← Comparison hub · Co-parenting apps · Checked October 26, 2026

OurFamilyWizard is a helpful tool. It just can't see most of your story.

You're here because you've got a very difficult person on the other side of your kids, and you're trying to protect those innocent lives with evidence that's buried in text message threads.

Take a deep breath. You're in the right place.

I've been there personally myself.

We're here to help.

I've been through a divorce.

I've sat across from attorneys — in my personal life and in my business life — watching the meter run while we scrolled through screenshots, trying to find the one message that mattered.

That frustration is why I built TextEvidence. Not a market report. Not a spreadsheet.

Here's what I want you to hear before any pricing or any table:

• You're already going through one of the most frustrating seasons of your life.
• The last thing you need is a product that doesn't give you what you need, when you need it, in a format that's easy to use and affordable.
• You need your record. All of it. In order.
• In a form you can hand to someone and say, “Start at line 412.”

This post will help you decide two things, honestly:

1. What OurFamilyWizard genuinely does well — because it does real things well, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.
2. The one gap nobody warns you about until you're already in it: OurFamilyWizard can only record what happens inside OurFamilyWizard. Everything before it, and everything outside it, is on you.

• It won't promise that a court will accept any printout, from any tool, including mine.
• Admissibility is a judge's decision, not a software feature.
• Everything here's general information, not legal advice. For advice about your case, talk to your attorney.

What OurFamilyWizard actually is — the neutral facts

OurFamilyWizard is a co-parenting communication platform, with iOS and Android apps:

• messaging
• a shared calendar
• expense tracking
• check-ins
• calling

It runs in a closed system. In its own words, “you can only use it to communicate with people who are connected to you in the app.”

• Messages in it can't be edited or deleted.
• Entries come time-stamped.
• You can run a keyword search to pull messages on a specific topic.

Its drafting help is genuinely thoughtful, too:

• It's listed on the pricing page as Writing Assistant.
• It's described elsewhere on its site as ToneMeter — an “emotional spellcheck” that flags wording likely to spark a negative response.

If a court has ordered you onto a platform like this, that structure is the point. (Sources: official pricing and comparison pages, linked below.)

The pricing — checked on OurFamilyWizard's official site on October 26, 2026 — is per parent, billed annually:

• $110/year — Choose your own

• $149.99/year — Essentials

• $216/year — Premium

• $299.88/year — Max

• Each parent needs their own subscription. So a two-parent Essentials setup is $299.98 a year, calculated from those official prices.

• There's no free parent plan and no free trial.

• There's a 30-day refund window on a first subscription bought on its website.

• Unlimited PDF records start at Essentials.

• Call recording and transcription are only on Max.

That's all good, solid stuff. And OurFamilyWizard deserves credit for publishing it clearly.

While it's a helpful tool, my frustration was never really with what it does inside its own walls.

My frustration was this:

The wall goes up the day you install it. Your life didn't start that day.

Think about your actual timeline.

The hard conversations didn't begin the week a judge mentioned a co-parenting app. They're in:

• two, three, four years of regular texts
• WhatsApp threads
• the messages from before anyone said the word “custody” out loud — the ones that explain how you got here

None of that's in OurFamilyWizard.

Not because the product is broken. Because that isn't its job.

• It's a forward-looking channel.
• It starts recording the day both of you show up inside it.
• And it stops at its own walls.

If it happened before — or it happened over a normal text thread last Tuesday — it's outside the record.

The question that kept me up at night was never “which app should we message in next?” It was “who is going to make sense of everything that already happened?”

I kept hearing versions of the same story:

• A parent does everything right going forward — every message inside the app, calm, documented.
• Then they sit in an attorney's office while someone asks about a thread from fourteen months ago.
• And the answer is screenshots. Dozens of them. Out of order. Half of them cropped.

I've been the person scrolling.

It's a miserable, expensive way to tell the truth.

What real users say — the good, the bad, and the ugly

I didn't cherry-pick these. Here's how OurFamilyWizard actually scores, split out — never blended into one number:

Ratings: Google Play 4.56/5 · 16,315 ratings · App Store 4.59/5 · 56,000 ratings (via AppBrain) · Trustpilot 2.3/5 · 101 reviews

Written reviews skew more negative than tap-to-rate scores on every app here. That's why I'm showing you both.

The good

About: Communication between separated parents “I highly recommend OurFamilyWizard to ease communication issues between separated parents” “This App has made such a difference to communication between the separated parents I work with. It not only helps a parent feel confident about reading messages without fear of what they may contain, but also encourages parents to think twice about what they write.” “The OurFamilyWizard team are also highly responsive to queries, technical support and adding features that make sense.” Beverley — Trustpilot, 14 Sep 2025 · star rating not shown in source · Beverley appears as a professional working with separated parents, not necessarily a parent user. Source: Trustpilot - Beverley / OurFamilyWizard review

About: Documentation, messages and calendars “Great for co-parenting, messages, calendars, especially if the other parent is difficult. It documents everything and encourages healthy communication.” Candace Carr — Google Play via AppBrain, 5 stars, 8 Sep 2026. Source: AppBrain - OurFamilyWizard Google Play reviews

The bad

About: Cost and value (UK context) “Total and utter crap in my opinion.” “Time allocation does not have the granularity required to manage complex situations for example.” “It doesn't appear to offer anything much in the way of meaningful benefit over using other communication tools from what I could tell (email, WhatsApp etc) other than perhaps being in one place (though you submit your own evidence anyway and the court pack becomes the master evidence source in my case.” “The sales pitch overplays the ability to use the info in court in the uk from what I experienced; uk court happily accepted WhatsApp screen shots in court packs as evidence in my case.” “Costs an arm and a leg compared to other apps in my view.” Richard Hill — Trustpilot, 1 star, 31 Dec 2024. His WhatsApp point is his experience, not a general rule. Source: Trustpilot - Richard Hill review

About: Login and biometrics “Update: I HATE this app! Every time I try to log on without biometrics, it tells me my info is wrong, and I have to reset the password. This is the biggest scam on families and the court systems that exist! I have never had any issues with other apps regarding the fingerprint scan. But with this app it almost never works. This is an expensive app that was court ordered for me to use and all it is ever used for is messaging and the calendar. I really do not enjoy using this app.” Olivia Gantt — Google Play via AppBrain, 1 star, 31 Aug 2026. Source: AppBrain - OurFamilyWizard Google Play reviews

About: Sign-outs and notifications “over priced and doesn't work. The app signs you out constantly. I have to reset my credentials every time I sign in. It doesn't give any notifications if you get a message. the app is absolutely useless.” Theresa Long Hayes — Google Play, 10 Jul 2026 · star rating not shown in source. Source: Google Play - OurFamilyWizard

About: Speed and usability “The app is slow, clunky, and incredibly unintuitive. Simple tasks take way too many steps, and basic functions like message retrieval or calendar updates are buried under layers of frustrating menus.” Luke Hutchins — Trustpilot, 6 Mar 2025 · star rating not shown in source. Source: Trustpilot - OurFamilyWizard reviews, page 4

The mixed — and the ugly truth in the middle

About: Messaging threading “Recently switched to OFW, and I'm pretty happy with it thus far. I was really happy to see that you can create an account for your child, so they can communicate with one or both parents. I do wish that the messaging was more like a text message form or everything stays in one thread. If you respond more than once to the same message it creates separate threads. With that being said, it makes communication a little bit easier knowing everything is in one place for all things co-parenting.” Brittany — Google Play via AppBrain, 4 stars, 10 Sep 2026. Source: AppBrain - OurFamilyWizard Google Play reviews

About: Parenting schedule “Figuring out the parenting schedule was a bit of a pain but overall a good app for communicating with the other parent. Everything is time stamped. Shared calendar which is nice too... been using these things for about 2 weeks now. Still getting used to things but overall it's great. Wish they had a function regarding kids going to school that way the calendar is a little bit cleaner.” KARA G — Google Play via AppBrain, 4 stars, 9 Oct 2026. Source: AppBrain - OurFamilyWizard Google Play reviews Ugly pattern: pricing per parent, missed notifications, login failures, clunky interface.

Why TextEvidence is better here

I'll be direct. OurFamilyWizard only keeps what you create inside the app, after setup and matching.

Your story didn't start that day.

• We cover before and outside. Everything before the app, plus old SMS, iMessage and WhatsApp, in one searchable record you can hand your attorney.
• Dated AND line-numbered PDF from the Free Text-to-PDF Tool. The Free Text-to-PDF Tool turns an iPhone backup, an Android SMS Backup & Restore (.xml), or a WhatsApp/chat export (.csv/.xml/.json/.txt) into that PDF, in your browser only. Messages never leave your device, nothing's saved on page close, free to 1,000 messages, no account. You pick a thread, filter by conversation and date range, preview shows first 50 rows.
• Paid platform goes further: whole-history search, AI questions with citations, and reports — paid features, not in the Text-to-PDF Tool.
• Start free, literally nothing to lose. No account, no credit card for the Text-to-PDF Tool.

We're the record layer in the middle, not a court-ordered messaging channel. Keep using what the court ordered for new messages. I'm not promising a court will accept any printout.

— Matt

Use the Free Text-to-PDF Tool — up to 1,000 messages

Related comparisons

• TalkingParents, honestly
• Is AppClose free?
• Back to the comparison hub
• Use the Free Text-to-PDF Tool first

What I would do, if I were standing where you're standing

1. Keep using what the court ordered. If OurFamilyWizard is part of your order, use it, use it well, and let its record do what it's designed to do. I'm not selling you a replacement for it — and you should be suspicious of anyone who does.
2. Cover before and outside. Gather the history the app can't see — your iPhone backup, your Android messages, your WhatsApp exports — and turn it into one dated, line-numbered record while you still have it. Phones get replaced. Threads get lost. Do this part now, while it's still in your hands.
3. Start free, not with a trial clock. That's why the first thing I'll point you to isn't a checkout page. Run the Free Text-to-PDF Tool first: It turns an iPhone backup, an Android SMS Backup & Restore file, or a WhatsApp export into a dated, line-numbered PDF. Right in your browser, up to 1,000 messages, with no account. Your messages never leave your device, and nothing's saved when you close the page. See your own record, in order, before you spend a dollar with anyone — including me.

Make my free PDF with the Free Text-to-PDF Tool — up to 1,000 messages

Turn your iPhone, Android, or WhatsApp messages into a dated, line-numbered PDF — free up to 1,000 messages, in your browser, nothing saved, no account needed.

If your record is bigger than the Text-to-PDF Tool covers, the paid options are plain:

• Case Pack — $149 one-time
• Keep Your Record — $19 a month
• Guided Setup — $299 one-time, if you want us walking through it with you
• 14-day free trial on paid plans

One purchase covers your record.

Your co-parent doesn't need an account, a subscription, or anyone's permission for you to organize your own messages.

The honest limits of my own product

TextEvidence doesn't:

• send messages
• replace a court-ordered app
• unlock anyone's phone
• guarantee any legal outcome

What it does: it takes evidence you've already lawfully got and makes it readable, searchable, and askable.

AI answers cite the numbered lines. So your attorney is looking at the source — not at a summary you've to defend.

Whether any of it's admitted is, and should be, the court's call.

You didn't choose most of what you're dealing with right now.

But you can choose whether your side of the story shows up as a pile of screenshots — or as a record.

I built the second option because I needed it myself, first.

Take your time. Breathe. Start with the Free Text-to-PDF Tool, and get your house in order one thread at a time.

By Matt Cretzman Founder, TextEvidence. Co-author, The LinkedIn Advantage. This post is general information, not legal advice.

• Pricing tiers, per-parent subscriptions, Writing Assistant, unlimited PDF records on Essentials+, Max call recording/transcription — verified live Oct 26, 2026: https://www.ourfamilywizard.com/node/12833
• Closed system, keyword search, ToneMeter description: https://www.ourfamilywizard.com/plans-and-pricing/ourfamilywizard-vs-emails-texts
• 30-day refund policy: https://www.ourfamilywizard.com/plans-and-pricing/refund-policy
• PDF message reports: https://www.ourfamilywizard.com/node/12473
• Couldn't verify: whether its PDFs are line-numbered (no official page checked mentions line numbers) — flagged, not assumed. Whether “ToneMeter AI” and “Writing Assistant” are the same feature under two names is also not confirmed on the pricing page, so both names stay.

Use the Free Text-to-PDF Tool

Turn your iPhone, Android, or WhatsApp messages into a dated, line-numbered PDF — free up to 1,000 messages, in your browser, nothing saved, no account needed.

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This article is general information, not legal advice. TextEvidence is software, not a law firm, and nothing here promises a court will accept any printout — that decision is always the court's. Prices change — confirm on the vendor's site before you buy anything, including ours.