Freeish vs a paper calendar
A wall or fridge calendar the household writes on. Still, by some distance, the most widely used family scheduling system in the world.
What a paper calendar does well
- Always visible to everyone in the house, with no unlocking and no notifications.
- Children can read it and add to it.
- Never runs out of battery, never needs an update, never has an outage.
- Zero learning curve for anybody of any age.
- The whole month at a glance, in a way a phone screen struggles to match.
Choose a paper calendar if…
If everyone who needs your schedule lives in your house and your schedule is stable, the fridge calendar is excellent and free. There is no reason to change. It is also better than any app at being seen without being sought.
Choose Freeish if…
Choose Freeish when the people who need to know are not in the house — a parent across town, a co-parent in another home, a partner at work — or when the schedule changes faster than anyone wants to rewrite it. A wall calendar cannot be updated from the break room, and it cannot tell anybody that a shift moved.
Side by side
| a paper calendar | Freeish | |
|---|---|---|
| Visible without being asked for | Yes — its greatest strength. | Only if someone opens the app. |
| People outside the house | No. | Yes. |
| Updating from work | No. | Yes, in seconds. |
| Getting a posted schedule in | Copy it out by hand. | Photograph it. |
| Privacy | Everything on it is visible to everyone in the house. | Per event. |
| Cost | A few pounds a year. | Free to start. |
Questions people actually ask
Can I keep the fridge calendar?
What about grandparents who do not use apps?
Is this really a comparison?
Try it against whatever you use now.
Now on iPhone — Android coming soon. Free to start, and nothing to migrate — import one week from a photo and see whether it sticks.