It’s human nature to want to memorialize someone who has recently died. We want people to know who they were by allowing friends and family to come together and provide thoughts, insights and memories of the departed. Online, this is big business. This is because it can be shared all over the world and provides a platform that everyone can access, at any time.Here is my list of some of the top online memorial websites and obituary tribute websites. They are not ranked in any order of popularity or quality.
Forever Missed.com
“What are online memorial websites for loved ones?
ForeverMissed.com memorial websites allow families and friends to celebrate the life of a lost loved one by writing life biography, sharing stories, leaving tributes, compiling photo, audio and video albums in their memory. Memorial sites are truly collaborative. Everyone can share in treasured memories wherever they are in the world. Once the memorial site for your loved one is setup – invite their dear friends and family to share fondest memories together.”
Their basic service is free, and setup takes only a few minutes. There are no ads, ForeverMissed is funded solely by donations and optional upgrade memberships.
Basic service provides:
• Personalized online obituary URL for your family memorial
• Choose among dozens of attractive themes
• Pay tribute to your loved ones by telling their stories
• Visitors can light candles and leave condolences
• Add music to play in the background
• Invite friends and family to build a memorial together
• Build a photo album
• Allow visitors to contact you, or stay private
Legacy.com There are two areas to legacy.com.
Memorial Sites:
“Honoring and celebrating the lives of individuals who shared a common bond, Memorial Sites feature obituaries and Guest Books from the Legacy.com network of newspaper and funeral home affiliates.” These are shared memorials. Some of the links include memorials for the 9/11 Victims, all branches of the military, famous people. There are guestbooks to sign.
Create a Living Legacy
“Remember a loved one and inspire others to do the same with an online memorial. Create a lasting tribute that celebrates your loved one’s life, helping you share messages of support and remembrance while connecting friends and family.” “With a Legacy.com Memorial Website you will celebrate and honor the legacy of your loved one’s life and inspire family and friends to do the same. Share messages of support and remembrance while connecting with each other. Through shared personal tales and reflections, this lasting online memorial continues the life story of your loved one.”
(Free 14 day trial, has a limited time offer of 25% off a year’s membership. Shows discounted price for the year to be $36.75.
Tributes.com Offers lasting tributes for the departed, human as well as pets.
For humans, the user searches “over 90 million obituaries and death notices” to find the deceased, then build a tribute for them. Receive unlimited obit text to document your loved one’s life story, family connections and priceless moments. There is a charge to upload a photograph. There are no comment or interaction options. You can setup anniversary email reminders.
$50 gets an “Eternal Tribute” that offers unlimited photos and an integrated video and slide show with background music. A simple one photo tribute is $20.
Remembered.com
“Remembered.com is a social network where you create and maintain a place to share memories of your loved ones. The memorial websites builds a community of family and friends that keeps your cherished memories alive. We offer many features designed to reflect your loved one’s life and personality while keeping control of privacy, religion, and security.”
Connect and share through email or Facebook.
Free 30 day trial but no free memorials offered:
Legacy Memorial is $20, Legacy Plus is $80
Both types offer sharing, allowing friends and visitors to leave comments and memories.
YourTribute.com
Your Tribute integrates seamlessly with many different social media accounts, allowing for quick and easy memorial creation. They offer standard features such as a guestbook and photos, but they also have an suite of tools for planning a funeral.
Pricing: Basic is free; Premium is $50 per year or a $150 one-time fee
Other sites:
Kudo Board Online Memorial
Virtual Memorials
Last Memories.com
Ever Loved
Keeper
Facebook offers the ability to memorialize someone by ‘freezing’ their account. Once frozen, the account cannot be unfrozen. Only confirmed friends can see their profile or leave posts on their page. Because of the inability to find someone without already being a friend of theirs, I don’t recommend Facebook for memorials.
Thanks for all the information. Very helpful.
It’s not a memorial site, it’s a pre-memorial site, but I have been really loving CaringBridge.org. It’s perfect for when a loved one is ill – you can post updates on their condition, invite whomever you like, control permissions, and they can share memories, pictures, thoughts, prayers, etc. Really awesome, and totally free. Though you’ll like it so much you’ll want to donate!
Sorry to hear that Terri and thanks for letting us know. Have you been in touch with the owners?
I have recently used this service and it was a wonderful assistance to us at a difficult time.
It is an obituary in its first instance that sent us a funeral notice and invitations to forward to all of our family and friends. We sent it to everyone and it saved all the pain of making phone calls.
Others then found out all of the ceremonial details and were able to advise they were coming. It then sent us regular guest attendance lists telling us who was expected and the funeral and wake.
It literally did all the hard work for us and now we can see how many people around the world have seen it via a clever map showing all visitors.
Thought I would leave this comment as it really did save us distressing phone calls to everyone, saved up buying invites and postage, told us who was coming to the life celebrations and now its there for us interact with anytime. They have free versions but we paid extra (less than the newspaper) for the better version and there is no on going costs as with others we saw.
Very much recommended to anyone at a time of loss.
Hope this helps
Jack Holly
Dave, I’m so sorry you had this experience. I’m not too familiar with the hard-book options of websites such as this but I am happy to recommend several people that would create a hard-copy book for you outside of an online social network. Just let me know.