Legacy.com Alternatives: Is Legacy.com Free, What It Costs, and 8 Sites to Use Instead
Is Legacy.com free? Reading obituaries and signing the guest book costs nothing. Placing an obituary there usually does β not because Legacy.com bills you directly, but because the obituary arrives through a newspaper notice, and the newspaper charges for it. Long-term access to the guest book has historically been a paid add-on. That is the whole answer, and if it is all you came for, you can stop here.
Most people searching for alternatives already knew that. What they are asking is subtler: the obituary is on Legacy.com, and now what? The guest book has filled with messages from people who could not make the service, the page looks like every other page on the site, and the family wants something that is theirs. This article is about that.
What Legacy.com Actually Is
Legacy.com is not a memorial website that also publishes obituaries. It is an obituary network that also has a guest book. The distinction explains almost everything people like and dislike about it.
It partners with thousands of newspapers in the United States and beyond. When a funeral home places a death notice in the local paper, the notice appears on Legacy.com as part of the package. Most families never post to Legacy.com at all β it just shows up. That is why the obituary is so easy to find by name a month later, and why the page belongs to the newspaper's arrangement rather than to you.
What It Does Well
Credit first, because it decides which alternative you need.
- Reach. An old colleague who hears the news late will search the name, and Legacy.com is where that search lands. Nothing else in this category ranks the way it does.
- Credibility. The page carries the newspaper's masthead. For a public figure or a long career, that matters.
- The guest book. Short messages from people who never made it to the service. Families read these for years.
- Zero effort. The funeral home handles it. In the worst week, that is not nothing.
If reach is the only thing you need, you may not need an alternative β you need a memorial alongside Legacy.com, which is a different question and answered below.
Where Legacy.com Falls Short
1. The cost is the newspaper's cost. Print obituaries are priced by length, which is why they read like telegrams. A few hundred dollars is common; metro papers can run well past a thousand for a longer notice with a photo. Best online obituary sites has a fuller budget table.
2. The page is not yours. You cannot redesign it, you cannot remove the ads that run beside it, and you cannot make it look like anything but a Legacy.com page.
3. It is thin as a memorial. One photo, one block of text, one guest book. There is no life story that grows, no gallery a scattered family adds to, nothing that feels like the person rather than the notice.
4. The guest book has a clock on it. Keeping it accessible long-term has historically meant paying. The messages are the most valuable thing on the page, and they are the part with the paywall.
5. Nobody promises permanence. The page will probably be there in five years. Probably is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
How the Alternatives Are Ordered
By the job they replace, because Legacy.com does two jobs badly matched to each other. Each entry is labelled so you can check the placement.
- Reach β where people find the obituary by name (entries 1β3)
- The lasting memorial β a page the family owns and keeps adding to (entries 4β6)
- Specific situations β UK families, virtual services (entries 7β8)
Within each group the order is our judgement. Between groups it is not.
Eight Legacy.com Alternatives
For reach
1. The newspaper's own website
Many papers now sell an online-only obituary at a fraction of the print price. Before you pay, ask what "online-only" means β for a large share of papers it is a Legacy.com page under a different header, which you may already be getting through the funeral home. Where it is genuinely the paper's own page, you get local reach without the per-line bill.
Cost. Often under $100, varies widely. Weakness. Rarely free, no control over presentation.
2. Ever Loved
A free obituary page with no ads, plus service details, RSVP, and a fundraiser in the same link. Ever Loved pages rank reasonably for name searches, and the obituary can be as long as you like because nobody is charging by the line.
Cost. Free; a platform fee on money raised. Weakness. Built for the fortnight around the funeral, not for the years after. The page is a listing, not a memorial. Ever Loved alternatives covers what happens next.
3. Echovita and obituary aggregators
Free listings that pull from funeral home notices, which is where most people looking for a name end up if the paper did not run a notice. You rarely post here directly either β it aggregates.
Cost. Free. Weakness. You have no say in the page, and the memorial features are close to none. Useful for being found, useless for being remembered.
For the lasting memorial
4. GetMemorial β Editor's Pick β
Our product, so weigh what follows accordingly. GetMemorial is the opposite shape to Legacy.com: memorial-first, with no obituary network at all. It is the page you build because the Legacy.com page is not enough.
What it does that Legacy.com cannot. A life story and a gallery that keep growing; family members adding photos and tributes from their own phones without a shared login; templates that look like a memorial rather than a notice; no ads on any page; a native iOS app; English, Spanish, and Chinese; Western and East Asian remembrance traditions both supported.
Cost. Free β a permanent page with a life story, up to 50 photos, and tributes. Premium ($4.99 a month, $39.99 a year, or $89.99 once for life) lifts the photo limit and adds video, premium themes, and background music.
What it does badly. No name-search reach to speak of β it does not feed newspapers and does not aggregate obituaries. No fundraiser, no RSVP. Android is still in development. If you want to be found by strangers, pair it with one of the reach options above.
5. Forever Missed
Nearly two decades old and strongest for text: multi-chapter biographies, long tributes, a rich editor. If the family has a writer, this is where that writer is happiest.
Cost. Free with third-party ads on the page; a paid lifetime upgrade removes them. Weakness. The ads, the dated interface, no app. Forever Missed alternatives goes deeper.
6. Keeper
Each memorial is tied to a cemetery location and a family tree, with a mobile app. If genealogy matters β and for families leaving a newspaper obituary it often does β this is the natural fit.
Cost. Free tier; a one-time lifetime plan under $100. Weakness. Functional rather than warm. A database with a memorial attached.
For specific situations
7. MuchLoved (UK)
A registered UK charity: no tiers, no ads, no upsells, donations optional. Widely used through UK funeral directors and handles in-memory charitable giving well.
Cost. Free, donation-supported. Weakness. Conservative design, limited media, an unusual choice outside the UK and Ireland.
8. GatheringUs
If the reason you are looking past Legacy.com is that half the family cannot travel, the problem is the service, not the obituary. GatheringUs produces live-streamed virtual memorial services with a free memorial page attached.
Cost. Free page; events run to four figures. Weakness. The page is basic and the product is the event. Virtual memorial service guide covers running one yourself for far less.
Side by Side
| Legacy.com | Newspaper site | Ever Loved | GetMemorial | Forever Missed | Keeper | MuchLoved | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free to place | Via paid notice | Rarely | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Ads on page | Yes | Varies | No | No | Yes (free tier) | No | No |
| Name-search reach | High | Local | Moderate | Low | Moderate | Low | Low (UK) |
| Page is yours | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Grows over years | No | No | Partly | Yes | Yes | Yes | Partly |
| Guest book / tributes free long-term | Historically paid | Varies | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| App | No | No | No | iOS | No | Yes | No |
The Two-Site Answer
For most families the right move is not to replace Legacy.com but to stop asking it to be a memorial.
Leave the Legacy.com page up. It costs nothing to leave, it is where strangers will find the name, and the funeral home already did the work. Then build the memorial somewhere the family owns, and put a link to it in the Legacy.com guest book β one message, from the family, saying where the photos and stories live. Everyone who finds the obituary finds the memorial.
That arrangement gets the reach of the network and the permanence of a page you control, and the only thing it costs is one guest book entry.
How to Save What Is on Legacy.com
Do this before anything else, because the guest book is the part with the clock on it.
1. Copy the obituary text into a plain document. It is short; this takes a minute.
2. Copy every guest book entry β the message, the name, and the date. There is no export button. A guest book with forty entries takes twenty minutes and is the most valuable twenty minutes in this whole process.
3. Save the photo at full size if there is one. Ask family for the original rather than downloading the compressed version.
4. Build the new memorial quietly β obituary, photos in one batch, the guest book messages re-entered with their authors' names β before you announce it. The first thing people see should be a finished page.
5. Link back. One entry in the Legacy.com guest book pointing to the new memorial. Then leave the old page alone.
How to write an obituary covers the text itself if you are writing fresh rather than moving.
FAQ
Is Legacy.com free? Reading and signing the guest book is free. The obituary usually arrives through a paid newspaper notice, and long-term guest book access has historically been a paid add-on.
Can I post an obituary on Legacy.com directly without a newspaper? Historically the route has been through a partner newspaper or funeral home rather than posting yourself. If you want a page you control, use one of the alternatives above.
Will the Legacy.com page disappear? The obituary listing is likely to remain; the guest book is the part with a time limit unless extended. Copy the entries now.
Which alternative has the best name-search reach? The newspaper's own site and Ever Loved. None of the memorial-first sites, including ours, replaces Legacy.com for being found by strangers.
What is the cheapest way to have both reach and a lasting memorial? A free Ever Loved obituary plus a free memorial page on GetMemorial or MuchLoved. Neither costs anything, and together they cover both jobs.
GetMemorial helps families build beautiful, lasting online memorials in minutes β a permanent home for tributes, photos, and stories. Build yours at GetMemorial.com.
