Written by Sam, who runs Taletrove. Taletrove is one of the four services below, so read this with that in mind. Every price here came off each company's own website in November 2026 and you can check the lot in about ten minutes. I have tried to be straight about who each one really suits, including the times when it is not us.
First, the question that decides it
Everything on this page splits in two, and that split matters far more than price or design.
Some of these print the newsletter and post it. The rest email it.
If the person you have in mind is comfortable online, an emailed newsletter is cheaper, quicker, and in two cases free. If they are not online, and that is usually the reason people start looking in the first place, then an emailed newsletter is not an answer however good it is. You are down to the printed ones.
So answer that one question first and ignore half of this page.
The four services, side by side
| Service | What arrives | How the family contributes | Price | Where from |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Taletrove | Printed booklet, posted | £7 a month, first month £3.50 | UK | |
| Famileo | Printed gazette, posted | Famileo's own app | From £5.99 a month | France |
| Trove | Weekly email, printed edition optional | Trove's own app | Email free, print $4.99 a month | Not stated, prices in dollars |
| Letterloop | Email only | Answering questions by email or app | First two issues free | Not stated, prices in dollars |
Checked November 2026. Famileo's plan table and its own FAQ page listed slightly different plans when I looked, so confirm theirs before you buy.
The ones that get printed and posted
Famileo
The biggest of the lot by a long way. A French company going since 2015, with something like a quarter of a million subscribing families across Europe. Relatives add photos and short messages in the Famileo app, those get laid out automatically into a newspaper style gazette, and it is printed and posted out.
What it does well. It is the cheapest printed option here at £5.99 a month, it is properly established, and it is the only one that will send a gazette as often as every two weeks if your family is chatty. Up to 60 people can contribute to one account.
What to watch. Every contributor has to download the app and keep using it, which is the bit families most often tell me falls away after a month or two. There is a cap on how much goes in each edition, 20 messages on the entry plan and 28 or 36 on the dearer ones, and once you hit it nobody can add anything until the next gazette. The layout is automatic, so it comes out in the order things were sent rather than arranged.
Suits a large, app comfortable family who want something frequent and cheap.
Taletrove
Ours. A printed booklet of the family's photos and news, posted to an older relative in the UK or abroad, designed by hand rather than laid out automatically. The difference that matters is how the family sends things in: everything comes through WhatsApp, in the group the family is already using. Nobody downloads anything, nobody signs up, nobody has a password to forget. You send a photo the way you would send it to your sister.
What it does well. No app for contributors and no limit on how many people join in. Up to 40 photos an edition, and anything over that rolls into next month instead of being refused. A5 or A4, and A4 is large print, which matters more than people expect. Printed and posted from the UK. Rated 4.9 on Trustpilot.
What to watch. We are more expensive than Famileo at £7 a month. We are also a very small company, two of us and a printer, where Famileo is about seventy people. And we do monthly or quarterly only, so if you want something every fortnight we are not it.
Suits a family who already share everything on WhatsApp and do not want to talk anyone into a new app.
Trove's Paper Edition
Mostly a photo sharing app with a free weekly email, but there is a printed monthly edition posted on the 1st for $4.99 a month, with a second address at $4 more. On paper that is the cheapest printed option here.
What to watch if you are in the UK. The pricing is in dollars and the site does not say which countries the paper edition ships to, so check that before you count on it. Contributors use the app rather than anything they already have.
See it for yourself
What actually arrives through the door
A real printed edition, the same booklet we post to families every month.
Read a sample
The ones that arrive by email
Letterloop
Genuinely good, and the one I would point you at if everybody in your family is online. It works on questions. You pick a few, everyone answers by email, and the answers come back as one newsletter for the whole group. That prompt is the clever part, because it gets people writing something rather than just posting another photo of the dog.
What to watch. It is emailed, not printed. There is no posted edition. So for the grandparent who is not online, which is the whole reason most people land on this page, it does not solve the problem.
Suits a scattered family who are all comfortable with email and want to hear from each other properly.
Trove's free weekly email
Free, with no cap on how many people receive it. If your relative does check email, this costs nothing and is worth trying before you pay anybody, us included.
Which one suits your family
- They are not online at all. Taletrove or Famileo. Famileo if price and frequency matter most and your family will use an app. Taletrove if you want it to run off the WhatsApp group you already have.
- They check email happily. Start with Trove's free weekly email or Letterloop. Do not pay for printing you do not need.
- You want everyone writing, not just sending photos. Letterloop, because of the question prompts.
- Your family is large and spread out. Famileo handles up to 60 contributors. Taletrove does not cap contributors at all, though in practice most families have five or six people sending things in.
- You are buying it as a gift. The printed ones work better, because something arrives in the post with their name on it every month rather than quietly landing in an inbox.
What about just doing it yourself?
You can, and some families do it beautifully. Order prints from Boots or Photobox, write a page in Word, and post the lot. It costs a few pounds and it is more personal than anything on this list.
The honest problem is month two. Doing it once is lovely. Doing it every month for three years, while working and running a house, is the bit that quietly stops. Every service on this page exists because of month two, not because the job is hard.
If you want to try it yourself first, do. You will learn quickly whether you are the sort of person who keeps it going, and that tells you more than any comparison table.
Questions people ask
Does the person receiving it need any technology? With the printed services, none at all. No wifi, no device, no login. It comes through the letterbox like a magazine.
Can they reply? Not through any of these. They phone, or write back. Several families tell me the newsletter becomes the thing they talk about on the next phone call, which is rather the point.
Is there a free option? Yes. Trove's weekly email is free and Letterloop gives you two issues free. Neither is printed.
What happens if the family forgets to send anything? Worth asking whoever you sign up with. With Taletrove we chase you before the deadline so an empty edition does not go out. Check what the others do, because an edition arriving nearly blank is worse than none at all.
Can it go abroad? Taletrove posts overseas and Famileo covers much of Europe. For Trove's paper edition, ask first.