How to Make a Memorial Website

What a memorial website is

When someone dies, what made them who they were is suddenly scattered — photos on a dozen phones, stories that only come out at the table, a voicemail someone is afraid to delete. A memorial website gathers it in one place, at one address, where everyone can visit and everyone can add.

It is not social media. There is no feed, no algorithm, and nothing competing for attention next to their name. A good one is closer to a family album that everyone can reach.

The six steps

This is the whole of it. Most families finish the first version in about ten minutes and let the page grow from there.

Step by step

• Choose where the page will live. Before anything else, check three things in writing: what the page costs to keep over the years, what happens to it if the company closes or a payment stops, and whether you can download everything.
• Start the page with their full name, their dates, and one photograph you love. That is enough to begin — the rest can come in its own time.
• Write a few lines of their story, in plain words, the way you would tell it across the table. If the words will not come, start with what they loved.
• Add photographs. Begin with a handful that feel most like them; a page with twelve true photographs says more than one with four hundred.
• Send the one link to everyone who loved them — by text, by email, or printed as a QR code on the program. The link is the invitation; no one needs an account to visit or to leave a memory.
• Approve what arrives. Every memory and photograph waits for the family before it appears on the page, so nothing stands next to their name that should not.

What does it cost?

Here, a complete tribute page is free, with no card: up to 12 photographs and 10 memories, their story, their timeline, the family tree, and the service details with RSVP. Plus is $197, paid once, and opens unlimited photographs, videos and memories, their voice, and their page played as a presentation at the service. Nothing renews.

Elsewhere, most memorial websites are subscriptions — a monthly or yearly fee for as long as you keep the page. Over a decade that quiet difference becomes a large one, and it changes what happens to the page when the paying stops. We keep an honest comparison of the major services, with prices verified and dated.

The comparison

• Memorial websites, compared honestly — prices verified October 2026, at /compare

What should you check before choosing a service?

Grief is long, and a memorial page should be built for years, not for the week of the service. Three questions separate the services that understand this from the ones that do not.

Ask every provider

• Is the permanence promise in writing — on a page you can point to later?
• What exactly happens to the page if the subscription lapses, or if the company closes?
• Can the family export everything — photographs, words, and recordings — whenever it wants?

If the computer part is not yours

Often the person making the page is not the closest griever — an adult daughter, a church secretary, the friend who is good with computers. That is how it should work. Make the page, hand the family the link, and show one person how to approve memories. From there the page runs itself, and the family holds the keys.