Frequently asked questions

Famaly is one shared app for everything a household has to keep track of: the calendar, the chores and pocket money, tonight's dinner, the shopping list, the school runs, the bills — plus live location and check-ins so you know everyone got where they were going.

Think of it as replacing the fridge whiteboard, the family group chat, three separate apps and the mental load of being the one who remembers everything.

Most families are up and running in under ten minutes. You create your family, add your kids' names and birthdays, and send one invite link to your partner. Everything else — the calendar, chores, meal plan — you can fill in as you go.

Our getting started guide walks through it step by step.

That's the honest worry with every family app, so we built for it. Kids get a big, friendly kid mode where they just tap their chores done and watch their pocket money add up — that's usually what gets them in. Teens come for the check-ins and the family chat. Partners come because the "who's doing pickup?" texts stop.

You don't need everyone on board on day one, either. It works fine with just you and one other adult, and you can add people as they come around.

Both. Every feature is available in the web portal at portal.famaly.ai on any computer, tablet or phone browser. The mobile app adds push notifications, one-tap check-ins and live location — get it on the App Store or Google Play.

Plenty of families run it with a couple of people on the app and grandparents on the web.

Yes — and you don't need a credit card. The Starter plan is free forever, and Famaly Plus comes with a 30-day free trial. Nothing is charged unless you decide to stay on Plus, and you can cancel any time with no lock-in contract.

It depends on how you add them. Younger children are added as kid profiles — they have a name, a birthday and a photo, they appear on the calendar and the chore list, but they have no login of their own and see nothing on their own device.

Older kids can be promoted to full household members with their own email and password. They then see the same shared family things everyone sees: the calendar, chat, chores, to-dos, meals and shopping list.

That's exactly the case it's built for. A toddler can be a kid profile with a growth chart and a firsts journal; a nine-year-old can be tapping chores done in kid mode; a sixteen-year-old can be a full member with their own login and check-ins. They all live in the same family, and kids get promoted as they grow up — nothing needs re-entering.

Yes. Anyone you invite becomes a household member — grandparents, a nanny, an au pair, a co-parent in another home. Starter includes up to two adults; Famaly Plus lifts that to unlimited household members.

There's no extra charge per person, and everyone you invite is on your plan.

It does. A household in Famaly is whoever you say it is — there's no assumption about two parents under one roof. Blended families, single-parent households, co-parents across two homes and multi-generational households all use the same shared calendar, chores and roster.

For things that span two households, group chats can include people from other families, so you can coordinate without giving anyone access to the rest of your family's information.

You assign chores with a dollar value, your kids tap them done, and Famaly keeps the running balance and the payout history. It's the tracking, not the banking — no real money moves through Famaly. You pay your kids however you already do, and mark it paid.

That means no bank details, no card for your child, and nothing for you to set up.

Only members of your own family. Location is never made public, never sold, and never used for advertising. There's no "nearby families" feature, no social layer, and no way for a stranger to find you.

Yes — and that's deliberate. Sharing is something a teen switches on, and they can always see when it's on. We designed it as a safety net rather than surveillance, because the families where it works are the ones where the kid agreed to it.

If a teen would rather not share continuously, one-tap check-ins are usually the compromise that everyone accepts: they tap "I'm at school" and the family sees it, without a map following them all day.

Not long, on purpose. Detailed location history is automatically deleted after about 48 hours. A much smaller set of summary points is kept for around 90 days so history views work, and is then deleted too.

Safety alerts are kept so your family has a record of them. The full detail is in our privacy policy.

The app is built to report position efficiently rather than constantly, so the impact is modest — comparable to other family location apps. If battery matters more than live tracking on a particular phone, check-ins give you most of the peace of mind for almost none of the drain.

Yes. Check-ins, the live family map and arrival alerts all need the app on the phone that's sharing, because a browser can't report location in the background. Everyone else can watch the map from the web portal. Grab it from the App Store or Google Play.

No, to both. There are no ads anywhere in Famaly, and we do not sell your personal information to anyone. Your family's information is used to run the service for your family — that's it.

We're funded by the subscription, which is a big part of why there's a paid plan at all.

Famaly is built in Australia by OWNA Corp Pty Ltd (ACN 613 387 474), the team behind OWNA, childcare management software used by centres across the country. We've been handling families' information carefully for years — Famaly is that same work, pointed at the home instead of the centre.

We use major cloud providers (including Google Cloud and MongoDB Atlas) to host the service, so some information may be stored or processed outside Australia, including in the United States. We're an Australian company bound by the Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles, and we take reasonable steps to ensure overseas providers handle your information to the same standard.

Our security policy sets out how it's protected.

Family chat is visible only to your household — no ads, no strangers, no algorithm. Photos and files you send are stored privately and only reachable through short-lived links generated for your family.

To be straight with you: it isn't end-to-end encrypted, so it's private from the outside world but not from us in the way a messaging app like Signal would be. Traffic is encrypted in transit and access is restricted, but treat it as a family space rather than a secrets vault.

You can ask us to delete your personal information at any time by emailing support@famaly.ai, and we'll action it. Parents and guardians can also review, edit or delete their children's information directly in the app whenever they want.

Note that things you posted into shared spaces may stay visible to the family members you shared them with, and residual copies can sit in backups for a limited period before being cleared.

The whole organiser, forever: shared calendar and birthdays, chores and pocket money with kid mode, family to-do list, family chat, meal planner and shopping list, and the growth tracker and firsts journal. Up to two adults plus unlimited kids.

It isn't a trial that expires — the free plan stays free.

Plus adds the things that either save you money or save you thinking: AI meal ideas that work around your allergies, live fuel prices on a map, Woolworths grocery price watch, the bills and subscriptions tracker, teen check-ins and the live family map, unlimited household members, and priority support.

One tank of fuel found cheaper, or one half-price special caught, tends to cover the month.

No. You can create your family and start using Famaly without entering any payment details, and the 30-day Plus trial doesn't need a card either.

Yes. There's no lock-in contract and no cancellation fee. If you cancel Plus you drop back to the free Starter plan and keep your family, your calendar and your history — you just lose the Plus features.

No. One subscription covers your whole household. Everyone you invite joins on your plan at no extra cost.

The web portal runs in any modern browser on Windows, Mac, iPad, Android tablets and phones. The mobile app is built for both iPhone and Android — download it from the App Store or Google Play — and everything stays in sync, so add an event on your laptop and it's on your partner's phone straight away.

Live fuel prices currently cover NSW, the ACT and Tasmania, drawn from the official state price feeds. Woolworths grocery price watch works Australia-wide.

More states are on the list as their price feeds become available.

The organiser — calendar, chores, chat, meals, shopping, safety — works anywhere. The money-savers are the Australian part: fuel prices and Woolworths pricing are local by nature.

Use the Forgot your password? link on the sign-in screen and we'll email you a reset link. It's good for a limited time and can only be used once.

Email support@famaly.ai or use the contact form on our home page. We're a small Australian team and a family business ourselves — you'll get a person, not a ticket bot.