ESSENIAL
Life goes on.
ESSENIAL creates an interactive portrait of you or your loved one, preserving the stories, personality, humour and memories that make each person unique.
You can preserve your own life, help someone you love record theirs, or bring together the memories of someone who has died. Photographs, biographical details, letters and existing audio or video recordings can all help build a picture of their life, with family contributions clearly identified as such.
You can keep your material locally on your chosen main device, or store it on secure ESSENIAL servers with a backup on your own device. Local storage gives you a personal, device-based archive; server storage makes collaboration possible. If others are helping build a profile, its material needs to be held on our servers, at least temporarily. You can also have everything stored both locally and online. Another advantage of online storage is that, as it is continuously backed up, you can revert to older versions of your Essenial Person if you wish.
Yes, if you have opted to keep it on the online server in the first place. You can keep an independent copy of the material you have entrusted to ESSENIAL. The current prototype prepares a folder-based download of available stories, photographs, recordings and transcripts, with missing files clearly listed. A browsable HTML edition and automatic annual download reminders are planned; they are not yet verified production features.
An ESSENIAL subscription costs €100 per year or €12 per month, giving you a choice between annual and monthly billing. You can cancel with one month’s notice. If you decide to leave, your uploaded material will be offered for download, so you can keep the memories you have entrusted to us.
Your ESSENIAL Person is kept for as long as you remain a subscriber, allowing its collection of stories and memories to grow over time. If you decide to end your subscription, you will be offered a download of all your uploaded material—including questionnaire answers, recordings, videos and photographs—so that you can retain a personal copy.