Frequently asked questions

Etherstone is a lasting digital memorial for someone you have lost. It brings their biography, photos, favorite music, military service, and the family's own stories and messages together in one beautiful, private place — created with a funeral home and handed to the family to keep.

Every memorial has a short ID — five numbers and two letters, like ES-58358-GU. You can open it three ways: enter the ID at etherstone.net, scan the QR marker at the resting place where present, or visit the link shared with you. A memorial for a companion animal starts ESC- instead — enter it the same way.

The public memorial — biography, photos, music, service honors, and milestones — is visible to anyone with the ID or link, exactly as the family chooses to share it. Private family memories and messages stay hidden until you sign in as a verified family member.

Usually by invitation. The funeral home or an existing family owner invites you by email; you open the link and sign in with the one-time code we send, and the private family view unlocks. If you haven't been invited, ask the funeral home or a family member to add your email, then sign in at the family sign-in page. There is one other way in — if someone gave you a short code, see “Someone gave me a code” below. Either way, a person in the family decides.

Some families print a short code on a service card, or share one in an obituary. Entering it opens the memorial and lets you send the family a few words about how you knew them.

The code does not give you access on its own. Somebody in the family reads what you wrote and decides. If they say yes, you are given viewer access — you can see the whole memorial, including the photos and memories kept back from the public page, and you cannot change anything or invite anyone else.

If they would rather not, nothing happens and you are not sent a message. That is deliberate. Families are often deciding about someone they need to ask a relative about first, and the choice should stay quietly theirs.

Yes, where the family has opened condolences — you will find them on the memorial page, under Messages. A sentence is plenty; nobody is expecting an essay.

The family chooses what appears on the memorial, so your message may not show up straight away. It has not been lost.

Yes. Family members with contributor, admin, or owner access can add photos, write memories, and share stories from the management dashboard. These appear in the private family space, and the family controls what (if anything) is also shown publicly.

There is one payment and no subscription, so there is no renewal to miss and nothing that lapses if you stop thinking about it. We will not take a memorial down because time has passed.

We are not going to tell you that any company or any website will always be here, because nobody can promise that honestly. What we will say is this: we commit to migrating memorials rather than deleting them, and you can download a complete copy at any time and keep it yourself — so the part that matters is never only in our hands.

Your memories belong to your family, and our commitment is to migrate rather than delete.

You do not have to rely on that. From the management dashboard you can download a complete copy at any time — the biography, photos, videos, audio and memories, in one archive. The photographs are built into the page itself, so it opens in any browser with no internet connection at all. Anything too large to include is listed by name inside the archive, so you always know exactly what you are holding.

Family owners and admins manage access from the memorial's management dashboard, under Family & Access. From there you can invite new family members, set what each person can do (viewer, contributor, admin, or owner), answer anyone who has asked to be connected, and remove access at any time.

The dashboard is your home for every memorial your home has created. You can build new memorials, edit profiles, order engraved markers, and hand pages off to families — all from one place. Sign in at the sign-in page with your work email; the dashboard opens automatically.

While you're with the family, open the dashboard and create a new memorial — add the biography, dates, hometown, photos, music, and any military service. It takes only a few minutes, and you can save a draft and refine it before publishing.

When the memorial is ready, invite the family by email straight from the dashboard. They open the invitation and sign in with a one-time emailed code, and from that point they can add private memories and manage the page going forward. You stay in control until you hand it over.

Etherstone offers a solid engraved steel coin for the resting place, in a silver or black finish, showing the Etherstone name and the memorial ID (format ES-XXXXX-XX, or ESC-XXXXX-XX for a companion animal). A QR version is available so visitors can scan to open the memorial with their phone camera. Talk to us about finishes and mounting options for your families.

Funeral homes partner with Etherstone on a per-memorial basis, with commission on the markers and plans you offer your families. For current pricing and partnership terms, reach out at support@etherstone.net.

The marker is a solid engraved steel coin at the resting place showing the memorial ID. To open the memorial, enter that ID at etherstone.net. Where a QR version is fitted, you can instead point your phone camera at it to open the page directly.

No. Any phone or computer with a web browser can open a memorial — just go to etherstone.net and enter the ID. If the marker has a QR code, most phone cameras will recognize it automatically; no app is required.

Every memorial can be reached by entering its ID (e.g. ES-58358-GU, or ESC- for a companion animal) on the Find a Memorial page at etherstone.net, or by opening the shared link directly. A QR marker, where present, is simply a shortcut to the same page.

Anything the family keeps family-only — private memories and messages, and any photos, video, audio, or the people and recipes you mark as private — is shown only to family members who have signed in. It is not part of what an anonymous visitor receives, and those files are held in a private store rather than on the public web, so having the memorial's link is not enough to open them. The family decides what appears on the public page, and access can be changed or removed at any time.