About us
Why we called it Kistkeep.
A kist is the old Scots word for a chest, a place you kept the things too important to lose. That's what we set out to build, for a digital life.
Built with Scotland in mind, from day one.
Most digital legacy services are built for the US market first. We started somewhere different: Scotland, and the rest of the UK and EU alongside it. Your data stays hosted in the UK and EU, wherever you are.
We're a small team who believe that organising your digital life shouldn't require a spreadsheet, a solicitor's appointment, and a leap of faith. It should feel calm, and it should be something you can trust to still be here when it matters.
What we believe.
Warm, not clinical
Planning for what happens next shouldn't feel cold or transactional. We write and design for people, not compliance forms.
Honest about trade-offs
When something is unrecoverable by design, like a lost passphrase, we say so upfront, not in the small print after something goes wrong.
Built to last
A vault only matters if it's still there when it's needed. We're building Kistkeep as something you can rely on for decades, not a startup that might disappear.
How we got here
A short version of a longer story.
- 1
The idea
Kistkeep started from a simple, frustrating realisation: after a family emergency, the hardest part wasn't the emotional weight, it was not knowing where anything was, or what anyone would have wanted.
- 2
The research
We looked hard at the existing options, US-first tools like Everplans and Trust & Will, and UK players like Lyfeguard, and found the same gap everywhere: broadcast-only messaging, no automated account cancellation, and legal content that ignored Scotland's specific law.
- 3
The build
We built Kistkeep around the gaps we found: per-recipient messaging, automated post-death cancellation instructions, threshold cryptography for high-value secrets, and jurisdiction-aware content from day one.
- 4
What's next
We're still a small team, and we're building in the open with the people who use Kistkeep, adding jurisdictions, refining the release process, and making sure the product earns the trust it's asking for.
What we do differently, and why.
Scotland-native, not a US product ported over
Most digital legacy services are designed for the American market first, then localised. Kistkeep started in Scotland, alongside the rest of the UK and EU, so the legal framing, the language, and the defaults were built for this market from the very first line of code.
Per-recipient messaging, not one broadcast list
Every other service we looked at sends one message to everyone on the same fixed date. We built Kistkeep so each recipient can have their own independent trigger, because real relationships and real timing are never that uniform.
A genuine continuity guarantee
This industry has a cautionary tale: a well-known US competitor shut down, and families lost access to what they'd stored. We built Kistkeep's data export and continuity structure specifically to answer that failure, not as an afterthought.
Two encryption tiers, chosen deliberately
Most competitors pick one encryption model for everything. We use standard server-side envelope encryption for documents and memories, so search and AI extraction keep working, and a genuine zero-knowledge model for Passwords, because that module deserves a stronger guarantee.
Join us in building a calmer way to plan ahead.
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