We read what families said
Before we wrote a line of Famio we read 7,430 reviews of the family apps households were already living with. The same handful of things came up over and over, whatever the app. Those are the things Famio was built to get right.
What families kept raising in the reviews we read
- family apps
- 9family apps
- reviews read
- 7,430reviews read
- three stars or worse
- 1,585three stars or worse
The same things came up whatever the app. Unedited, and deliberately unattributed.
the video ads turn on and the audio plays aloud
looks ugly and dated
in night mode the words are white against a white background
now the app won’t even open
years worth of data I can’t get out
the calendar is behind a paywall for anything beyond 3 days
it was working fine before I paid for premium
my daughter’s phone — the screen is too small
please stop changing things
every update the shopping list gets hidden further
no one can get past the Create a Family screen
the buttons at the bottom are offscreen
I built Famio because I believed I could make something tangible — something that actually brings a family closer together than they were before. Not another calendar with a subscription bolted to it.
Almost none of what we read was a request for another feature. It was the basics giving way: something that worked last year moved behind a higher tier, an update that would not open, a screen that did not fit the phone a child actually has. None of that is a hard engineering problem — it is a question of what an app keeps its attention on. Everything below is something families raised, and what Famio does about it.
“Every time I open my calendar to view, the video ads will turn on and the audio will play aloud.”
Famio has no ads in it. Not a banner, not a video, nothing that makes a noise in a school car park. The subscription is the whole business model, which is the only reason we can say this and mean it.
What the subscription covers“It’s one thing to put new features behind a paywall, another to remove basic features.”
This came up more than anything else in the corpus, and what people minded was not the price — it was losing something they already had. Nothing in Famio that works today moves behind a higher tier tomorrow. There is one price and one set of features.
The one price, in full“I’ve been with you for years, which means there’s years worth of data I can’t get out.”
You can export everything your household has put into Famio, whenever you want, without asking us. Leaving is a button, not a support ticket — your family’s years are yours to take with you.
Exporting and deleting your data“I just purchased a yearly subscription and now the app won’t even open.”
Famio keeps your household on your device and syncs when it can, so the lists, chores and meals are still there when the network — or we — have a bad day. A week you can’t open is the same as a week you’ve lost.
“The cards are too large for the screen, so the buttons at the bottom are offscreen. It can’t be used on my daughter’s phone.”
The kid side is built for the phone a child actually gets, which is usually the old one. The tick lands instantly and locally rather than waiting for a server, because on tired hardware a spinner reads as “it didn’t count”.
“Bizarrely doesn’t have a dark mode and looks ugly and dated.”
Famio follows your phone into dark mode, and someone here cares about how it looks on a Tuesday morning. A family opens this app every single day for years, so it gets looked after like something that is opened every day for years.
How Famio works day to day
Put the house down.
Setting up your household takes about two minutes. After that, the week has somewhere to live that isn’t your head.