KeepsakeKeepsake vs Family Folder
Family Folder is a friendly European organiser for family life admin, free for up to three members. It is the closest competitor to us in tone and in price — and it still keeps your documents where the company can read them.
Is Keepsake or Family Folder better for organising family documents?
Family Folder is a cloud organiser for family life admin, free for up to three members with paid plans from around €6.99/month and a one-off lifetime option. Keepsake is a zero-knowledge vault from £19/year: documents are encrypted on your device, read and filed by offline OCR, and expiry alerts fire before anything lapses. Choose Family Folder for a light shared organiser, Keepsake when custody, OCR and expiry management matter.
| Keepsake | Family Folder | |
|---|---|---|
| Where documents live | Your devices + your own cloud | Family Folder's cloud (EU) |
| Can the vendor read them? | Never — encrypted on your device | Yes, server-side |
| Free tier | 25 documents, every feature that keeps you safe | Up to 3 family members |
| OCR / reads your documents | Yes, on-device | Limited |
| Expiry alerts & renewals | Yes — 30/7/lapsed, calendar feed | Reminders |
| Works offline | Fully | No |
| Desktop app | Yes, Windows | Web |
| Languages | English and Urdu, right-to-left | European languages |
| Price | Free / £19 yr Premium / £29 Family / £79 Teams | Free tier; paid from about €6.99/month, lifetime option |
| If the company shuts down | Everything keeps working | Export window, then gone |
Keepsake prices are in pounds sterling (£); Family Folder's are its own published list prices, quoted in their original currency and unconverted.
When Family Folder is the better choice
- You want a shared family organiser more than a vault — lists, life admin, and a free tier that covers a small household.
- You want everything hosted in the EU with no decisions to make about storage.
- A one-off lifetime payment suits you better than a yearly licence.
When Keepsake is the better choice
- Custody: Family Folder can read your documents, and Keepsake cannot read anything — the key is derived on your device and never leaves it.
- Intelligence: on-device OCR that files documents and lifts identity fields, expiry alerts with renewal checklists, a calendar feed, Travel Mode, Secure Send.
- Reach: a real Windows desktop app, an Android app, and an installable web app that works offline on an iPhone.
Questions
Is Family Folder encrypted?
It encrypts in transit and at rest like most cloud services. The difference is who holds the key: theirs is held by them so their systems can process your files, and Keepsake's is derived from your password on your own device, which is why we cannot read a single document even if asked.
Family Folder is free for three members. Why pay for Keepsake?
You may not need to. Keepsake's free tier covers 25 documents per device with the safety features — Recovery Kit included — never paywalled. Premium buys unlimited documents, sync and the intelligence features, at £19 a year.
Can I move from Family Folder to Keepsake?
Yes. Export your documents, drop the folder on Keepsake, and each file is OCR'd, categorised and dated on your machine.
The honest verdict
Family Folder is a pleasant product aimed at the same household chaos we are, and its free tier is more generous than ours. The difference is architectural rather than cosmetic: their servers hold readable copies of your family's documents, and ours hold nothing at all. If you want a light shared organiser, theirs is a fair choice. If the phrase "the company can read my children's birth certificates" bothers you, only one of these two products has an answer.