Dead man's switch email

The email that sends only if you actually die.

Write one letter to one person. We check in with you on a schedule. If you keep answering, nobody ever sees it. If you stop, and two people you chose confirm why, we deliver it. Free for the first letter, with no card and no expiry.

What it is

A message held indefinitely, released on one condition.

A scheduled email fires on a date whether you are alive or not. A dead man's switch fires on a condition: you stopped checking in, and the checks confirmed why. That difference is the entire product.

The letter you would want your child to read at eighteen, written while you still sound like yourself.

Where the will actually is, and which solicitor holds it.

The subscriptions and direct debits nobody else knows are running.

Who to ring first, in the order you would ring them.

The thing you have never managed to say to the person you would most want to hear it.

Instructions for the funeral, so nobody has to guess what you wanted.

How it works

Three steps. About ten minutes.

Step 1

Write your letters

To your daughter. To your partner. To your co-founder who needs the passwords file location. Each letter is sealed to one named person.

Step 2

Answer one email a month

One tap tells us you are alive. Miss it and we remind you, then wait 30 days, then ask your witnesses.

Step 3

We deliver, only when it is true

Two people you trust must both confirm before anything is sent. Each recipient gets a private, secure link to exactly what you left them.

The hard part

Sending it early would be worse than never sending it.

A goodbye letter arriving while you are alive and well is the failure that ends a service like this. So a missed check-in triggers nothing on its own. It starts a grace period you can cancel by logging in, and only two trusted contacts agreeing can release anything.

The order that keeps you safe

Nothing is sent until all five, in order. Logging in once resets it to zero.

You miss check-ins
The monthly email goes unanswered.
We remind you
Several nudges, over days.
30 days pass
A full waiting period, quietly.
Two witnesses confirm
Both must agree you have died.
We deliver
The letters reach the people you named.

Price

Free for one letter to one person.

Not a trial. If one letter to one person is all you need, that is the whole product and it costs nothing. Pay only when you want more recipients or more letters.

Free
£0
  • 1 letter, 1 recipient.
  • Quarterly check-ins.
  • The full verification chain.
Most people
Personal
£6 /mo, or £60/yr
  • 10 letters, 10 recipients.
  • Monthly check-ins.
  • SMS reminders.
Family
£18 /mo
  • Five accounts in one household.
  • Each person fully private.
  • One bill.

Less than the streaming services you forget to cancel. Full pricing

Questions

What people ask about dead man's switches.

What is a dead man's switch email?

It is a message that sends itself if you stop responding. You write the letter now and choose who receives it. The service checks in with you on a schedule. If you keep answering, nothing happens and nobody sees anything. If you stop answering, and the checks below confirm you have died, the letter is delivered to the person you named.

Is your dead man's switch email free?

Yes, for one letter to one recipient, with monthly check-ins. No card, no trial clock, no expiry. It stays free for as long as one letter is all you need. Personal is £6 a month when you want up to ten letters and ten recipients, and Family is £18 a month for five separate accounts in one household.

What stops it sending while I am still alive?

This is the part most switches get wrong, and it is the failure that actually matters. A missed check-in is not proof of anything. Missing one starts a grace period, thirty days by default, during which we prompt you again through every channel we have. Logging in at any point resets everything. Only after the grace period runs out do we ask the two trusted contacts you nominated to confirm, and at least two of them have to agree before a single letter moves.

How is this different from scheduling an email to send later?

A scheduled email sends on a date whether you are alive or not. That is a timer, not a switch. The whole point here is the condition: the message is held indefinitely and only released against verified death. It also means you can leave it in place for thirty years without touching it, rather than re-scheduling every year.

What happens to my letters if If You Die shuts down?

We publish a sunset policy and we are bound by it. If we stop operating you get thirty days of notice, you can export everything you wrote, and content is then wiped rather than sold or transferred to whoever buys the domain. You can read the full policy before you write anything.

Can I use a dead man's switch email for passwords?

Not today, and we would rather say so than sell you something we cannot stand behind. We deliver text you write, encrypted at rest, and we do not claim zero-knowledge encryption. For anything sensitive, write down where the thing is and who to ask rather than the secret itself. Sealed instructions of that kind are what we are building next.

What stops delivery if I am alive but busy?

Reminders, a 30 day waiting period, and two witnesses who must both confirm. Any login resets everything instantly.

Can you read my letters?

No. Letters are encrypted at rest and no human or AI ever reads them. We see who you write to, never what you wrote.

What do my recipients receive?

An email from us with a private, secure link to the letter you wrote for them. No account needed. They see only what was addressed to them.

Is this a will?

No. Letters are words, not legal documents. For property and money you still need a will. Many people keep both.

Set it up tonight. Then forget about it.

One letter, one person, no card. The check-in takes a single tap once a month, and everything else only happens if it has to.

Start free, no card