The Digital Beyond maintains this list of online services that are designed to help you plan for your digital death and afterlife or memorialize loved ones.
These services come in all flavors including digital estate services, posthumous email services and online memorials.
If your service is not listed here, don’t feel left out. Let us know and we’ll add it to the list.
1000Memories
1000memories.com/Founded: July, 2010
1000memories provides memorial websites that allows users to invite other friends of the deceased to submit photos and stories. Founded by three friends who have lost loved ones, the site brings together the family and friends of the deceased to create a unique online memorial.
AssetLock
www.assetlock.netFounded: November, 2006
AssetLock is an online safe deposit box that allows users to upload files, passwords, and instructions to be released to predetermined individuals at their death. The service also allows for email messages and printed letters to be sent. AssetLock determines you have passed by waiting for a certain number of your recipients to log in and certify your passing. Once your death is confirmed your account will be unlocked (after a time delay preset by you).
Bcelebrated
www.bcelebrated.comFounded: July, 2009
Bcelebrated enables members to create a multi-media website that will become their autobiographical memorial site when the time comes. Members create password-protected private pages for loved ones, record their last wishes, and assign a charity to receive donations on their behalf. The service also sends automated notification emails at the time of a member’s death and provides a list of numbers for those who need to be called.
DataInherit
www.datainherit.comFounded: 2006
DataInherit offers customers around the world highly secure online storage for passwords and digital documents. You can access your online safe using any Internet browser or an iPhone from anywhere and at any time. In addition the unique data inheritance functionality will fully protect your data in emergency situations. Our services are designed and built by Swiss online banking experts and include Password Safe Free which gives you storage for up to 50 passwords and 10MB – absolutely free.
Dead Man’s Switch
www.deadmansswitch.netFounded: August, 2008
Dead Man’s Switch is a simple posthumous email service. Users can create an account or log in via OpenID. Once logged in they can create messages to be sent after their death. Dead Man’s Switch asks that users log in periodically to verify that they are still alive. If users do not log in after three email reminders, their messages are released.
Death Switch
deathswitch.comFounded: 2006
Death Switch sends out emails after you die, or at least after it stops hearing from you. You get one email with no attachments for free, or 30 emails with attachments for $19.95 a year.
Entrustet
www.entrustet.comFounded: 2009
Entrustet is a secure organizational tool that brings together people like you, estate planning lawyers and the companies that provide online accounts and memberships. Entrustet allows users to maintain a secure portfolio of online assets, nominate heirs and manage asset distribution and deletion after their passing. Entrustet’s services allow you to organize and decide what happens to your digital assets, before your loved ones or your executor are faced with the unknowns and complexities of protecting your online legacy.
Estate++
www.estateplusplus.comFounded: May, 2008
Estate++ is a virtual safe deposit box that was developed in response to the need for safe and reliable access to information for planning and emergency purposes. Through natural disaster, theft — even death and incapacity — your information is always available.
EstateLogic
www.executorsresource.comFounded: 2010
EstateLogic is a digital estate planning service where you can gather and store your important documents, personal instructions, and family stories. This service can help your family settle your estate and preserve your legacy.
Eternity Message
www.eternitymessage.com/Founded: 2009
Eternity Message is a service that allows you to send emails a set number of years into the future. The free plan allows messages to be sent up to one year into the future, but their premium service offers emails up to 60 years into the future. Unlike other services on our list, Eternity Message allows you to set an interval in the future and does not have any trigger based upon your death.
GoneTooSoon
www.gonetoosoon.orgFounded: 2008
GoneTooSoon is a not-for-profit organization which enables anyone to create a free online memorial for a relative or friend who has passed away.
GreatGoodbye
greatgoodbye.comFounded: 2009
European based email service starting at $39.00 or $9.95 per year. Users can draft email messages ahead of time to be sent posthumously along with photos, videos, and audio recordings. The service guarantees that your memorial will remain online for 20 years following your death. Requires that you grant a passcode to a friend or relative who will activate the delivery process. Users are given 21 days to cancel sending after the delivery is triggered.
if i die.org
ifidie.orgFounded:
if i die.org provides an ultra-simple, straightforward, and free way to write notes that will only be delivered if you die. The service is free, easy to use, and completely secure. Use this website to leave instructions for what to do with your pets and journals, to write letters to the people you care about, or for anything else you want. It’s not as morbid or scary as you think; it’s an easy way to be prepared just in case something totally unexpected happens.
Legacy Locker
www.legacylocker.comFounded: 2009
Legacy Locker is the safe and secure way to pass your online accounts to your friends and loved ones. It’s like a digital safety deposit box – you can put all your online accounts (emails, photos, social networks, everything online that requires a login) in it. For every account you store, you can assign a beneficiary, someone to whom you want to entrust your digital assets for the future. Currently running at $29.99 a year or 299.99 for a lifetime subscription.
Legacy.com
legacy.comFounded: 1999
Legacy.com is a site that offers online obituaries, memorial Web sites, and online guest books.
Lifestrand
www.lifestrand.netFounded: 2009
Lifestrand.net is a social utility for reminiscing and sharing fond memories with people close to you of your dearest moments with parents, relatives or friends, which have departed the earthly realm but still live on in the mind. Lifestrand is unlike other social networking sites in that it brings together people for purposes of celebrating the lives of those no longer with us, for commemorating people who have touched our lives.
Memorial Gardens
www.memorial-gardens.orgFounded: 2009
Create online memorials that you can share with friends and loved ones. Friends can grieve for loved ones and leave messages for others.
MentoMori
mentomori.comFounded: 2010
Send emails to loved ones after you die, share memories, and write words of encouragement. Also store your passwords and make your passing easier on the ones you love.
My Last Email
www.mylastemail.comFounded: 2006
My lastEmail is a service that sends out a batch of emails after you die.
My Web Will
www.mywebwill.comFounded: 2009
My Webwill is a secure online service that allows you to make decisions about your Internet accounts after your death. My Webwill was created so that you can take control of your immaterial assets, even in the afterlife.
My Wonderful Life
www.mywonderfullife.comFounded: 2010
My mywonderfullife.com is a planning, messaging and memorial site with loads of features that will help you plan your own passing. You can leave letters, document your wishes, make sure your pets are taken care of, write your own obituary and even design your own headstone.
Online Legacy / Permasite
www.online-legacy.comFounded: 2010
Online Legacy is a service that allows you to create a website with your family stories. The sites are stored by Permasite, a sister site managed by a trust, ensuring up to 50 years of storage for your memories.
RememberWell
www.rememberwell.netFounded: 2005
RememberWell.net is a not for profit online memorial website for you to share and celebrate the memories of your loved one with family and friends.
SympathyTree
www.sympathytree.comFounded: 2010
SympathyTree is a smartly featured memorial Web site where people can celebrate the lives of those they have recently lost. The site allows people to build memorials using photos, videos and text. Visitors can share stories using stories and videos. Gifts and charity donations can also be managed through the site.
VitalLock
vitallock.comFounded: 2009
VitalLock is a secure messaging platform for posthumous delivery of escrowed VITAL (Video Image Text Audio Link) messages to family, heirs and loved ones.VitalLock works with your attorney to ensure that your data is not released without legal verification of your death.
Xsen.de
xsen.deFounded: 2008
Xsen.de is a European-based service that sends e-mails, stores usernames & passwords and photographs. Survivors inform the service of your death using a private key, which you provide to them. Their staff then verifies your death by obtaining a death certificate. They operate in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, but intend to expand as they find reliable means of accessing official records in other countries.
