Position of text and avatar, both can be dragged freely into place in the preview; a slider changes the text size.
- Banner texts, heading and subheading of the card, so that the same sentence does not appear in every area.
What you can change about the embed
The embed is not a fixed format but a kit: title, description, author line, footer, color, thumbnail and any number of fields, side by side as well. Placeholders such as {user}, {server} or {level} are filled in by the bot when sending.
If you leave all fields empty, the bot sends the translated default text in your server's language. So you do not have to fill in anything to get a usable result.
What is Premium and what is not
We would rather say this plainly than hide it behind a locked button:
- Image cards are a Premium feature. Without an active subscription the bot sends the embed version, not nothing at all.
- Embeds are free. Every area can be redesigned completely without a subscription. There is no area that exists only as an image card.
- Two exceptions are always free: the cards of the voice channels and those of the setup assistant.
- The captcha always stays an image, the number is deliberately only in the picture there, otherwise the whole point would be lost.
When a card does not appear
The bot deliberately falls back to text instead of sending nothing at all. So if an embed or plain text arrives instead of the expected card, one of these checks did not pass:
- The global image card switch under
Personalized Botis off. - The area itself is set to Embed only.
- There is no active subscription, then the embed version applies.
- The background image is unreachable or damaged. In that case the embed appears and the incident is recorded in the log.