KeepsakeKeepsake vs IronClad Family
IronClad Family bundles a vault, legal document wizards, automated delivery to heirs and emergency cards into one $189-a-year package. It is a lot of product for the money — and all of it runs on their servers, where their systems can read what you store.
Is Keepsake or IronClad Family the better digital vault?
IronClad Family is a bundle: at $189/year it includes unlimited vaults, 100 GB, legal document wizards, automated delivery to heirs and emergency cards, all hosted by them. Keepsake costs from £19/year, encrypts every document on your device so nobody at Keepsake can read it, reads and files documents offline, and warns you before anything expires. Choose IronClad for estate paperwork and hand-holding, Keepsake for custody, daily use and price.
| Keepsake | IronClad Family | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Zero-knowledge daily document vault | All-in estate vault and delivery service |
| Where documents live | Your devices + your own cloud | IronClad's cloud (100 GB included) |
| Can the vendor read them? | Never — encrypted on your device | Yes, server-side |
| Legal document creation | No — we store documents, not draft them | Yes, will and directive wizards |
| Delivery to heirs | Legacy Kit (Shamir 2-of-3) + deputy card | Automated delivery from their servers |
| OCR / reads your documents | Yes, on-device | No on-device OCR |
| Expiry alerts & renewals | Yes — 30/7/lapsed, calendar feed | Not a focus |
| Works offline | Fully | No |
| Price | Free / £19 yr Premium / £29 Family / £79 Teams | $189 per year, all-in |
| If the company shuts down | Everything keeps working | Delivery and access stop |
Keepsake prices are in pounds sterling (£); IronClad Family's are its own published list prices, quoted in their original currency and unconverted.
When IronClad Family is the better choice
- You want the estate paperwork created, not just stored — IronClad's wizards produce documents, and Keepsake has no opinion about drafting a will.
- You want delivery to heirs to happen automatically, run by a company, with no share for anyone to lose.
- You want one price with everything in it and no thinking about tiers.
When Keepsake is the better choice
- The automated delivery that makes IronClad convenient requires them to be able to open your documents. If that trade is not one you want, no amount of "military-grade encryption" changes it.
- Your documents work every day: OCR filing, identity fields, expiry alerts, travel capsule, calendar feed — an estate vault is a thing you visit once a year.
- £19 against $189, and no dependency: if Keepsake vanishes tomorrow your vault opens as normal, because the apps are local and the format is published.
Questions
IronClad advertises military-grade encryption. Is Keepsake weaker?
"Military-grade" almost always means AES-256 at rest with the vendor holding the keys, which is what IronClad and most of this category do. Keepsake uses AES-256-GCM with an Argon2id-derived key that never leaves your device — the same cipher, a fundamentally different custody model. The distinction that matters is not the cipher, it is who can decrypt.
Does Keepsake help me write a will?
No, and it does not pretend to. Keepsake stores, reads, files and protects the document; drafting is a job for a solicitor or a wizard like IronClad's. What Keepsake does add is proof — the Document Notary anchors a hash so you can show a will existed, unmodified, on a given date.
What happens to my heirs if Keepsake disappears?
They open the vault exactly as before. Their share of the key, the printed Recovery Kit, and the published vault format are all things they hold — none of them depends on us existing.
The honest verdict
IronClad Family is a well-packaged answer to "I have not sorted out my estate", and if drafting and automated delivery are the missing pieces, buy it. But the delivery mechanism is also the disclosure mechanism: a company that can hand your documents to your heir on the appointed day can read them on any other day. Keepsake takes the harder route — split the key, rehearse it, print the card — and in exchange nobody but your family can ever open the vault, at a tenth of the price.