Qeepsake vs Tinybeans: Two Different Jobs, Now One Company

Qeepsake and Tinybeans solve different problems: Qeepsake turns a parent's answers to text prompts into a written journal and eventually a printed book, while Tinybeans is a private photo-and-video feed for sharing your kid's daily life with family. The choice usually comes down to whether you want to write a memory book or share photos with grandparents. But there's a wrinkle worth knowing before you pick: as of November 2025, Tinybeans Group acquired Qeepsake, so you're now choosing between two products from the same company, not two independent competitors.

That acquisition is the headline fact most comparison posts online haven't caught up to yet, so it's worth being precise about it before getting into which app fits your family.

Full disclosure

Ourtifacts is our product, and it shows up later in this post as a third option for families who want both jobs (writing and photo-sharing, plus voice) in one place. We built the comparison table below the same way regardless of who it flatters.

First: yes, Tinybeans owns Qeepsake now

On November 3, 2025, Tinybeans Group Limited (OTCQB: TNYYF), the publicly traded parent company behind the Tinybeans app, announced it had acquired the assets of Qeepsake, Inc. in an all-stock deal worth about US$2.7 million. Qeepsake's CEO, Tracy Cho, became General Manager of the Qeepsake unit inside Tinybeans, and the two companies said their combined paid subscriber base would land around 90,000, with more than a million free users across both apps.

Both apps are still live, separate downloads today (Qeepsake's own site tells existing users "nothing about your Qeepsake experience is changing today"), and the companies have said they'll explore combining the two products' strengths "over time." Nothing has been announced about the apps merging into one at this point.

Practically, this means:

• You're not picking a "winner" between two rival companies anymore. Any money you spend on either one supports the same business.
• The products still do different jobs today, and that's unlikely to change immediately: Qeepsake's text-journal format and Tinybeans' photo feed are genuinely different capture methods, not just different branding on the same tool.
• Long-term, expect convergence. If a unified product ships eventually, this comparison may need an update, but as of today, treat them as two separate tools built by one company.

What Qeepsake actually is

Qeepsake is a text-message journal. You get prompts by text (and in the app) asking small, specific questions about your kid; the app also lets you write spontaneous entries whenever something happens that you want to remember. Answers accumulate into a private journal that you can eventually turn into a printed book (softcover, hardcover, or a few other formats, each an added cost beyond the subscription).

On Qeepsake Premium, you can add "Family Contributors" (a spouse or another relative) who get their own prompts and text in their own entries, which land in the same journal as yours. That's a real collaboration feature, but it's gated behind the higher-priced tier and, in practice, most Qeepsake journals are one parent's perspective.

There's no permanent free plan: Qeepsake offers a 7-day free trial, after which you're on a paid tier (a cheaper "Lite" plan exists alongside Essential and Premium). The app itself is a free download with in-app purchases, and it's well-reviewed on the app stores.

What Tinybeans actually is

Tinybeans is a private photo-and-video feed. A parent (or, with the paid tier, a co-owner) posts photos and videos of their kid; invited family members (grandparents especially) see them in a private timeline and can react, with the option of a digest email so grandparents don't need to check an app. It's explicitly built as an alternative to posting kids' photos on public social media: no public profiles, no strangers, invite-only.

Tinybeans has a genuine permanent free tier: a capped number of uploads per month, a set amount of storage, ads on the free tier, and a maximum video length. Tinybeans+ removes ads, raises the upload and storage limits, extends the video length, and adds a second linked account so both parents can post ad-free under one subscription.

You can grant upload permission to other invited family members too, not just view access, so grandparents and others can be more than passive viewers, but the core job of the app is still "share what my kid is doing," not "collect everyone's memories and stories about my kid."

Qeepsake vs Tinybeans at a glance

	Qeepsake	Tinybeans
The job it does	Turn a parent's answers into a written journal, eventually a book	Privately share photos/videos of your kid with family
Capture method	Text-message prompts + app; reply by text or in-app	Upload photos/videos directly in the app
Who contributes	Mainly one parent; a spouse/contributor can be added on Premium	Parent(s) as co-owners; other invited relatives can get upload permission
Output	A private digital journal, optionally printed as a physical book	An ongoing private photo/video timeline, viewed in-app or by email digest
Privacy model	Private account; 256-bit SSL, journal content not sold or licensed (per Qeepsake's own policy)	Invite-only private feed, not a public social platform
Free tier (verified)	No: 7-day trial only, then paid plans	Yes: permanent free tier with upload/storage/video limits, plus ads
Owned by	Tinybeans Group (since Nov 2025)	Tinybeans Group

When Qeepsake fits

Qeepsake is the right pick if what you actually want is a written keepsake and the text-prompt format is what will get you to actually do it. If you know you won't open an app on your own initiative but you will reply to a text, that low-friction design is genuinely the point: it's built to beat the blank-page problem that kills most baby journals. It also fits if the end goal is a physical printed book you can hold, rather than a digital archive.

It's a weaker fit if you want more than one parent's perspective by default (that's a paid add-on, not the base experience), or if what you're really after is a way for grandparents and other relatives to see photos as they happen; that's not Qeepsake's job at all.

When Tinybeans fits

Tinybeans is the right pick if the problem you're solving is "grandma keeps asking to see more pictures" and you want a private alternative to posting on Facebook or Instagram. The free tier is real, not a trial, so you can try it properly before deciding whether the ad-free upgrade is worth it. It's built for photo/video volume and family viewership, which Qeepsake isn't trying to do.

It's a weaker fit if what you want is a written record of your kid's story in their own words or yours; Tinybeans is a feed, not a journal, and there's no text-prompt system nudging you to write anything down.

If you want both jobs in one place

Qeepsake (writing) and Tinybeans (photo-sharing) are different tools for a reason, but if what you actually want is one private place where many relatives, not just one parent, each contribute their own memories, in their own words and voices, that's a third kind of product entirely.

Full disclosure again: Ourtifacts is our product. It's a private family memory vault built around a child: a parent starts the vault and invites the people who love their kid (grandparents, aunts, uncles, close friends) to contribute. Each person gets small, role-tailored prompts by email on a relaxed weekly cadence (a grandmother's questions differ from an uncle's), answerable in about 30 seconds. They respond by talking: recording a voice memory from a link on their phone, no app install required, and the original audio is kept alongside the transcribed story, so their actual voice becomes part of the keepsake. Parents can also add text, photos (including bulk-importing years of photos with automatic album grouping), and video. It's invite-only with no social feed, no ads, and no public profiles, and it's free to start.

That's a different shape from either Qeepsake or Tinybeans: closer to Qeepsake's "get someone to actually write it down" instinct, but built for a dozen contributors instead of one, and closer to Tinybeans' family-sharing instinct, but private and voice-first rather than a public-style feed. If you're weighing more alternatives to the photo-sharing side specifically, our Tinybeans alternatives roundup goes deeper on that comparison, and our full Qeepsake review covers the journaling side in more detail. If your main goal is simply getting photos in front of family without an app, the best app to share baby photos with family compares the options built specifically for that.

The honest verdict

If you want a written journal that turns into a printed book, and the text-prompt nudge is what will get you to actually fill it in: Qeepsake. If you want a private, easy way for family to see your kid's photos and videos as they happen, with a real free tier to try first: Tinybeans. If you want many relatives (not just you) each contributing their own memories and voices to one private archive your kid gets to have when they're grown: that's the job Ourtifacts was built for.

Either Qeepsake or Tinybeans is a reasonable choice on its own merits, and now that they're under one company, you're not betting on two competing businesses, just picking the tool that matches the job you actually need done.

Don't let this stay a someday decision

Whichever tool fits, the risk is the same one every family faces: memories that live only in a parent's head, a phone's camera roll, or a group text thread eventually get buried or lost. Pick the format that matches how you'll actually use it (text-prompt journaling, private photo-sharing, or a voice-first vault built for the whole family) and start now. If it's the "whole family, one private vault" job you're after, Ourtifacts is free to start.