Compare
Tellforth vs Storyworth
Storyworth, founded in 2013, is the original: it emails your parent one question a week for a year and binds the written answers into a hardcover. It is simple and it works for people who like to write. It is a scrapbook of answers rather than a book, and the subscription auto-renews.
What Storyworth does well
- Twelve years of operation and a large, searchable question library organised by category
- Simple for the writer: reply to an email
- Phone dictation added in 2025 for people who would rather speak
- Hardcover included; extra copies are cheap
Where Storyworth falls short
- The output is the answers, in order, as written: nobody designs a book from them
- Dictated answers are converted to plain text, not written up
- The subscription auto-renews at the yearly price unless cancelled; this is the most common complaint about it
- No follow-up questions: if an answer stops halfway, it stays stopped
- It depends on the parent doing their homework every week; completion is the category's quiet failure and nobody publishes the rate
Side by side
| Storyworth | Tellforth | |
|---|---|---|
| How stories are gathered | One emailed question a week; the storyteller types a reply (or dictates, converted to plain text) | Voice visits of 15 to 20 minutes with a live interviewer that asks follow-ups, plus a 30-second daily card; no typing, no login for the teller |
| Follow-up questions | None; the next week's question is the next in the queue | One record of every person, place, saying and story; the next question comes from what is still missing |
| What you get | The written answers, in order, bound as a 6×9 hardcover | A designed, finished book: a memoir in the teller's own words, or a novel built on the true story with what was invented listed at the back |
| Ownership | Access continues after the subscription year; the book can be reordered | You own every recording and word; export everything free, any time; no subscription |
| Price | About $99 a year, auto-renewing (check their site) | One-time price; no renewal |
| If it isn't finished | The year ends; you can keep going on renewal | No deadline and no renewal: the record stays open until the book is finished, and we step in early if it stalls |
Verdict
Choose Storyworth if your parent likes to write and you want the simplest possible product with a long track record. Choose this if your parent would rather talk, if you want a book someone actually designed and wrote from what was said, and if you do not want a renewal.
Switching from Storyworth
- Export your Storyworth answers as text
- They can be imported as told material; the interviewer reads them and asks what is still missing rather than starting over
Sources
Prices and features of other products are as published on their own sites at the time of writing and may have changed. If something here is wrong, write to hello@tellforth.com and we will fix it.