Vividly Line is open — $179 a year, call any hour.

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A voice is the first thing you forget.

Not the face — you have photographs for that. The voice. The way they told a story, what made them laugh, how they said your name.

It goes first. And there is nothing in your house that brings it back.

Vividly Line is open.$179 a year. Every price is below.

Vividly Line is a phone number of their own — your mother’s, your father’s, or yours. They call it whenever something comes to mind, any hour, from any phone, a landline included. Nobody picks up: a greeting, a beep, then they talk. Every call is recorded and transcribed into an archive in their name.

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Works on a landline — no app, no camera Nobody answers — they just talk They keep the files if they stop paying
ThreeThe store on Palafox

My father kept the store open until nine on Saturdays, which meant we ate late, and I have never since been able to eat supper at a reasonable hour. He’d come through the back door still smelling of the shop — cardboard and machine oil — and my mother would already have his plate covered on the stove.

I asked him once why he didn’t just close at six like everybody else. He said the people who needed him most were the ones who couldn’t get there before six.

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A page from a Legacy Edition memoir. The code in the margin plays that story in the voice it was told in.

Why people wait

Nobody decides not to do this.

They decide to do it later. Later is the one part of the plan that never gets a date on it.

There is always a better time. After the holidays. When she’s feeling stronger. When you have a free weekend and the house is quiet and you can sit down and do it properly, with a notebook, the way it deserves.

And a year goes by like that. Then another one, and the questions you meant to ask are still the questions you mean to ask.

You already have the pictures. What you don’t have is ninety seconds of her explaining why she left home at nineteen — in the voice she used at the kitchen table, with the pause before the part she wasn’t sure she wanted to say.

That is a specific thing, and there is exactly one way to get it.

Nobody wishes for fewer photographs. What families wish is that somebody had thought to record the story that went with one of them.

How it works

Four steps, and only the first one is yours.

After you buy it, there is nothing left for you to do. That is the point.

01

You buy the Line

A minute at checkout. You give us the storyteller’s name and the phone they already use. Nothing to install, nothing for them to set up.

02

They get a number and an extension

A toll-free number and six digits that are theirs. It arrives by email and post, and it goes on the fridge. Save it as a contact and one tap dials the whole thing.

03

They call when something comes to mind

Any hour, from any phone, a landline included. Nobody picks up — a short greeting, a beep, then they talk for as long as they want and hang up when they’re done.

04

The story lands in their archive

Recorded, transcribed, titled and dated, in an archive in their name. You get a note that it’s there. They decide who can listen.

Nine moments

Most people arrive here from somewhere specific.

Not from a general feeling that this would be a nice thing to do — from a Tuesday, a phone call, a piece of news. You don’t have to know which package you want to start.

For families in hospice care

When the good hours are short

She is clearest just after the afternoon sleep, for an hour, sometimes less. Nobody can book that hour in advance. But it is the hour she will still tell you about the bakery, and what her father charged for a loaf.

Usually Vividly Line

For military families

Eight time zones out

Bedtime at home is the middle of his afternoon. He tells the story his own father told him, with the same voice for the wolf. It keeps, for the nights the call does not come through.

For adult children far away

The call you already make on Sundays

The Sunday call has its own job and it does it well. Somebody else can ask the other questions — why she left the island, what her mother said to her at the dock, whether she ever wrote back.

Usually Individual sessions

For recording your own life

Nothing is wrong

That is the point. You still remember the smell of the stairwell in the first apartment, and what the upstairs neighbor played at two in the morning, and how little it mattered because you were happy there.

For grandparents

For one person in particular

Not the whole life. One thing. The rice dish that never got written down, the amounts given as a handful and a bit more, told once to the grandchild who keeps asking for it.

Usually Vividly Line

After a diagnosis

The diagnosis is not the story

A fact you now live with. Not what you want said first about you at the table. There are the tomatoes you are unreasonable about, the terrible jokes, the van that boiled over halfway to Texas. You decide what stays in.

For new parents

The questions come later

Right now she wants the same song at bedtime and the same three pages. One day she will ask what you were frightened of that first winter, and whether you sang it because your mother sang it to you.

For multilingual families

The language it happened in

In her own language the story has the joke in it. In English she gives you the summary, and the joke stays behind. We match her with an interviewer who speaks the one the story happened in.

Usually Individual sessions

If you have lost someone

You already know what this is worth

You can still do his accent. You cannot do the story about the fire escape the way he did it, with the pause in the middle, and you have stopped trying in front of your kids.

Pricing

Start with a line.

Pay for a year, three years, or by the month. Everything recorded stays downloadable in ordinary formats, with or without an active line.

Start here

Vividly Line

A number the storyteller calls whenever they have something to say — any hour, from any phone, a landline included. No app to install, no session to book. It takes the call and keeps what you tell it.

  • A private phone extension — call any hour, from any phone
  • One good question texted each week — helpful, never the only way in
  • Every recording transcribed and organized by story
  • You choose who can listen

$179 / year

or $399 for three years · or $19 a month

Start the Line

Family Line

Two storytellers on one purchase. Each has their own extension and their own archive.

$249 / first year

  • Two private extensions — one each, called from any phone
  • A separate archive for each of them, never mixed together
  • Each person decides who can listen to theirs
  • One good question texted each week
  • Every recording transcribed and organized by story
Start a Family Line

Individual sessions

Interviewed sessions, bought one at a time on top of the Line.

$395 / session

  • One recorded session of about 75 minutes
  • The same interviewer across your sessions
  • Questions built from an intake, plus the family’s own
  • Transcribed and organized by story
  • Added to the archive in the storyteller’s name
  • Needs an active Vividly Line
Book a session — $395

How it compares

Four ways to keep a story.

They work differently, and the difference is mostly about who has to do something, and when.

Vividly Line

The storyteller calls a number when a story comes to mind. Any hour, any phone, landline included. Nobody answers; it records, transcribes and files what they said. The weekly question is optional.

Storii

Places scheduled outbound calls to the storyteller and asks a question when they pick up. The schedule is set in advance, so the recording happens at the time the service calls.

StoryWorth

Emails a question each week and collects a written answer, which is bound into a book at the end of the year. What is kept is the writing rather than the voice.

A voice memo on a phone

Free, and it captures the voice. What it does not do is transcribe, title, date, or make itself findable by anyone else later — and it lives in the account of whoever recorded it.

The waitlist

Not ready yet? Put your name down.

This list is who we contact when we have news worth sending, in the order it was written. It is not a way to buy — the prices above are live and you can start whenever you want to. No card, no deposit, no obligation, and one email gets you taken off it.

Which of these is you?

Goes to hello@vividly.family. We write when there is something real to tell you, and not before.

Who this is for

Two people buy this, and they buy it differently.

You’re recording someone else

Usually a parent. Sometimes a grandparent, a sibling, or a spouse. You handle the arrangements and never appear on the recording unless you want to. Buyer and storyteller are separate records: you get the receipts and the scheduling, they get the sessions and the archive.

  • You choose the package and the start date
  • You add the questions you’ve never managed to ask
  • They can decline anything, and have anything removed
  • Most people give this as a gift. Pick a date and we’ll send a card.

You’re doing this for yourself

Nobody tells it the way you would. You have the version with the parts that mattered and the parts you’d rather explain in your own order — and that is the version worth keeping. People do this at every age — some when the grandchildren start arriving, some while their own children are still too young to remember them.

  • Set the pace: six sessions, or one call a week for a year
  • You decide who can listen, now and later
  • Record in the language you actually think in
  • The archive goes in your name, and you name who it passes to

Later, if you want it

A book you can hear.

Once there are enough stories to be worth binding, an archive can become a printed memoir in their own words. Beside every story, a printed code. Point a phone at it and the recording plays — the actual call, the actual voice, the pause before they answered.

Vividly · A memoir

FourThe people who couldn’t get there before six

There was a woman who came in most Thursdays for thread and never bought more than a spool at a time. I understood later that she was buying company. My father understood it immediately, which is the difference between us.

He kept a stool by the register that was hers by unspoken arrangement. Nobody else sat on it, and nobody was ever told not to.

I have thought about that stool more than I have thought about almost anything else he owned.

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Illustrative spread. Every story in the book carries its own code, printed in the margin beside it.

Their words

A person reads the transcripts and shapes them into chapters. Edited for clarity, not for polish. The dialect stays. The digressions stay. If they said it twice because it mattered twice, it’s in there twice.

Not part of the Line

This is separate work by a real editor, and it costs what those hours cost. It is quoted for the archive it is made from, so there is no price to put here honestly — the length is what sets it.

When there is something to bind

Not on day one. Record for a while first — the book is better when there is a year of calls behind it, and you will know when that is true.

Taking it with youEverything recorded downloads in ordinary file formats, audio and transcripts both, and the download does not close when a package does. No subscription stands between a family and their own copy of it.

When you get there, write to hello@vividly.family and we will talk about what it would take.

What’s different

A number, not an app.

Everything here follows from that one decision. It is why it works for someone who has never installed anything in their life.

Nobody answers

That is deliberate. There is no appointment to keep and no one to perform for — a greeting, a beep, and the storyteller talks for as long as they want. Some people find that easier than a conversation. When they do want a person asking the next question, that is a session, bought separately.

It works on a landline

The Line is a phone number the storyteller calls — any hour, any day, from whatever phone is in the house. Nothing to download, no account to sign into, no week to wait for. Someone can call at two in the morning because a thought surfaced, or record a bedtime story for a grandchild on a Tuesday afternoon. The question we text each week is there to help. It is not the mechanism.

Their own language

They talk in whatever language the story happened in. Nobody is on the line asking them to switch, and no translation software sits in the middle of a conversation about somebody’s childhood.

The archive is theirs

Recordings and transcripts are transferred into the storyteller’s name. They choose who listens, who can manage access, and who it passes to.

The recordings stay with us and with you

Transcription runs on our own servers. Your mother’s voice isn’t sent to an AI company for processing, and it isn’t used to train anything. It goes to you, and to an archive in her name.

Nothing locked up

Audio and transcripts download in ordinary file formats, whenever you want them. You don’t need an active subscription to keep what has already been recorded.

Gulf Coast only

Near Pensacola? We also digitize photographs.

White-glove scanning across the Gulf Coast, from Destin to Mobile. We bring professional equipment to your kitchen table, or you can drop your collection at our studio. Your photographs never go in the mail.

Most families do both — the photographs get preserved, and the stories behind them get recorded.

See photo digitization →

Free, and yours to keep

Twelve questions worth answering.

A journal about your own life — the rooms you grew up in, the work you did, the people, the ordinary Tuesdays nobody thinks to write down. Type into it in your browser, or print it and write by hand.

  • Eight themed sections, each with room to write
  • Prompts that ask for the specific thing, not the summary
  • No account, no trial, and nothing to buy

The journal arrives by email straight away. If we write to you again it will be because Vividly Voice is opening, and a reply saying stop ends that.

Questions

What people ask before they join.

Yes. Vividly Line is $179 a year, $399 for three years, or $19 a month. Family Line covers two storytellers for $249 for the first year — each with their own extension and their own archive. Individual sessions are $395 each and need an active Line. Whatever has been recorded stays downloadable in ordinary formats, with or without an active line.

We recruit from hospice, teaching, ministry, and oral history backgrounds — and from people with no professional background at all, who simply turn out to be the person everyone tells things to. Every interviewer is background-checked and trained before their first session. They’re real people, not AI. You’ll know your interviewer’s name and see their photo before the first call.

They’re a different product, and for some families the right one. Those send a prompt and wait for someone to sit down and write. Vividly is a phone line — the storyteller picks up any phone, a landline included, and talks, at whatever hour the thought arrives. When you want a person on the other end asking the next question because of the answer just given, that’s a session you add on top.

No. Vividly is audio only, on purpose. A phone call is the least intrusive way to have this conversation, and a camera changes how people talk — someone who is elderly, unwell, or telling you something difficult tends to say less with one in the room. The voice is the part worth keeping.

The first few minutes are just conversation — nothing to set up, nothing to answer correctly. Most people forget they are being recorded within ten minutes. There is no app, no login, and no camera. They pick up the phone they already use.

We match the storyteller with an interviewer who is fluent in their language. We don’t put translation software in the middle of a conversation about someone’s childhood. Coverage depends on which interviewers we have, so tell us on the waitlist form which language you would need and we will tell you plainly whether we can staff it.

They can decline anything without explaining why, and have anything already recorded removed. Interviewers are trained to slow down rather than push. Some of the best material arrives after a long pause — and some subjects simply stay closed, which is their call to make, not ours.

The storyteller. The archive is transferred into their name, whoever paid for it. They choose who can listen, who can manage access, and who it passes to.

You keep everything already recorded, with the transcripts and the archive, and we refund any phase that had not yet begun. This happens, and it is not a problem to sort out later — it is built into how the packages are billed.

Yes — most people do. Buyer and storyteller are separate records: you get the receipts and the scheduling, they get the recordings and the archive. Choose a delivery date and we will send a card explaining what is about to happen, so the first call isn’t a surprise.

Legacy Edition is six sessions over six to eight weeks. The memoir adds four to six weeks on top, and we will need family photographs and captions from you before it goes to print. Priority scheduling is available for $795 if the timing matters.

Start with one phone call.

You don’t have to decide the whole thing today. Start the Line and record in your own time, or book a single session and hear what it sounds like first.

See the prices

Or join the list for the next places

Questions? hello@vividly.family