Question 1

What is Beacon3?

Accepted Answer

An evacuation plan and home inventory you build before anything happens. You list what would leave your home room by room, tag what to grab first, photograph each item for your insurer, and share the whole thing with your household.

Question 2

Is Beacon3 an emergency alert app?

Accepted Answer

No, and this matters more than any other answer on this page. Beacon3 does not send alerts, does not track fires, and does not tell you when to leave. It is a planning tool. Your local fire authority, sheriff and emergency management office are the ones who tell you to go, and Beacon3 never replaces them.

Question 3

Is it only for wildfire?

Accepted Answer

No. The decisions are the same for flood, hurricane, storm and any other reason to leave quickly: what comes with us, in what order, and can we prove what we owned. Wildfire is the most common reason people find us, not the limit of what it is for.

Question 4

Is there an app to download?

Accepted Answer

Beacon3 runs in your phone or laptop browser, so there is nothing to install and nothing to keep updated. On a phone you can add it to your home screen and it opens like an app.

Question 5

How long does it take to set up?

Accepted Answer

The first room takes about ten minutes. Most households have a usable list in an evening and then add to it over a few weeks. You do not need to finish it for it to be worth having — a list with only the documents on it already beats no list.

Question 6

What does it cost?

Accepted Answer

Household is $49.95 a year or $4.99 a month and includes 5 GB of photos. Household Plus is $95.95 a year or $9.59 a month and includes 30 GB of photos. Paying yearly is two months free.

Question 7

Do I have to give a card to try it?

Accepted Answer

No. The 14-day trial starts as soon as you create an account and does not ask for payment details. You add a card only if you decide to keep it.

Question 8

What happens when my trial ends?

Accepted Answer

Your lists, photos and details stay exactly where they are. You can still sign in, read everything you built, and mark items grabbed or packed. What stops is adding and editing, until you subscribe. Nothing is deleted because a trial ended.

Question 9

Is the price per person or per household?

Accepted Answer

Per person, with free viewers. One subscription covers one person building and editing the plan. Everyone you invite into your household can see the whole list and mark items grabbed or packed without paying anything, for as long as you keep your plan. If a second person wants to add and edit items too, they subscribe for their own seat.

Question 10

Can I cancel?

Accepted Answer

At any time, from the billing portal in your settings. You keep access until the end of the period you have already paid for, and we do not ask you why.

Question 11

What if I run out of photo storage?

Accepted Answer

Extra storage is available in 10 GB blocks, at $19.95 a year or $1.99 a month per block. You can also move up to Household Plus, or delete photos you no longer need. Nothing is deleted automatically when you reach the limit.

Question 12

Where do my photos live?

Accepted Answer

In Google Firebase Storage, in a bucket scoped to your household, reachable only by accounts that belong to it. They are not on the phone you would be carrying out of the house, which is the point of putting them somewhere else.

Question 13

Who can see my list?

Accepted Answer

You, everyone in your household, and anyone you deliberately hand a share link to. Nobody else. Access is enforced by server-side security rules, not by what the app chooses to show.

Question 14

What exactly does a share link give away?

Accepted Answer

A read-only view of one household's list, to anyone who has the URL, without an account. That is what makes it useful for a neighbor or a house-sitter, and it is also why you should send it directly to a person rather than posting it anywhere public. You can see every live link and revoke any of them from the card that created it.

Question 15

Do you sell my data?

Accepted Answer

No. Beacon3 is paid for by subscriptions. There is no advertising business here to sell anything to, and your inventory is not a product.

Question 16

How do I delete everything?

Accepted Answer

Email support@beacon3.app from the address on the account and we will delete the household and everything in it, photos included. See the privacy policy for what that covers and how long it takes.

Question 17

How do I add my family?

Accepted Answer

Invite them by email from your household settings. They create their own sign-in, see the same list, and their packing shows up on your screen as it happens.

Question 18

Can someone help without getting my account?

Accepted Answer

Yes — that is what the read-only share link is for. They see the list, they cannot change anything, and they never touch your account or your other data.

Question 19

What if two of us pack the same thing?

Accepted Answer

You will see it. Items update live for everyone in the household, so the second person opening the list already knows the first one has the fire safe.