How Much Does a Memorial Website Cost? A 20-Year Price Comparison
Nearly every memorial website will tell you it is free. Most of them are, on the day you sign up. The question that actually matters is different, and almost nobody asks it out loud: what will this page cost by the time my grandchildren look at it?
A memorial is one of the few things people build on the internet intending it to outlast them. That makes the pricing question strange. A $5 monthly plan is nothing. A $5 monthly plan running for twenty years is $1,200, and it depends on a card that has to keep working for two decades and a company that has to keep existing.
This page compares memorial website costs three ways β today, at five years, and at twenty β and then covers the costs that never appear on a pricing page at all.
The Four Pricing Models
Every platform in this category uses one of four models, and the model tells you more than the number does.
Free, funded by something else. The page costs nothing because ads run on it, or because a charity funds it, or because the memorial is a doorway to a paid service like funeral planning or fundraising. Cost today: $0. Cost in twenty years: $0, if the funding source is still there.
One-time lifetime. You pay once and the page stays. The risk is entirely about the company outliving the payment, which is a real risk but a knowable one β there is no way to accidentally lose the page by forgetting to renew.
Subscription. Monthly or annual. Cheapest to start, most expensive to keep, and the only model where a lapsed credit card can take the memorial down. This matters more than it sounds: the person paying is often the person most likely, five or ten years on, to be the one who has moved, changed banks, or died.
Per-item. Newspaper obituaries and some card-style tribute products. You pay per obituary, per board, per printed program. Nothing recurs, and nothing accumulates either.
What Twenty Years Actually Costs
Ordered cheapest to most expensive at the twenty-year mark. Every row states its model so you can check the arithmetic yourself rather than take the order on trust.
| Platform | Model | Today | 5 years | 20 years |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MuchLoved (UK) | Free, donation-funded | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Ever Loved | Free + paid add-ons | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Forever Missed (free tier) | Free with ads | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Keeper | One-time lifetime | under $100 | under $100 | under $100 |
| GetMemorial β Editor's Pick | Free tier + one-time lifetime | $0 | $89.99 | $89.99 |
| Forever Missed (paid) | One-time lifetime | higher $100s | higher $100s | higher $100s |
| GetMemorial (annual, if you never switch) | Subscription | $39.99 | $199.95 | $799.80 |
| Kudoboard | Per board | per-board fee | per board | per board |
| Legacy.com / newspaper obituary | Per placement | set by the paper | β | β |
| GatheringUs (full event service) | Service fees | four figures | β | β |
Two things fall out of that table immediately.
The gap between the cheapest paid plan and the most expensive is not 2Γ, it is roughly 9Γ β and both give you a page with photos and tributes on it. Almost all of the difference is the pricing model, not the product.
A subscription is the most expensive way to buy the same thing. GetMemorial's own annual plan is in the table twice on purpose: $39.99 a year and $89.99 once are the same product. Paying yearly costs less in year one and more from year three onward. If a platform offers both, the one-time option is the correct choice for a memorial specifically, because a memorial has no natural end date.
Platform by Platform
MuchLoved β free, and structurally likely to stay free
A UK registered charity, funded by donations rather than by advertising or upsells. Pages are ad-free on the free tier, which is unusual. If you are in the UK and cost is the deciding factor, this is the honest answer.
Watch for: UK-centric, and the interface shows its age.
Ever Loved β free page, paid everything around it
The memorial page is genuinely free with no ads. Ever Loved makes money on funeral planning, printed programs and fundraising fees, so the free page is real but it sits inside a marketplace. If you are also organising a service, that integration is worth a lot. If you only want a page, you are getting a free page from a company whose business is elsewhere. There is a fuller breakdown in our Ever Loved comparison.
Watch for: fundraising fees if you use the donation feature.
Forever Missed β free with ads, or a lifetime plan in the higher $100s
Nearly two decades old, with the best long-form editor in the category for multi-chapter life stories. The free tier displays third-party advertising on memorial pages, which many families find jarring; removing it is what most people are paying for.
Watch for: the ads are the price of the free tier, not a temporary promotion.
Keeper β one-time lifetime under $100
Free tier plus a single one-time upgrade. Strong on cemetery records and family trees. Functional rather than warm β a database with a memorial attached β but the pricing is clean and there is nothing to renew.
Watch for: design and tone, if that matters to you.
GetMemorial β β free tier, $89.99 once
Our own platform, so read this section knowing that. The free tier is a permanent page with a life story, up to 50 photos and unlimited tributes, with no ads. Premium β $4.99 a month, $39.99 a year, or $89.99 once for life β lifts the photo cap, adds video, premium themes and background music. Nothing you have already added is taken away if you never pay.
Why fifth in a list ordered by cost rather than first: three platforms above genuinely cost nothing over twenty years, and Keeper's lifetime plan is a little cheaper than ours. That is the order the numbers give.
What we do not do: there is no Android app yet (in development), no fundraising, and we do not place obituaries in newspapers. If any of those is your requirement, one of the platforms above is a better answer than we are.
Legacy.com and newspaper obituaries β per placement, priced by the paper
Legacy.com hosts obituaries syndicated from newspapers. The obituary listing itself is usually free when a funeral home submits it; what costs money is the newspaper placement, and that price is set by each paper β commonly a few hundred dollars, and considerably more for a large metropolitan daily. Premium guestbook extensions are billed separately.
Watch for: you are buying a newspaper listing with a web page attached, not a memorial site. It is the right purchase for reach in the first week and the wrong one for the next twenty years.
Kudoboard and GatheringUs β priced per event
Kudoboard charges per board after a trial: excellent for a collective card, not built to be permanent. GatheringUs offers a free memorial page, but the business is full-service virtual funerals and that side runs to four figures.
The Costs That Are Not on the Pricing Page
Price is the easy part. These are the four things that actually decide what a memorial costs you, and none of them appear next to a dollar sign.
Storage caps. A 50-photo limit is not a problem until a cousin sends 300 scans. Check the cap before you upload, not after.
Archiving rules. Some free platforms make a page public at no cost and quietly archive it after a period of inactivity unless someone upgrades. The page does not vanish dramatically; it stops being findable. Read what the terms say about inactive memorials β this is the single most important paragraph on any memorial site, and it is never on the pricing page.
Ads. On an ad-supported tier, a tribute page can end up carrying advertising for insurance or funeral services. It costs nothing in dollars.
Export. Can you get the photos and the written tributes back out? If not, the real price of the platform is that leaving it costs you everything family wrote. We cover what permanence actually requires in permanent online memorials.
When Free Is Genuinely Enough
Most families do not need a paid plan. Free is the right answer when:
- You have fewer than about fifty photos and no video
- One or two people are maintaining the page rather than a whole extended family
- You are comfortable with the platform's archiving policy
- Ads on the page do not bother you, or the platform has none
Pay when the photo cap is the thing stopping you, when you want video, or β the most common real reason β when you want the page to survive without anyone remembering to do anything. Our guide to the best free memorial websites goes through what each free tier actually includes.
FAQ
How much does a memorial website cost per year? Between $0 and roughly $60 a year for the mainstream platforms. Most offer a free tier that is genuinely usable. Paid plans cluster around $40 a year or a one-time payment under $100.
Is a one-time lifetime plan better than a subscription? For a memorial, usually yes. A subscription costs less for the first two years and more forever after, and it can lapse. A one-time plan cannot be accidentally cancelled.
What happens to a memorial page if I stop paying? It depends on the platform, and this is worth checking before you build. Most keep the page up and drop the premium features. Some archive it. Some do not say, which should be read as a warning.
Are newspaper obituaries worth the money? For reach in the first week, sometimes β older relatives and local communities still read them. As a permanent record they are poor value, because you are paying per placement for something a free memorial page does better and indefinitely.
Can I move a memorial from one site to another? Photos, usually. Written tributes from family, often not β most platforms have no export. That is the real switching cost, and it is why the choice matters more than the price.
GetMemorial helps families build beautiful, lasting online memorials in minutes β a permanent home for tributes, photos, and stories. Build yours at GetMemorial.com.
