Familyful Get the free printables

The beta

SOMEBODY HAS TO GO FIRST. I'D LIKE IT TO BE YOU.

Familyful is nearly finished, and before it opens to everyone it goes to a small group of families who will use it on an ordinary week and tell me what actually happened.

That group is open now. Here is all of it, before you give me anything.

WHAT A BETA FAMILY IS

A family who has the app on their phone before anybody else does, uses it the way they would use any app, and says so when something is wrong.

You are not a tester in the clipboard sense. There is no bug form, no weekly survey, no session to attend. The useful version of this is one parent, one ordinary Tuesday, and one honest sentence afterwards.

  • You install it and use it when you would have reached for your phone anyway.
  • Every so often I ask one short question. You answer it, or you don't.
  • When something breaks or annoys you, you tell me, and I fix it before it reaches anybody else.

HOW MANY, AND WHERE

Familyful goes first to fifty St. Louis families, and then twenty-five more in each of the next nine cities.

Small on purpose. Familyful is built by one person, so a hundred families at once would mean a hundred notes I could not answer properly, and a note nobody answers is worse than no note at all.

St. Louis goes first because it is home and because it is the city the app knows best. Once St. Louis is running, the other nine open together rather than one at a time, and the form asks which city you are nearest so I know which invite to send you. If your city is not on the list you can still add your name. You will just see less of the local half at the start.

WHAT YOU GET

  • The whole app, not a slice of it. Every part that works on the day you get it, including the paid side.
  • It stays free for the whole beta. No card, no trial clock, and nothing that charges you when you stop paying attention.
  • The founding price afterwards, and it never rises. The beta itself is free the whole way through, and if you want to keep the paid side after it, you pay $2.99 a month or $29.99 a year for as long as you keep it, where everybody who arrives later pays $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year.
  • A free tier that stays free. If you would rather pay nothing at all, that option exists forever, beta or no beta.
  • Your name in the app, if you want it there. Nobody has to be public about this.

WHAT IT REQUIRES

Basically nothing.

An iPhone or an Android phone, and a family. That is the list.

On iPhone, the app comes through Apple's TestFlight: I send you a link, and nothing appears in the public App Store. On Android, the invite brings it the way it always has.

No minimum number of days. No streak to keep. No call, no video, no group chat. If you go quiet for three weeks because life happened, nothing happens to you.

I will send a short note every so often asking what worked and what did not. "Every so often" is honestly as precise as I can be about that right now. Answering it is the only ask, and I would rather have one sentence you meant than a paragraph you felt obliged to write.

WHAT IT COSTS

Nothing, and there is no card involved at any point.

When the beta ends you choose: stay on the free tier, or take the founding price. Either way you are never charged for something you did not pick, and nothing you saved is held hostage if you walk away.

WHAT YOU GIVE ME

  • Your email address, because that is where the invite goes.
  • The city you are nearest, because the local half of the app is built city by city and your invite has to match it.

Nothing else. Not your children's names, not their ages, not your address. The app asks for what it needs once you are inside it, and what you put there stays yours.

Questions go to hello@familyful.world.

The tester terms come with the invite rather than now, because they are short and you should read them at the moment there is something to accept. If they are not for you, turn the invite down and I delete the address.

Your email address is only ever used to email you. We never sell it and we never share it. The privacy policy is one page and says exactly that.

PUT MY FAMILY FORWARD.

Your email and the city you are nearest. I will write when there is a place for you, and I will write even if there is not, so you are not left wondering.

No spam, ever. See the privacy policy.