How yeerbook compares.
A few honest answers, not a sales pitch.
The short version
| Photo book | Guest book | Journaling app | Yeerbook | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Photos | ✓ | — | — | ✓ |
| Your words, while the memory is fresh | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Voice notes | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Signatures & notes from people who were there | — | ✓ | — | ✓ |
| Collects signatures across many events, not just one | — | — | — | ✓ |
| Can keep any page fully private | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Can also share specific pages to be signed | — | — | — | ✓ |
| End-to-end encrypted | — | — | — | ✓ |
| Built over a year, not in one sitting | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Turns into a printed hardcover | ✓ | ✓ | — | ✓ |
A photo book arranges your photos. A yeerbook captures what they meant.
Photo books are built around one thing: pictures, laid out nicely. You upload, you arrange, you print. Yeerbook starts from the same place, your photos, but adds what a photo book can't: your own words while the memory is still fresh, and signatures and notes from the people who were there.
The result isn't a nicer-looking photo book. It's a book nobody else could have made, because nobody else has your reflections or your people's handwriting in it.
A guest book is for one event. A yeerbook is for all of them.
Guest books work for one moment: a wedding, a party, a single event. Everyone signs once, and that's the whole book.
Yeerbook does the same job, signatures and notes from the people who were there, but for every event you host, attend, or share with others that year, not just one. A birthday, a dinner, a trip, a graduation: each memory gets its own private link and its own set of signatures, all collected in one book instead of scattered across a shelf of individual guest books.
If what you actually want is a single-event keepsake, a guest book is the right, simpler tool. If you want one book that collects signatures from everyone, at every event, across your whole year, yeerbook is built for that instead.
A journaling app is for you. A yeerbook is for you and everyone in it.
Journaling apps are great at what they do: private, text-first, just for you. Yeerbook overlaps there, since you can add words, photos, and voice notes the same way, and you can keep any page fully private if that's all you want from it.
The difference shows up when you want it to. A private journal has no way to become anything else. In yeerbook, you choose which specific pages to share: generate a private link for just that memory, and the people who were there can add their own note, signature, or voice message, while the rest of your year stays exactly as private as a journal would be.
It's not trying to replace a journal. It's for people who want at least some of their reflections to end up somewhere physical, shared with the people who were actually there, without giving up the option to keep other pages just for themselves.