Frequently Asked Questions

Our Years Together is a private video diary service designed for parents. You upload videos of your child throughout their life — from pregnancy announcements to graduation day — and we keep them safe and organized. When the time is right, you gift this collection to your child as a deeply personal keepsake of their entire childhood, told through your eyes.

Your phone's camera roll is chaotic — thousands of photos and videos with no organization or narrative. Cloud storage is better, but it's still just a digital filing cabinet. Our Years Together is purpose-built for this single, meaningful goal: creating a chronological, curated story of your child's life that you'll one day hand to them. We provide the tools to add context (dates, titles, notes), the security to protect these memories for decades, and the beautiful presentation that makes the final gift truly special.

The best time to start is now — no matter how old your child is. Many parents begin during pregnancy, capturing ultrasounds and the excitement of preparing for a new arrival. But you can start at any age. If your child is already 5, 10, or even 15, you can upload older videos from your archives and continue capturing new moments going forward. Every memory matters, regardless of when you begin.

Yes. Each child gets their own separate video diary with its own timeline. When you upload a video, you choose which diaries it should be added to — so a video of siblings playing together can go into both children's collections, while a video of one child's piano recital goes only into theirs. When the time comes, each child receives their own personalized gift — their story, focused on them.

That's entirely up to you. Some parents plan to gift it on their child's 18th birthday, marking the transition to adulthood. Others wait for milestone moments like college graduation, their wedding day, or when they become parents themselves. There's no right answer — you'll know when the moment feels right. The important thing is that the memories are there, safe and waiting, whenever you're ready.

When you're ready, you can deliver your diary to your child either electronically or on a USB thumb drive. In either case we will send a high-quality personalized card to the recipient either through email or postal mail. The card will contain instructions for downloading the diary if you have selected digital delivery. A digitally delivered diary can be copied to a user's Dropbox, Google Drive, or Microsoft OneDrive account, or can be hosted on our servers for a nominal monthly cost. If you choose to deliver the diary on a USB thumb drive, we will ship it to your child in a beautiful keepsake box. They'll have full access to watch every video, browse every photo, and read every note you've written.

No — not until the diary is delivered to them. This is part of what makes an Our Years Together video diary such a powerful gift: your child will experience their entire childhood story for the first time, all at once, seeing moments they never knew existed and understanding just how loved they've always been.

No. Uploaded videos are intended for your child's future self and are not viewable by anyone, including the uploader. This ensures that the gift remains a true personal history and that your child experiences their story for the first time when you choose to deliver it.

Our Years Together allows a diary owner to invite other people, such as grandparents, teachers, and coaches, to contribute videos to a child's diary. You should only invite people you trust to contribute to your child's diary. Because videos from the contributor are personal messages to your child and not to you, the application does not allow diary owners to watch videos contributed by others.

We understand this is one of the most important reasons to use a service like ours. You can designate a trusted person (a spouse, family member, or friend) as a legacy contact who can transfer the collection to your child if you're unable to. Your memories — and your love — will reach them no matter what.

Security is our highest priority. All videos are uploaded using HTTPS and stored encrypted. When a video is moved to long-term storage, each upload is encrypted with bank-grade AES256 encryption with a unique key, and the decryption key is encrypted with a diary-specific public key. We have tight security permissions on both the storage layer and the database that holds the diary's private key needed for decryption. The database that holds the diary's private key is encrypted with AWS Key Management Service (KMS), and the value in the database is additionally encrypted with a separate KMS key before it is saved to the database. Diary public keys are stored in a different database, in a different AWS account, than the corresponding private keys. Even if someone were to gain access to our storage, they would not be able to decrypt user uploads without access to the separate database, the database KMS key, and the separate KMS key, all of which are stored in a completely different AWS account than the one holding the backend application. We also store your data across multiple secure, geographically distributed data centers with redundant backups.

Absolutely not. Your videos are yours and yours alone. We will never use your content for advertising, sell your data, or use your family's private moments to train AI models. Our business model is simple: you pay for the service, and we protect your memories. That's it.

We're building this for the long haul, but we also plan for every scenario. If we ever need to wind down the service, you'll receive extensive advance notice (minimum 12 months) and easy tools to download your entire collection. We're also exploring partnerships with digital preservation organizations to ensure these memories can outlive any single company.

Yes. You can invite trusted people — grandparents, aunts, uncles, your partner, or even teachers and coaches — to contribute videos to your child's collection. You maintain full control over what gets added, and you can review contributions before they become part of the timeline. This way, your child's story includes perspectives from everyone who has played a role in their life.

We support all common video formats (MP4, MOV, AVI, and more) and there's no limit on video length. Whether it's a 10-second clip of a first giggle or a 30-minute recording of a school play, it all belongs in your child's story. We automatically optimize videos for storage while preserving quality.

Absolutely. You can upload videos from any point in your child's life — even digitized footage from old camcorders or VHS tapes. When you upload, you'll set the date the video was taken, and we'll place it in the correct spot on the timeline. Many parents spend their first few weeks uploading years of archived memories before continuing with new captures.

While our primary focus is video — because nothing captures a moment quite like moving images and sound — we're planning to support photos as well. You'll be able to create photo moments that appear on the timeline alongside your videos, giving you flexibility in how you tell your child's story.

Yes. Our mobile app (coming soon for iOS and Android) makes it easy to capture and upload moments on the go. You can record directly in the app or upload from your camera roll. The app also sends gentle reminders to help you remember to capture moments — because life gets busy, and we don't want you to miss the little things.

We offer four tiers: a Free Forever plan with 5 GB of storage and 1 child diary, Essentials at $6/month for growing families, Family at $12/month with 500 GB and unlimited diaries (our most popular), and Legacy at $24/month with 2 TB of storage and premium features. All paid plans are billed annually, and beta testers receive special founding member pricing for life. See our full pricing page for details.

Beta testers get early access to the platform, the ability to start building their child's collection before public launch, direct input into feature development, and lifetime founding member pricing. We're looking for parents who are excited about the vision and willing to share feedback as we refine the experience.

We're planning to invite our first beta testers soon. Sign up with your email on our homepage and you'll be among the first to know when spots open up. Early sign-ups will receive priority access.