Glow vs Empathy

If you searched "Glow vs Empathy", you are probably one of two people: a family member who wants to gather and preserve a loved one's photos and stories, or someone handling the practical and financial side of a loss or an estate plan. These are genuinely different needs, and the two products are built for different jobs.

At a glance

The table below covers the dimensions most people weigh when comparing these two products. Where a cell is blank, that capability is either not publicly documented or simply outside the product's scope - we have not guessed.

• Primary user: Glow - a family member gathering and preserving memories. Empathy - families dealing with a loss, caregiving or estate planning, usually reaching it through a life insurer, employer or financial institution; Empathy Connect serves the advisors.

• Core function: Glow - upload photos and documents, invite family members to add stories, build a private archive. Empathy - help families through the practical and emotional side of a loss, caregiving and estate planning, and give financial professionals tools to support bereaved clients.

• What data it handles: Glow - personal photos, documents, stories, and memories. Empathy - estate and financial planning data, claims support, client bereavement workflows.

• Integration with estate or financial platforms: Glow - none; it is a standalone family archive. Empathy - offered through financial institutions, insurers and employers; Empathy Connect gives financial professionals tools and guidance for client bereavement and estate planning.

• Pricing model: Glow - currently open to founding families; see tryglow.ai for the current offer. Empathy - usually offered to families through life insurers, employers and financial institutions; consumer pricing is not publicly listed.

Empathy's features and pricing may have changed; verify current details at empathy.com.

Where Empathy is the better choice

Empathy is built for the practical side of a loss. If your family is facing the paperwork, accounts and decisions that follow a death, and your employer or insurer offers Empathy, it is designed for exactly that work. It also serves the businesses around those families: an advisor managing a client's estate after a death, a life insurer trying to close the gap between claim and ongoing support, or a wealth management firm preparing for succession.

One of its products, Empathy Connect, gives financial professionals tools, insights, and guidance to support clients through bereavement, estate planning, and major life transitions. Connect is for the advisor. Empathy's other products, such as Empathy Loss Support and LifeVault, reach families directly through insurers, employers and financial institutions.

Empathy also publishes research and guidance for advisors on specific professional challenges: succession planning during the Great Wealth Transfer, the post-claim gap in life insurance, and how advisors can help families who intend to create an estate plan but haven't. It has also launched Empathy LifeVault in the UK, a guided solution for wills and powers of attorney. Its focus is the practical, legal and financial side of loss and planning, not a family photo archive.

Empathy's published pages do not describe a shared family photo archive where relatives add stories to photos. That is not a gap or a failing - it is simply not what Empathy is built around.

Where Glow is the better choice

Glow is for the person sitting with a shoebox of photos, a hard drive full of folders named "misc", and a group chat where cousins are saying they have stories too but no way to share them. If you're not sure where to start with those physical photos, scanning a shoebox of old family photos without losing a weekend is a good first step.

It is a private family archive. You upload photos and documents. You invite family members - siblings, cousins, an aunt who was there for things you weren't - to add their own memories and stories to those photos. Over time, what you build is a shared record of a person's life, held in one place that stays private to your family.

The person using Glow is not a professional with a fiduciary duty. They are someone who loved a person and wants to make sure that person's story doesn't scatter. The eldest daughter sorting her father's slides. The grandchild who recorded three hours of a grandmother talking about her childhood and now doesn't know what to do with the audio. The friend asked to write the eulogy and realising, mid-draft, how much she doesn't know - if that last one is you, there is practical guidance on how to write a eulogy when you don't know where to start.

Glow does not handle estate planning, financial claims, or legal documents. If those are your needs right now, Empathy - which many families reach through an employer, insurer or financial institution - is the right direction.

Pricing, side by side

Glow currently invites families to join as founding families. See the current offer on the Glow website.

Empathy's pricing is not publicly listed. Based on the pages we have reviewed, Empathy is offered through businesses - life insurers, employers and financial institutions - rather than sold as a consumer subscription. If you are a family member wondering what Empathy costs, the honest answer is: that pricing is not published, and many families get Empathy through a life insurer, employer or financial institution. Check empathy.com for how to get access.

Pricing may change. Verify current rates at each company's website before deciding.

How to decide

Two questions settle this for most people.

First: are you choosing for your own family, or as a professional supporting bereaved clients? Glow is only for families. Empathy serves both: families directly, often through an employer or insurer, and advisors through Empathy Connect.

Second: do you need to preserve photos, stories, and personal history - or do you need to navigate estate administration, insurance claims, and financial planning? The first is Glow's work. The second is Empathy's.

There is no wrong answer here. The choice follows from who you are and what you need to do right now.

One more thing worth knowing: these products are not in competition in the way that two photo apps are in competition. If your family is working through a loss, you might use both - Glow for the family archive, and Empathy, through your employer, insurer or advisor, for the practical, financial and legal side. In those early weeks, it helps to know what needs to happen immediately after a parent dies and what can safely wait. They are solving different problems for different people, sometimes in the same family, at the same time.