Frequently Asked Questions

My Family Story Vault is the only platform you need to preserve your loved one's life story for yourself, your family and future generations. You can upload media, add memories and share your loved one's story with your family and friends. Those family and friends you give permission to can upload their media and add their own memories too! Your loved one's story remains private unless you invite friends to view it.

Yes, that's one of our main features! Once you've subscribed, you can invite your immediate family (or even close family friends) as Gatekeepers or Contributors to help you tell your loved one's complete story! You'll also be able to share your Tribute page with other family and friends by inviting them as Viewers. This keeps your loved one's stories private from the internet and gives you complete control over who sees and contributes to your loved one's Tribute page.

No, your loved one's story is private unless you specifically invite family and friends to view it. It cannot be accessed by Google or other search engines or AI agents like chatGPT.

You can get started with photos, videos and the stories that you tell others about your loved one over family dinners or at holidays. We've made it easy to create milestones for your loved one's life to help keep your stories organized. This also helps you tell your loved one's story in a way that is easy to understand and navigate. You can also invite family and friends to add their memories. If you have an aging loved one and you'd like to start recording their stories in more detail right now, please read our How do I...Start Recording Family Stories guide.

Your Honoree's Family Story Vault will continue to be available to you and your invitees for the length of the subscription period, at which point your Honoree's Tribute page will be placed in disabled mode. During this period, any Gatekeeper or Contributor can step forward and take ownership of the Honoree Tribute page by activating a new subscription and choosing the Honoree that has been disabled. Once this takes effect, this person will become the new owner of the Tribute page. All existing functionality, invitees and media will be available and the Honoree's Tribute page will continue to function as normal. If no one in the family choses to step forward, then the Honoree's Tribute page will be taken offline. Owners, Gatekeepers and Contributors always have the ability to export all media from the media library at any time.

Yes, the My Family Story Vault platform is mobile-friendly! You can upload media, create stories, build a timeline, invite family and friends, add private stories and view your Tribute pages using your mobile device. The family tree feature works best on a desktop computer or large tablet, due to the small phone screen having difficulty showing a large number of family members, but you can still access and add to your family tree on your phone if needed. We're working on bringing My Family Story Vault to Apple iOS and Android mobile devices as native apps in the near future.

We have several free feature trials, including our Family Tree and Life Timeline & Map. You can claim your family tree or highlight reel timeline map and add it to a permanent, private digital archive with a Tribute Lite purchase or a Tribute subscription. Tribute Lite is a giftable 1-year tribute page with 500GB of media storage, our story creator, the family tree builder, the timeline map and unlimited viewer invites; it does not renew automatically but can be re-purchased or upgraded. A Tribute Subscription gives you 2TB of media storage per tribute page, our story creator plus a private story feature, the family tree builder, the timeline map and adds free family collaboration features with unlimited invites. You can cancel your subscription at any time, or upgrade/downgrade to a different plan once a year. If you cancel your subscription, your loved one's story will remain online until the end of your subscription period. After that time, family members with Gatekeeper or Contributor permissions will be offered a chance to takeover the My Family Story Vault subscription and keep the Tribute page growing. If no family member steps forward, you and all invited family members will lose access to your loved one's Tribute page.

Yes! You can build out a full family tree for your loved one, adding parents, siblings, spouses, children and extended relatives as person cards. When you invite family members to help tell your loved one's story, they can open the family tree and claim their own person card by clicking "This is Me" on the card that represents them. Claiming their card links their account to that card, adds their profile photo and lets them keep their own information up to date. Each invited family member can only claim one card per tree, and a card can't be claimed once it belongs to someone else (or if the person is deceased), so your family tree stays accurate as more relatives join.

Yes! Our free Family Story Interview Questions tool generates a personalized set of thoughtful prompts to help you get the conversation started. Just tell it your relationship to the person you'd like to interview and which chapter of their life you're curious about, and it will hand you a curated list of questions you can bring to your next conversation. No account is needed to use it.