BackThen: Family Album Journal 4+

Former LifeCake customer

This app is LifeCake with a different colour scheme. If you paid for extra storage on LifeCake, you can’t get your money back, whatever LifeCake says. You have to pay again. When you use the wizard to migrate your data, BackWhen says you have to buy a new subscription and hangs there offering no way to make the purchase. (PS: This was fixed by deleting and reinstalling the app.) What these people are selling, in essence, addresses the fundamental desire for immortality that is met by our offspring. They are selling continuity. This change of provider is a discontinuity, badly handled. The LifeCake -> BackThen migration wizard DOES NOT WORK for customers who need to subscribe to additional storage. (PS: This was fixed by deleting and reinstalling the app.) These are people’s most precious memories and sharing them when COVID 19 prevents visits is a real comfort. The timing of this move was disastrous in terms of coinciding with the pandemic. The executives of the companies concerned should get their heads out of their profit margin spreadsheets and look at the real world.

Developer Response ,

BackThen is a NEW company and we are not affiliated to Lifecake or its owners. BackThen was created to give parents and their families an alternative to having to move away from the experience they have grown used to.

BackThen is self-funded by the team. We understand any subscription is tough for some, particularly in this horrible period of global pandemic uncertainty. But we need to ensure the business is viable and that we can keep the lights on.

Lifecake have assured us that (1) pro-rated refunds are already being processed, and (2) all parents will be provided with 'Download All' links to retrieve their memories within the next 10 days.

Seamless transition

I have been a long time user , approx 4 yrs and I post multiple images every day , therefore I was no longer a free user, I used to pay annually but had recently switched to a £3.99 monthly payment anyway so the changeover was a bit of a pain to get family members changed over, however it’s done now. I haven’t lost any comments or likes , however the likes now say “ unknown rather than the person whom liked them which is a little sad as my mother recently passed and it was nice to look at old photos that she had liked. It seemed a little blunt to change over , no warning , no nice hope to see you on the new app just , blunt we are closing. It seems to no longer be a part of canon which is no loss to me as a user however security issues remain as we have no idea where images of our children are actually going , I was always weary of it but decided to take the risk .. now we have abruptly had to switch it only heightens that concern. Hopefully the app will be even better , only time will tell.

Love!

Ignore the negative comments! Yes back then is the same as lifecake and yes you go have to pay to have a decent amount of storage (over 1GB) but it’s not mega bucks it’s an affordable price and the app is great! How much more would these people be moaning if the app had just closed down and they weren’t able to use it anymore! There is nothing stopping anyone from going and purchasing a different app if you are unsatisfied with the new one but I personally will continue to use and love it the way I always have for many years.. we have sever family members connected to our account and they also love it! Thank you for transferring everything over too! Saved a lot of issues!

The only issue I’m having so far is I haven’t been able to add family to the new app as they aren’t receiving the email? If I could get some support with this that would be appreciated.. many thanks

Developer Response ,

please email us to support@backthen.app and we will try to solve this issue for you