The plain-language deal

Longtold is a product of Wood Candle Co, Verona, WI · Effective August 2026

What Longtold is

Longtold sends a family’s storyteller one question at a time, shares the answers with the people the family chooses, and turns a year of answers into a printed book. By creating an account you agree to these terms; if you’re only receiving story emails, nothing is asked of you beyond tolerating our affection for serif fonts.

Your stories are yours

Everything your family writes and uploads belongs to your family. You give us only the permission we need to run the service: to store your stories (encrypted at rest), email them to the recipients you choose, show them inside your account, and print them in your book. We never sell your content, never use it for advertising, and never make it public.

Questions, with a little help

Some suggested questions are chosen with the help of an AI service: your family tree and short excerpts of recent stories are sent to Anthropic to pick what to ask next. Anthropic’s terms say what we send is never used to train their models, and that they keep it only briefly for safety checks. You can turn this off entirely, and then nothing is sent at all. Details live in the Privacy Policy.

Your account and your recipients

Keep your password to yourself and tell us if something looks wrong. Add only recipients who are glad to hear from your family — every story email carries a working unsubscribe link, and we honor it immediately. Don’t use Longtold to harass anyone, break the law, or store content that has nothing to do with your family’s stories.

Texts

Optional SMS notifications have their own short policy at longtold.life/sms. Only you can opt your number in, and STOP always works.

Money

Longtold is free while it is in beta. Tips are welcome and are processed by Stripe — we never see or store card numbers.

Paid plans exist and are how Longtold will pay for itself, but nobody is charged without choosing a plan first. Prices are shown in full before you pay anything, a year that is already paid for runs to the end of that year, and if these terms change in a way that affects what you pay, account holders get an email first.

Leaving

You can stop anytime; write hey@longtold.life and we’ll export or delete your family’s data. We may close accounts that abuse the service or these terms.

The lawyerly part

Longtold is provided “as is.” We work hard to keep it reliable, but we can’t promise perfection, and our total liability for any claim is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before it arose. These terms are governed by the laws of Wisconsin. If we change the terms in a way that matters, we’ll email account holders first.

Questions? Write hey@longtold.life.