Last updated on Dec 24, 2021

What is KeepsakeĀ®?

ā€œkeepsakeā€ ā€“ noun. something that you keep to help you remember a person, place, or event.

Keepsake serves one purpose ā€“Ā to deliver meaningful letters āœØ

  • Went through something memorable with someone? Write about it. Send it to that someone. That someone receives it after 3 months by surprise, reads it then feels all warm and fuzzy inside. That someone is definitely going to be thinking of you.
  • Have a goal for the future? Write about it. Send it to yourself in the future. Read it in 5 years and rejoice because youā€™ve made it. Give yourself a pat on the back for pulling through!
  • Want something more personal? Send an audio/video recording and a picture!! Yes, you can record a short audio/video file AND attach a photo along with your letters šŸŽ‰
  • Feeling down? Simply look back on your letters šŸ˜Š

The site is still in its early stages, so I might have missed bugs here and there. If you do find some, just give me a message. Iā€™d appreciate it!

Here's an end-to-end demo of how you can use Keepsake:



But also, here's the first ever release video of Keepsake, for the memories:

Why did you make this?

Sometimes, all it takes is a bunch of words to make a person's day.

Hi there! My name is Kenzo. I've always enjoyed receiving friendship day letters in high school. I still have all of them tucked safely in an envelope. When I feel a bit down or sentimental, reading them never fails to lighten my mood. I wanted to bring that experience back and make it a more regular thing, especially in these trying times.

Sure, you can simply send a meaningful & long message through Messenger, DM, email, or even by hand, but really (and sadly), who does that nowadays? The world seems too fast paced for substantial, meaningful messages, so I want Keepsake to start becoming an avenue for that.

Keepsake started as a project for me to learn more about web development during this quarantine periodĀ (because of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 which stopped all our lives, and not to mention the feeling of isolation that it has inflicted on all of us),Ā  but it became way more than that. I thought might as well finish it and make something people can use. This project definitely kept me busy and became something for me to get excited about during this dark period.

What can this do for me?

Send letters to anyone on Keepsake.Ā  Write letters to anyone, even to yourself. The recipient wonā€™t see the contents before the letter is delivered by Keepsake through email. This is my link, for example: Ā https://keepsakeletter.com/kenzojrcĀ  (feel free to send something nice šŸ’Œ).

Make your letters more personal.Ā  Attach a cover photo šŸ–¼ļø and a short audio šŸŽ¤ or video šŸ“¹ message to your letters.

Send your letters to the future.Ā  Schedule the letters to send on a birthday, or as a surprise on some random day in the future, or on a specific day & hour. Keepsake takes care of all the scheduling and sending so you donā€™t have to worry about it! All you need to do is to write something nice šŸ˜Š

Share your letters.Ā  On top of that, you can share your letter publicly so that anyone can read, share, react, and comment on yourĀ public letteršŸ“¢

Create collections of letters.Ā  With Keepsake Capsule, you can create a customizable time capsule of letters for anyone or anything! Read more about it here. šŸ’Š

Why are there ads and a paid plan?

If I could offer this totally for free, I would! But nothing in life is free šŸ˜Ÿ

Keepsake runs on servers and services which cost money every month. For now, I shoulder them myself. But eventually, if usage of the site goes up, costs will also go up, so Iā€™ll need all the support you can give to keep Keepsake up and running for years to come.

On top of that, the more support Keepsake receives, I may be able to give more time to Keepsake and release more features. šŸ˜‰

You may avail of a premium plan or donateĀ here.

Is there a big company or team behind Keepsake?

Nope. Just one person (so far), and a lot of ā¤ļøšŸ‘Øā€šŸ’»ā˜•

Made in šŸŒ“ Manila, šŸ‡µšŸ‡­

What other features do you have in line?

There's still a lot in the backlog, but something interesting Iā€™m looking into is scheduled texts (if youā€™ve watched the Netflix showĀ Crash Landing on You, youā€™d probably appreciate this). This list may change as more people use Keepsake.

How did you make this site?

Pretty much with hundreds of hours (or probably almost a thousand hours) of research, designing, coding, testing, and a lot of frustration in between.

I wanted to learn building modern reactive web apps, and I believeĀ the best way to learn how to code is to work on a project.

Warning: some technical jargon coming through

I initially just wanted to learn React (I literally had zero background of it before this), but it then led to learning a bunch more to build a fully working product such as Next.js (because I needed SSR), TypeScript, GraphQL, serverless frameworks, infrastructure as code, payments integration, ads, and a looot of other stuff all at once ā€“ and building this site was almost the perfect learning experience. Coming from a Python/Django background where things are pretty opinionated with a set way to do things, modern JavaScript is a whole different world.

There are definitely some things I wouldā€™ve done differently if I were to start from scratch again. Maybe Iā€™ll write a blog post about this soon šŸ¤”

Huge thanks to the open source community!

Not the full list but Keepsake wouldn't be what it is without these packages:
React, Next.js, Apollo GraphQL, Jodit, TypeORM, Formik, RecordRTC, VMSG, ++