Tell me about your experiences with Storyworth?

Post date: 2021-12-07 10:04:03

Considering purchasing a Storyworth—or perhaps a similar but different service—subscription for my family, and asking them to contribute to it over the next year in lieu of traditional presents (to me). I have some questions, though...

I've been thinking about whether a subscription to Storyworth would make sense and be useful to my family. For a couple of reasons, principally including one family member being diagnosed with a progressive disease that will likely foreshorten their lifespan, and the addition of a new child who they will be unlikely to have the opportunity to interact with when they're older, there's a interest in recording family history and stories. But I haven't really had much luck getting people to actually write things down in a coherent form. Storyworth seems, at first glance, like it might be a fun and useful tool.

N.B. we are already using Qeepsake to compile photos and memories about the kiddo for themselves and others to enjoy down the road, so that's not really a requirement here.

If you have used or considered using Storyworth, I'd be interested in your perspective! Some particular questions include:

Did it work for you / your family? Did people participate and enjoy it? What made it enjoyable, or would have made it more enjoyable?

Conversely, what did you not like about it, or what made it painful to use, and why?

What's the quality like of the book that you get at the end of a Storyworth subscription?

How easy was it to use for people who are not especially technically savvy? Does it work well over basic email? (My family does email, but most are less likely to use a dedicated app regularly, so having something that allows questions and responses over email is fairly important.)

Does Storyworth have an export option? How can you get data out of the service aside from in book form? Their FAQ is suspiciously silent on the matter of export/archiving.

Did you use the built-in/provided questions from Storyworth, or create your own?

Are there any other services comparable to Storyworth that you'd recommend instead, or have used instead? I'm passingly aware of:
- Saga - appears to emphasize audio rather than text, which could be fun, but I'm not sure that the end product would be as usable as a book. Interested in pros/cons from anyone who has used or considered it.
- LifeArk Family Diary - the concept of having messages that appear to a specific recipient at particular times in the future is rather neat, but would limit the utility to people who are around today (and there's only one kid in our family at present). Maybe it would be complementary to Storyworth? I have some concerns about the viability of the service into the future for decades to come, what happens if they go out of business or get sold or "strategic pivot", etc. The fact that the most recent post on their website is from Sept of last year doesn't exactly give me the warm'n'fuzzies, but maybe I'm being uncharitable.
- MemLife - free to use, which isn't necessarily bad but makes me wonder about the sustainability of the underlying business. Emphasizes that all data can be exported (great!). Seems more geared towards self-directed / autobiographical stories, but maybe not? Doesn't have a ton of reviews or other information online.

DIYing some sort of service is also not out of the question either, and was my original idea before I realized other people have been down this road before. (I was going to jam together some sort of horrorshow of cron jobs and Python scripting to send emails and process the responses.) If you've done that, I'd be interested in the how and why.

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