Famileo Gazette - The Family Newspaper | Review

AD

Whether your parents (or grandparents) live in the next town over, or a different country altogether, we all know how hard it can be sometimes to visit and keep everyone up to date with events and milestones. And keeping in touch with loved ones has been even trickier the last few years thanks to restrictions and lockdowns. But I think this has made it more important than ever to have that communication between families! And that's where Famileo comes in.

Famileo began when Tanguy struggled to keep in touch with his grandmother Elisabeth. He was thinking up ideas that didn't need Elisabeth to use the internet, and was inspired by family albums and postcards to create another way to share family news. Armel then joined the project and together they launched Famileo for French care homes - simply the beginning of their venture. 5 years later and 100,000 families in France had used Famileo, and now their magazines are sent to more than 50 countries all over the world, as languages also include English, Spanish and Dutch.

Famileo was created as an easy and fun way for whole families to keep in touch, whether that's via photos or just simply written memories and messages. Each family member can share messages and photos from their month with just a few simple clicks. These messages are then automatically formatted and printed out in the style of a personalised family newsletter. You can decide who the Famileo newsletter is posted to, but their main audience is grandparents or older parents who want to keep in touch without the need of technology.

It's incredibly easy to sign up and start creating your families Famileo magazines. Head to the website and click the 'sign up for my family' option. Enter your details, and then the details of the person you wish to send the magazines to. You are then you are given a code that you can send to family members so they can join the subscription and add their own messages too. Each member can add children and their birthdays so these feature in the magazines too - a great way for major events to never be forgotten!

Messages and pictures (up to 30 per gazette) are then simply uploaded to the family wall in chronological order. You can choose to get the printed magazines sent monthly, bi-monthly or weekly - with prices ranging from £5.99 to £19.99 a month which includes postage. Plus every registered family member can contribute to the subscription cost too which is a great option.

I chose to get the magazines sent to our home address first for the purpose of this review, so I really enjoyed looking through the pages with the littles. They loved spotting the pictures and remembering all of the things we got up to - excited that nanny would be getting to see all of these too! I love that the pictures are large and really fill the page, and the text is in a larger (although not the clearest) font too which is much easier to read for those with poor eyesight. The magazines really are a great snapshot of your families month and would be perfect to store away and look back on in the future. 

The only big negative I would say about the magazines is that as they are printed on paper, they are easily crumpled, folded or damaged. I think it would be a nice idea for them to add a harder cover page, to help protect the pages inside with the images on. This would make them better protective during the postal process too, as although the envelope says 'do not fold' I still found our magazines were slightly bent and bashed.

Overall though, I really love the idea behind Famileo and their personalised family magazines. They are such a lovely way to keep in touch with loved ones who might not be so up to date with technology, and I think it's fantastic that multiple family members can contribute to one magazine. So if you're looking for a Christmas gift for an older relative this year why not consider a Famileo subscription? It would definitely make someone's year!