A private family hub for kids at college and grown children

That is the short answer if you came looking for a way to stay connected with kids in college, with grown children, or with a family that is now several households. The shape of it: one bill for the hub at $9.99/mo, after a 14-day trial that takes no card — free while we’re in early access, no card and no clock, every member free wherever they live, and a grown child’s household can run a hub of its own that is connected to yours. The rest of this page is the longer answer, including what will not suit you.

The problem the group chat does not solve

A family stops fitting in one house long before it stops being one family. Two are at school, one is married with a baby, one is a senior with a car and a curfew, and the grandparents want to see the pictures without being handed a login to somebody else’s social network. What most families end up with is four group chats, a shared album nobody updates, and a calendar that lives in one person’s head.

A hub is a place rather than a stream. Nothing is pushed at anybody, nothing scrolls away, and nothing decides what is worth seeing. You go there and the family’s week is on it, the same week for all of you, at an address only your family can open.

What a kid at college actually opens

The Harpers are invented for the illustration. Nora is 20 and a junior; Sam is 18 and a freshman four hours the other way. Neither installs anything: the hub is a website, so a laptop in a dorm room, a phone in the library and the tablet on the kitchen counter at home are the same address.

• The week. Fall break, the drive up on the 20th, Sunday dinner, Ro’s appointment. Colour-coded by person, added to by anybody, and a change moves on every screen at once.
• Countdowns. Twelve days until she flies home — the fridge-door countdown, live in two zip codes.
• The message board. No phone number, no group chat, no notification anxiety. Sam writes home the 20th, bringing laundry and it is still there on Thursday.
• The Daily Question. One conversation starter a day, answered by whoever is around. It is, honestly, the card most likely to be the reason a kid four states away opens the hub at all.
• Wishlists. What to send them at school — and the person whose list it is never sees who claimed what off it.

The one with a household of her own

Claire is 27, married to Ben, and Wren is eight months old. She is not a guest in her mother’s hub. From Settings › Account any adult can start a hub of their own — its own name, its own address, nothing copied across — and the two hubs are connected, with a word from an owner on each side.

• A connection is permission to send, never to read. What Claire posts to the Harpers is copied into their hub and becomes their own row there. Nothing is ever read back across the line between two families. “Send Mum the photographs of Wren” works; “let Mum browse our album” does not, and never will.
• Either owner can end it. Unlinking stops what comes next and leaves what already arrived, because you cannot un-give a photograph. Deleting your original does not delete their copy, for the same reason.
• You decide where each household’s post lands. Every connected family can be filed into a circle of your own, so what one side of the family sends can arrive somewhere the other side will not see it. The sender is never told where their letter was filed.
• Her hub is hers. Her own members, her own circles, her own skin, her own bill — and if you would rather pay for it, you can offer, and she has to accept the offer before a penny moves.

That is also the answer to the in-laws, the ex’s parents, a partner’s children and everybody else who should not simply be dropped into one big family account. The privacy model and the way the family grows turn out to be the same sentence: a second hub, not a wider one.

And the one still at home

Leo is 17 and the house still runs on rides, practices, a test date, three college visits and one car. He gets a real account rather than a corner of a parent’s: his own login, his own skin, his own arrangement of cards. Rides, Homework and the calendar go on the same week everybody else is reading.

Circles are the part that matters at seventeen. A circle is a named group inside the family, and a photograph or a message can go to it instead of to the whole house. An owner can always see that a circle exists and who is in it, and can never see what is in it — a conversation rather than a search warrant. A kid account cannot send anything out of the hub to a connected family and cannot start a hub of its own; both are deliberate.

One grandmother, several hubs, one password

• One account, several families. Invited into her daughter’s hub and her son’s, Ro joins both with one email and one password. The family name at the top of the sidebar becomes a menu and the other hub is one tap away.
• Two hubs, on purpose. She reads each family inside that family’s own hub, and neither sees the other’s. No screen in this product merges two households, because that is the screen that leaks.
• She never pays. Members never pay, however many of them there are. Thirty per hub is the fair-use ceiling, not a price.
• Any of the thirty skins. Quiet blue-grey with larger type, if that is what reads best, without changing anybody else’s screen.

What it costs, all of it

One subscription per hub, never per person. $9.99/mo buys the fifteen cards that make up the day in this family — messages, photos, the calendar, chores, meals, the grocery list, family dates, who’s around, connected families, the daily question and the rest — all thirty skins, and 20 GB of room. The trial runs 14 days and takes no card. In early access nobody is charged and we take no card. The other twenty-two of the thirty-nine cards come in four bundles from a couple of dollars a month each, and more room comes in 50 GB packs. If a payment fails the hub goes read-only after seven days; nothing is ever deleted for not paying.

Who this is not for

Four reasons to close the tab now rather than in week three. There is no native app yet — it is a website, with nothing in an app store and no push notifications, so a kid who never opens the tab will not be nudged by us. Nothing syncs in from Google Calendar, Outlook or iCloud, so if a student’s class schedule has to appear here automatically this will frustrate you. There is no location sharing, ever: Who’s Around says who has been active in the last ten minutes and nothing else — no map, no arrival alerts, by design, which is the right answer for a twenty-year-old and the wrong one if that is what you wanted. And invitations are links you send yourself: email delivery is not switched on yet, so you paste them into whatever you already use.