Chris Jones here. Free sounds pretty good when you are already writing checks you did not budget for. Funeral, flowers, a lunch after the service – and then a website says it will put the obituary up at no charge. You may say, ‘So Chris, why would I pay you if somebody else will host it for nothing?’ Fair question. I have been on the web long enough to know what free usually means. It means you are the product, or it means the lights stay on until they do not.
Here is the part families find out too late. Those free pages get sold, folded, or just switched off. One day the link you put in the paper, the one you texted to cousins in three states, goes nowhere. No forwarding address. No phone that still rings. You are left hanging with a story you already wrote and a hole where it used to live. I have watched domains rot. I have watched “we’ll keep this up forever” turn into a parked page. Forever is a long time to promise when nobody is paying the hosting bill.
We started Obits Online because a life story should not depend on a side project staying solvent. You pay a modest fee, the page stays put, and the full obituary is yours to keep – not a teaser that dumps you into ads. If a free site still feels like the move, ask one question before you paste the text in: what happens to this page if they shut the doors next year. If the answer is a shrug, you already know. Call me at 518.223.6044 if you want it done right, or submit the obituary here.