Cake (joincake.com) Has Closed: What Happened to Its Memorial Pages, and Where to Rebuild One
The short answer: Cake, the end-of-life planning site at joincake.com, no longer exists. It was acquired by Foundation Partners Group, a funeral home company, in September 2024, and on 15 June 2025 it moved to a new service called Afterall, asking users to download anything they had saved before that date. Cake's free memorial pages were not carried over: archived copies show memorial page addresses failing by late summer 2025. Today joincake.com redirects to Altogether, a network of funeral providers. If you made a memorial page on Cake, the page is gone, but some of what was on it may still be recoverable. This guide covers how, and how to choose where to rebuild.
If you found this because a link someone shared years ago now goes to a funeral home's website, that is why.
What Cake was
Cake was a free website for planning ahead and for the weeks after a death. It offered a planning checklist covering health care, legal and financial matters, funeral wishes and legacy; state advance directive forms; a will tool; a trusted decision maker form; and a checklist for families after a loss.
It also offered free memorial pages. Its own page, preserved by the Internet Archive, described them like this: "Create a beautiful memorial website… Completely free. Set up takes 5 minutes." A page could hold photos, a life story, an obituary, event details, and messages and photos from guests. It promised that families could "look back on the page forever."
There was also a memorial fundraiser. Cake took no platform fee, only card processing of 2.9% plus 30 cents per donation, and payouts went through Stripe to a US bank account.
What happened to it
- September 2024: Foundation Partners Group announced it had acquired Cake. Terms were not disclosed.
- Before 15 June 2025: Cake's home page told users it was "transitioning to our new online home, Afterall" on 15 June 2025, and asked anyone who had saved documents, files or photos to download them to their own device before then.
- Summer 2025: memorial page addresses on joincake.com stopped loading. The archived copies we checked return server errors from August and September 2025.
- 2026: joincake.com redirects to altogetherfuneral.com, which describes itself as a network of licensed funeral, cremation and cemetery providers.
The notice asked people to save their own information. A memorial page is different: the photos and messages on it were often added by dozens of other people, who never saw the notice and had no reason to think a page promised "forever" would need saving.
None of this is unusual. Free services are acquired, merged and shut down all the time. It matters more for a memorial page than for almost anything else, because the people who built it may not be there to rebuild it.
Recovering what you can
Work through these in order. Each one takes a few minutes, and between them they usually bring back more than families expect.
1. Find the old address. Look in your email, texts and social media for the link you shared when the page was made. It will look like joincake.com/memorial-pages/ followed by a name.
2. Check the Internet Archive. Paste that address into the Wayback Machine at web.archive.org. Not every Cake page was archived, but some were, and an archived copy can show you the life story and the messages people left. Copy the text into a document straight away. Photos in archived pages are often missing or small, so do not count on them.
3. Ask the people who added things. The photos on a memorial page almost always came from someone's phone. Send one message to the family and friends who contributed: "Cake has closed and the page is gone. If you posted photos there, could you send me the originals?" The copies on their phones will be better than anything the page held.
4. Search your own email. If you received messages when guests left a tribute, those emails may contain the words they wrote. Search for "Cake" and the person's name.
5. Check Altogether. Its website has a help section about Cake's closure. It is worth reading for anything about your account, although we found nothing suggesting memorial pages can be restored.
If you also used Cake's planning tools, the documents you uploaded there (a will, an advance directive) should be checked against the originals. If you did not download them before June 2025, use the paper copies or recreate them; our guide to digital legacy services covers current planning tools.
Choosing where to rebuild
What happened to Cake is the best argument for asking one question before you choose any memorial site: what happens to this page if the company closes or is sold? Very few sites answer it well. Here is what to look for, and what three common choices say.
| What it says about the long term | Can you download the page? | Fundraising | |
|---|---|---|---|
| MuchLoved (UK charity) | Says it has ring-fenced funds to cover future hosting costs | Yes, as a ZIP file | Charity donations, with Gift Aid |
| Ever Loved | Says pages stay up indefinitely | Not that we found | Yes, for funeral costs |
| GetMemorial (ours) | Free page does not expire and has no ads | No export button | No |
Some honest notes on that table.
MuchLoved is the clearest answer to the Cake problem: a registered charity that says it has set money aside for hosting and lets you download your page. It is built around UK charities and funeral directors, which matters less than it sounds if all you want is a page. Our MuchLoved alternatives page explains when it fits.
Ever Loved is closest to what Cake offered in its first weeks: a page plus a fundraiser for funeral costs. If the fundraiser is why you used Cake, start there; best memorial fundraising sites compares the options.
GetMemorial is ours. The free page does not expire, carries no ads, and lets you add co-managers so the family can keep adding photos and stories for years. You can make it public, open only to people with an access code, or visible only to you. We are a small company, and we would be making the same promise Cake made if we told you nothing could ever happen to us. So we would give you the same advice for our site as for any other: keep your own copies.
Keep your own copies, wherever you build
Whatever site you choose, three habits mean a closure can never take everything:
- Keep the originals. Put every photo and video in one folder on a computer or in your own cloud storage before you upload it anywhere.
- Save the words. Once or twice a year, copy the life story and the messages people have left into a document. The messages are the part nobody else has a copy of.
- Name a second manager. A page with one person in charge is fragile, whatever the platform. Our guide to who inherits an online memorial covers handing it on.
Cake was not the first memorial service to close, and it will not be the last. CaringBridge families face a version of the same question; what happens to a CaringBridge site after someone dies covers that one. If you want to understand what "permanent" can and cannot mean for any online memorial, permanent online memorial goes into it.
Quick answers
Is joincake.com still working? No. Cake closed on 15 June 2025, after being acquired by Foundation Partners Group in 2024. The address now redirects to Altogether, a network of funeral providers.
Can I get my Cake memorial page back? Not from Cake. Try the Wayback Machine at web.archive.org with the page's old address, ask contributors for their original photos, and search your email for tribute notifications.
What replaced Cake? Cake said it was moving to Afterall, and joincake.com now redirects to Altogether. Neither offers Cake's free memorial pages. For a new memorial page, see the comparison above.
What should I ask a memorial site before using it? What happens to the page if the company closes or is sold, whether you can download it, and whether more than one person can manage it.
GetMemorial helps families build beautiful, lasting online memorials in minutes, with a free page that does not expire. Rebuild the page you lost as a free online memorial, and keep your own copies too.
