Every family has that story that only one person can tell. It could be about a dead grandparent or the job a parent walked away from. These are the stories services like Memowrite and Remento try to capture before they’re gone, and they both do so by turning them into a printed book delivered to your doorstep.
Memowrite uses guided questions that the storyteller answers by speaking or typing, then a human team edits and designs the finished book. Remento uses the storyteller’s voice recordings, turning them into written chapters, and the book includes QR codes that play the original audio.
We’ll cover both services in this article, comparing what each service actually includes, what the books look like, what they cost, and what real customers say on Trustpilot.
Why Putting a Life Story on Paper Matters
Services like Memowrite and Remento exist for a reason. Researchers at Emory University’s Family Narratives Lab found that kids who know their family’s stories do better on almost every measure they looked at, such as self-esteem and a stronger sense of purpose.
The person telling the story also benefits. A review of community programs for older adults found that guided reminiscence improved both their quality of life and their satisfaction with it.
So, clearly, writing a life story pays off on every end. Let’s now look at which service will give you a finished book with the least hassle.
How Memowrite Works
Memowrite asks the storyteller 50 guided questions about their life, starting with childhood and ending with the lessons they’d want to pass down. Every question is available right away, so you can answer them in order, skip around, swap a few out, or write your own from scratch. You can type your answers or speak them out loud, and you can add up to 100 photos.
Once you’re done answering the question, the rest is up to Memowrite’s team. They proofread and edit your answers, then design a hardcover book. This means even someone who hasn’t written anything longer than a birthday card gets a polished book that reads smoothly but still sounds like them. You get to review the result and ask for revisions until you’re satisfied with the finished product.
By the end of everything, you get a full-color book, printed at A5 size, up to 500 pages long, with a cover design to choose from over 20 templates, shipped to you for free anywhere in the world.
You can get a full walkthrough of how Memowrite works on its site if you want more detail.
How Remento Works
Remento makes storytelling simple by sending one prompt at a time through text or email and letting storytellers answer with voice recordings. The process is easy to follow, especially for older family members who may not be comfortable with apps or complex technology. Its standout feature is the ability to preserve original voices – every story in the finished book includes a QR code that plays back the recording, creating a unique audio keepsake alongside the written memoir.
The Books Themselves: Paper, Pages, and Photos
There’s a difference in how both services’ finished books look when held side-by-side. Remento’s book is larger, an 8 by 10 hardcover. Memowrite’s book is smaller and denser, about 5.83 by 8.27 inches, printed on archival paper and made to be read start to finish rather than flipped through.
The page count is also different, with Memowrite allowing up to 500 pages and 100 photos at no extra cost. Remento allows 200 pages before a $30 surcharge kicks in, and anything past 380 pages will need to be written as a second book entirely.
With Memowrite, you upload pictures right alongside your answers as you write them. With Remento, you attach photos to each story, and you can pull them straight from Google Drive, Dropbox, Facebook, or Instagram.
Both services charge separately for you to order extra copies for the rest of the family, so budget for that. Remento charges $69 per extra copy up to 200 pages, and $99 past that. Memowrite ships as many books as you want for free, and sells extra copies through its order page.
Writing vs Speaking: Two Different Starting Points
This is where it becomes important to pick based on the storyteller, not the person buying the gift.
Some people freeze up in front of a microphone and would rather shape every sentence themselves. For that person, Memowrite’s written mode produces a book that sounds just like the one they have always wanted to write, with the efforts of a real editing team. It also suits someone who wants to sit down and finish the whole project over a few months instead of dragging it out over a year of weekly prompts.
Other storytellers will never sit down and type a page, so Remento makes it easier with one question a week, answered out loud in five minutes. The catch is that spoken answers come out sounding like a conversation, and even after the software cleans them up, someone still has to check each chapter for mistakes or repeated bits.
Memowrite is really the only one built for both kinds of people, since its storytellers can type their answers or speak them.
Memowrite Reviews: What Customers Say
It’s not hard to find honest Memowrite reviews, as over 3,000 people have reviewed the service. The good reviews tend to say the same few things:
- The questions pull out memories people thought they’d lost.
- The platform is simple enough for an elderly parent to use on their own.
- The finished book feels like something you’d actually pick up in a bookstore.
As for the complaints, these usually are about add-on costs they didn’t expect or auto-renewal terms they missed at checkout. Memowrite responds to almost every review, which is a good sign, but there is a lesson from the bad ones, which is reading the order page carefully so the price you see is the price you pay.
Remento Reviews: What Customers Say
Rementos’ reviewers keep saying that recording is easy for older relatives, and hearing a parent’s actual voice come out of a finished book is genuinely moving.
The few complaints that do show up mostly point to slow replies from customer support, or the odd hiccup logging into an account. Nothing about it points to a problem with the product itself.
Where Remento Comes Out Ahead
- The voice: Hearing a loved one’s actual recording through a QR code is something a printed paragraph can’t match.
- Ease of use: Talking into a phone once a week is about as easy as this gets for a reluctant storyteller.
- Family collaboration: Unlimited collaborators can add questions and listen along all year long.
Where Memowrite Wins
- A finished, polished book: Real people proofread and design it, instead of leaving that work to the family.
- Way more room: Up to 500 full-color pages, against Remento’s 200 before the $30 upcharge.
- More flexible: Storytellers can write or speak, stick with the 50 questions or swap them out, and move at their own pace instead of one prompt a week.
- Photos built right in: Up to 100 pictures, plus 20 cover designs to choose from.
- Costs less to start: $57 against $99, with free shipping worldwide instead of just the US.
Memowrite vs Remento: The Verdict
If your family wants to hear the storyteller’s actual voice for years to come, get Remento. That’s the entire point of the product, and customers clearly love it for it.
But for most families, the real point of buying one of these is the book itself. That is, something long, well-edited, full of photos, that reads properly and can be on a shelf for the next generation to pick up. On that measure, Memowrite comes out ahead. It lets the storyteller write or speak, gives more than double the pages, hands off the editing to professionals instead of leaving it to the family, and costs less to start.
