No, and it doesn’t replace one. Epitafy isn’t a legal service. It carries the parts of your digital legacy a will was never designed to hold, alongside one. If you’d rather not depend on us to pass a key on, the access key can be left with your solicitor and referred to in your own paperwork.

No – you decide, one recipient at a time. A Capsule goes only to the people you assign it to, sealed with a key only they hold. If your son is the one who should have the alarm code and the logins for the family photo archive, he has them. The solicitor handling your paperwork gets what you left for the solicitor. Neither of them sees the other’s, and neither knows what the other was given.

Before your check-in period runs out, we remind you. A few days before it does, we alert the emergency contacts you’ve nominated and email you a link that checks you in without the app, in case your phone is lost. Going away? Postpone your next check-in until you’re back. If the whole period passes without a word from you, your Capsules are delivered.

You can usually get back in on a new one. The keys behind your Capsules are backed up, sealed on your own device under a key that stays with you: on your devices and, if you keep sync on, in your Apple or Google account. We store the sealed backups, but we can’t open them. On a new phone you sign in, confirm it’s really you, and your own key opens the backups there.

The honest limit: if that key is gone for good – no device, no sync to your new phone and no recovery code from the app – nothing can be recovered. That is the price of a system with no back door – nobody, not even us, can open your Capsules for you.

Safety check-in apps do one thing well: if you stop checking in, somebody you trust is alerted. Apps like Demumu are built around that, and Epitafy includes the same layer – check-ins on your own schedule, reminders, alerts to the emergency contacts you nominate. Then it answers the question an alert leaves open. Something is wrong: now what do the people around you actually need? The letter you wanted read. The alarm code, and where the paperwork is kept. The instructions for the business. An alert tells them something has happened. A Capsule hands them what they need.

Both are worth setting up, and both are partial by design. Google’s covers your Google account. A password manager’s emergency access typically hands one person your whole vault – all of it or none of it, and passwords only. Epitafy works across the rest of it, one recipient at a time: a letter for one person, account details for another, each in its own Capsule, sealed with a key only they hold.

Most email apps can send a message on a chosen date, and it’s the nearest thing most people already have. But a scheduled email is fixed the moment you set it: it goes on its date whether the address still works, whether you’ve changed your mind, or whether you’re perfectly well. A Capsule waits for the thing that actually matters – you no longer responding – and it’s yours to change until the day it’s delivered.

Soon, and the waitlist goes first. We’re starting in the United Kingdom. You’ll get a confirmation email now, an optional early-access invitation before launch, and the announcement when Epitafy opens.