Our promise
If anything happens
You're about to put irreplaceable recordings somewhere. It's fair to ask what happens to them if something happens to you — or to us. Here is exactly what we do, and what we don't.
1. Someone you name inherits the archive
Every account can name a steward — the person who should be given the family's stories if you're no longer able to look after them. You set it in Settings → Legacy & stewardship, and you can change it whenever you like.
Plainly: today this records your intention and tells us who to talk to. It is not an automatic transfer, and we'd rather say so than imply a mechanism that doesn't exist yet.
2. We remind you to keep your own copy
Once a year we email you what your archive holds — how many stories, how many hours of voices — and a link to download all of it. Not because we expect to disappear, but because an archive that exists in exactly one place isn't safe, and we'd rather nudge you than be the only copy.
Download every original recording any time while your plan is active — and for 60 days after it ends.
If a plan lapses, originals stay downloadable for 60 days — 12 months on Heirloom — with repeated reminders before anything is removed.
3. If Kinrelic ever shuts down
We commit to three things, in this order:
- 90 days' notice. Every account holder is emailed, more than once, well before anything stops working.
- Your originals, downloadable throughout. Export stays open for the whole notice period — no request, no queue.
- The viewer, published openly. We release the code that reads a Kinrelic archive under an open licence, so your export stays readable without us.
What we deliberately don't promise: a funded escrow, or that the service will run forever. Both are commitments we couldn't honestly guarantee, and a promise we might break would be worth less than the three above.
The short version
Your recordings are yours. You can take a full copy at any moment, we remind you to do it once a year, someone you choose inherits the archive, and if we ever go away you get three months' warning and a reader that doesn't depend on us.