A Storyworth alternative that keeps a grandparent’s voice

Why families look for a Storyworth alternative

Storyworth sends your parent or grandparent one question a week, by text or email, for a year. They answer by replying to the email, writing on the website or recording their voice over the phone, and at the end the answers are printed as a hardcover book. You can pick from a library of more than 500 questions or write your own.

On 6 October 2026 its site advertised plans starting at $59, each including weekly questions and one hardcover book. Telling stories over the phone, with a guided interview or speech turned into text, is listed as an upgrade. A separate Unlimited plan includes two color books and any number of storytellers.

It has been doing this since 2013 and says it has printed a million books. Where families get stuck is the writing. Fifty-two essays is a lot to ask of someone who has not written at length since school, and a half-finished year can leave them feeling they let you down.

The other reason is the voice. A book keeps what was said. It does not keep the accent, the pause before the punchline or the laugh, and for many grandchildren that is the part they will want.

Sources: Storyworth

Ask a small question, press record, and keep the answer where the family can find it.

1. Everlittle: their voice, kept beside the photographs

Everlittle is ours. It is a private family archive built around a child: photos, written stories, voice recordings, video and letters on one dated timeline. A grandparent’s story goes in as a recording in their own voice and sits beside the photographs from the same years, so a grandchild finds it in context.

It has no finish line. Storyworth runs for a year and ends in a book. An Everlittle archive stays open, and a story remembered at a birthday five years from now goes in the same way as the first one. Everyone you invite can add to it: a grandfather records, an aunt adds the photo he was describing, and you write down the part he left out.

A grandparent can also write to the future. A letter sealed as a capsule stays unreadable until the date chosen, such as an eighteenth birthday, even to the person who wrote it. When your child is old enough, they can have their own view of the archive, opened with a family PIN and no email account.

The archive is private and has no ads. People join by email invitation, and nothing is public unless you create a link to one memory, which expires after 30 days. The free plan is 100 MB with no card and no end date, enough to try a few recordings. The family plan is $6 a month or $60 a year for 25 GB, with any number of invited relatives.

Start your family archive, free

What to write in a letter to your grandchild

Sources: Everlittle: Pricing

Everlittle or Storyworth?

Storyworth’s plans start at $59 and each includes a hardcover book. Everlittle is free to begin and prints nothing. Choose Storyworth instead if a bound book on the shelf is what you are after and your grandparent enjoys writing.

Everlittle also does not send weekly questions or turn recordings into text. You ask the questions yourself, in person or on a call, and add the recording afterward from your phone or theirs. A grandparent who is not comfortable with a browser does not need an account at all, because you can add the recording for them.

In return you keep the sound of them, with the family’s photographs, in a place that goes on growing.

See Everlittle’s plans

Sources: Storyworth

Questions that get a story started

Whatever you use, the question decides the answer. “Tell me about your childhood” gets a shrug. A small, concrete question gets a story. Ask one of these, record the answer, and add it with the date and the names of the people mentioned.

• What did your kitchen smell like when you were small?
• Who was the first person you ever had a crush on?
• What was the naughtiest thing my mother or father did as a child?
• What did you do with your first pay packet?
• Which house did you love most, and what could you see from the window?
• What did your own grandparents call you?
• What is a thing you were sure about at thirty that you have changed your mind on?

More prompts for the stories only grandparents can tell

2. Remento

Remento is the closest thing to Storyworth, built around speaking. Each week it sends the storyteller a prompt by email or text. They tap the link and record on any device, with no app, login or password. Each recording is turned into a written chapter, either word for word or tidied into a narrative, and printed in a book where a QR code plays the original.

On 6 October 2026 it cost $99 for the first year, including one color 8 by 10 inch hardcover of up to 380 pages. Additional copies were $69 each, and continuing after the first year was $99 a year or $12 a month.

Choose Remento instead if you want a book and your grandparent will not type. It is still a one-year project with a book as the goal.

Sources: Remento

3. The StoryCorps app

StoryCorps is a nonprofit that has been recording conversations between ordinary people since 2003. Its free app, for iPhone and Android, helps you prepare questions and records the conversation on your phone.

It is designed for one sitting: you and your grandmother at the kitchen table for forty minutes. There is no book and no weekly rhythm. Recordings can be uploaded to the StoryCorps Archive and the Library of Congress, which some families love and others would not want, so read the sharing options before you press record.

Sources: StoryCorps: The StoryCorps App; App Store: StoryCorps

4. Storii

Storii phones the storyteller. It places up to three scheduled calls a week, asks a life-story question and records and transcribes the answer. A storyteller with only a landline can also call in to hear their next question, and the stories can be downloaded as an audiobook or an ebook.

Choose Storii instead for a grandparent in their nineties who answers the phone and does nothing else with technology. Its pricing page did not display a price when we loaded it, so we have left the cost out. Check it at checkout.

Sources: Storii: Pricing

5. Your phone’s voice recorder

Every phone has a recorder, and it is enough. Sit somewhere quiet, put the phone on a folded towel between you, say the date and both your names, and ask one question. Stop after twenty minutes; come back next week.

The work lands on you. Name each file with the date and the subject on the same day, copy it to a second place and write two lines about what was said. Families who skip that step end up with forty files called “New Recording”. Adding each recording to Everlittle on the day you make it, with a title and a date, is one way to keep them findable.

See how old the grandparents will be at each of your child’s milestones

Start with one story this week

Do not wait for the right tool. Record one story on your phone this week.

Then give it a home. Create a free Everlittle archive, add the recording with its date, and invite the rest of the family to add what they remember.

Create your free archive and add the first recording

Ideas for grandparents who live far away