A digital memorial is any lasting record of someone's life kept in digital form, rather than carved into stone.
That definition is broad because the term is used loosely. Half a dozen quite different things get sold under it, they cost anything from nothing to several hundred pounds, and they fail in completely different ways. This sorts them out.
The six things people mean
1. An online memorial page
A web page about one person, holding photographs, a life story, and usually a guestbook where visitors leave messages. The most common meaning of the term.
Some are free and charity-run. Some are sold by funeral directors as part of a package. Some are commercial services with a monthly fee.
Good for: gathering material from a scattered family, and for in-memory fundraising.
Fails when: nobody has the link any more. This is the quiet failure and it is very common. A page shared in a WhatsApp group in the first month is unfindable four years later.
2. A memorialised social media account
Most major platforms will convert a deceased person's account into a memorial state, freezing it and preventing logins while leaving the posts visible.
Good for: costs nothing, requires no decision, and it is where their actual life already is, in their own words.
Fails when: the platform changes its rules, the account is closed by a relative, or the company decides something different. You are a guest on somebody else's system, and you have no say in it.
3. A digital legacy vault
A service that stores documents, letters, videos and passwords to be released to named people after death. Usually subscription-based, and often sold alongside will-writing.
Good for: practical handover, and for messages meant for specific people rather than the public.
Fails when: the subscription lapses, or the company folds and nobody knows what was in it.
4. A memorial linked from a physical marker
A page like the first option, but with a code on a plaque so that anyone at the grave, bench or urn can reach it without being sent a link. This is what we sell, and it is explained properly in what is a memorial QR code.
Good for: being found by people who were never told it exists. A grandchild in fifteen years, a cousin tending the grave, a stranger who read the name.
Fails when: the supplier disappears and the code was a static one that cannot be repointed. That distinction is the single most important thing in this whole field and it is covered in how memorial QR codes work.
5. A virtual cemetery or genealogy record
Large databases of grave records, photographs of headstones and family trees, contributed largely by volunteers.
Good for: family history, and for finding relatives you did not know about.
Fails when: you want warmth. These are records rather than memorials, and they read like it.
6. A private family archive
Not sold by anybody. A folder of scanned photographs, recordings and documents, kept on a drive or in a cloud account.
Good for: total control, no company involved, no fees.
Fails when: one person owns it, that person dies, and nobody else has the password. This is the most common ending for family archives and it happens within one generation.
What they cost in the UK
- Free. Charity-run memorial pages, memorialised social accounts, a folder you keep yourself.
- £20 to £100 once. A plaque with a page included, which is where we sit at £70.
- £15 to £60 a year. Subscription memorial pages and legacy vaults. Over the life of a memorial this is by a wide margin the most expensive option, and the arithmetic is in the cost guide.
The four questions that apply to all of them
Whichever kind you choose, these decide whether it survives.
- Can you get the material back out, as ordinary files? If the only copy lives on somebody else's server, their failure is your loss.
- Is there a recurring payment? A memorial on a subscription is one bereavement away from deletion, because the person paying is usually the one who will die next.
- Who else can get in? If one person holds the only login, the memorial freezes when they go. Name a second editor now, ideally a generation younger.
- How does anyone find it in twenty years? A link in a message thread is not findable. Something physical, in the place people go, is.
Digital memorials are not a replacement for a headstone
Worth saying plainly, because the marketing in this field sometimes implies otherwise.
A carved stone has a track record measured in centuries. It needs no company, no server, no electricity and no password, and it is readable by a person with no phone and no interest in technology. Nothing digital comes close to that, and nothing on this page should be bought instead of it.
What a digital memorial does is hold the part that will not fit. A headstone has room for about twelve words. That is the whole public record of a life, and it says nothing about how she laughed or what he could fix with a hammer and a swear word. The comparison between spending on more carved letters and spending on somewhere for the rest is worked through in memorial QR code or a longer headstone inscription.
Practically: keep the stone short and right, and put everything else somewhere that costs nothing per word.
What actually goes on one
The instinct is to write an obituary. Do not. Achievements are the part nobody misses.
What people miss is how he answered the phone, the exact way she said your name when she was pleased with you, the tuneless whistle from the garage that meant he was in a good mood. Those feel too trivial to record, which is precisely why they get lost. There is a full structure in building a digital memorial page.
The most valuable thing you can put on one is voice, and it is the most commonly lost. Faces last a long time in memory; voices go within a few years. If there is a voicemail from them still on a phone, deal with it this week rather than at the weekend, because networks delete voicemail automatically and closing their contract wipes it instantly. See how to save a voicemail from someone who has died.
Privacy, which most people decide by accident
Three settings, and it is worth choosing deliberately: public and indexed by search engines, unlisted but readable by anyone with the link, or private by invitation.
One risk almost nobody is warned about. A page giving a full date of birth, mother's maiden name, place of birth, first school and last address is a completed set of security questions, published openly, about someone whose accounts may stay open for months. Identity fraud against the recently deceased is an established problem. Use years rather than full dates, and leave the address off. More in memorial page privacy.
They are not only for people
A great many are made for animals, and there is no reason not to. No permissions, no burial authority, no waiting for the ground to settle. Your garden, your urn, your decision, this week. See pet memorial QR codes.
Where to start
If somebody has just died, almost none of this is urgent and most of it should wait. The ordered list of what genuinely has a deadline is in what to do when someone dies. The one exception is gathering material while the people who hold it are still around you, because that gets harder every month.
If you are further on and deciding between suppliers, we have compared the UK ones with dated prices in memorial QR code companies compared, including several we would send you to instead of us.
And if you want the digital part to be findable by somebody who was never sent a link, that is what a plaque with a memory page is for. The page is the memorial. The plaque is only how anyone finds it.