Alternatives to Funeral Home Obituary Writing Services

If you would rather not pay the funeral home to write the obituary — or if they do not offer that service at all — five alternatives actually work. A dedicated obituary writing toolkit is the strongest option for most families because it gives you the structure of professional help without the cost or the schedule dependency. But each option has a clear use case and a clear limitation, and the right choice depends on your timeline, budget, and how complicated the family situation is.

Option 1: Write It Yourself from Scratch

Cost: Free Time required: 2–6 hours (often at 2 a.m.) Best for: Simple family structures, writers who are comfortable under pressure

This is what most people default to, and for a straightforward obituary — one marriage, biological children, natural death — it works. You search "obituary examples," read a few, and adapt the structure to your person.

The risk is invisible until it bites. Without a security review, you will likely publish biographical details (maiden names, birthdates, home addresses) that identity thieves harvest from obituaries. Without a cost tracker, a 45-line obituary with a photo in a major metro daily can arrive as an $800+ invoice you did not authorize. Without family coordination tools, the sibling who did not get to review the draft before publication will remember that omission for years.

Writing from scratch works when the situation is simple. When it is not, you are making high-stakes decisions with no guardrails, under the worst cognitive conditions of your life.

Option 2: Hire a Professional Obituary Writer

Cost: $200–$500+ Time required: 1–3 days (writer availability + revision rounds) Best for: Complex legacies, public figures, families who can wait for a polished piece

Professional obituary writers and tribute writers exist as a niche service. The good ones conduct an interview (30–60 minutes), write a draft, and deliver a polished piece within 24–48 hours. Some funeral homes offer this as an add-on service; independent writers can be found through the International Association of Obituarists.

The tradeoffs are real. The cost is $200–$500 for a single obituary, which adds to an already expensive week. Availability is unpredictable — a death on a Friday evening may not find a writer until Monday, which may miss the newspaper deadline for the service. And the writer handles the prose but not the administrative tail: they do not audit your draft for identity theft risk, track your newspaper costs, coordinate family review, or manage the dozen post-publication tasks (credit freezes, IRS notification, account closures) that the obituary triggers.

For public figures, community leaders, or anyone whose obituary will effectively be a published biography, a professional writer is worth the investment. For a standard family obituary under a newspaper deadline, the timeline rarely works.

Option 3: Use a Dedicated Obituary Writing Toolkit

Cost: Under $19 Time required: 1–2 hours Best for: Families with blended dynamics, security concerns, or newspaper budget pressure

A dedicated toolkit sits between the free-template approach and the professional-writer approach. You do the writing, but you have structure, security auditing, family coordination tools, and cost tracking built in. The best ones are not single templates — they are systems with multiple components: fill-in templates for different situations (standard, military, religious, minimalist), a security audit worksheet, blended-family wording strategies, trauma-informed language guides, budget trackers, and communication templates for coordinating family input.

The limitation is that you are still the writer. If you genuinely cannot write under grief — if the cognitive fog is too thick, if the emotions are too raw — a toolkit gives you structure but not words. For most people, though, the problem is not an inability to write. It is not knowing what to write, what to leave out, and how to handle the parts that standard templates ignore.

The Secure Obituary Writing System is designed for exactly this scenario — 13 PDFs covering the full process from fact-gathering through post-publication security.

Option 4: Use an Online Memorial Platform

Cost: Free (standard) to $199.99 (premium features) Time required: 30 minutes–2 hours Best for: Online-only publication, collecting tributes from multiple contributors

Platforms like Legacy.com, Everdays, GatheringUs, and many funeral home websites offer guided obituary creation with online publication. Some provide templates, photo galleries, and the ability for friends and family to add memories and condolences.

These platforms handle online publication well but do not address the harder problems. They do not audit your draft for identity theft risk. They do not help with blended-family wording. They do not track your newspaper costs (if you also want a print obituary, you still need to deal with the newspaper directly). And the free versions often carry advertising, upsell prompts, or data collection that can feel uncomfortable on a memorial page.

For families who want an online memorial with no print component, these platforms are a reasonable free option. For anyone who also needs a print obituary, they are solving only half the problem.

Option 5: Use AI (ChatGPT, Claude, etc.)

Cost: Free to $20/month Time required: 15–30 minutes for a first draft Best for: Getting past a blank page quickly

AI can generate an obituary draft in minutes. You provide the biographical details, and the model produces structured prose that sounds professional and reads smoothly.

The problems are specific and serious. AI will fabricate biographical details when it does not have them — it will invent a career trajectory, a hobby, or a personality trait to fill the template, and if you are too grief-impaired to catch the fabrication, it gets published. It does not flag security risks in what it generates (it will cheerfully include the maiden name, birthdate, and home address you fed it). It cannot navigate blended-family dynamics because it does not know your family. And it has no mechanism for tracking newspaper costs, coordinating family review, or managing the post-publication security tasks.

AI is useful as a starting point — a way to get words on a page when you are staring at a cursor at 2 a.m. But the draft it produces needs the same security audit, fact-checking, and family coordination that any other draft needs. It is a writing accelerator, not a writing replacement.

Comparison at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

Can the funeral home require me to use their obituary writing service?

A funeral home cannot require you to buy a package that includes goods or services you do not want, but the Funeral Rule allows a non-declinable basic-services fee. If you ask in person about arrangements, the funeral home must give you an itemized General Price List; if you call and ask about prices, it must provide price information. Ask whether obituary writing is included in that fee or charged separately. Some funeral homes include a basic obituary draft as part of their service package, but this is typically a bare-bones notice (name, dates, survivors, service information) rather than a full tribute. You can also write your own or use an alternative.

How do I submit an obituary to a newspaper if I am not going through the funeral home?

Contact the newspaper's obituary department directly — most have a dedicated email address and submission portal. You will need to provide the text, photos that meet the publication's specifications, and a payment method. Reputable newspapers require verifiable proof of death, such as a death certificate or the handling funeral home's contact details, before publication. Ask each paper for its cutoff; major daily and weekly local papers require finalized copy up to 72 hours before the planned visitation or service to guarantee publication.

Is it disrespectful to use a template or toolkit instead of writing from the heart?

No. Templates and toolkits provide structure, not words. The personal memories, the specific details of someone's life, the qualities that made them who they were — those come from you. The template ensures you do not forget a structural element (survivors, service details, donations) at 2 a.m. when your brain is running on grief and caffeine. Using a template is like using a recipe: the ingredients are yours; the recipe just tells you the order.

What if I start with AI and then use a toolkit to review it?

This is a reasonable workflow. Let AI generate a first draft to get past the blank page, then run it through a security audit to remove high-risk details, fact-check every biographical claim against actual records, and apply blended-family or sensitive-language strategies where needed. The AI draft becomes raw material, not the finished product.

Can multiple family members collaborate on an obituary?

Yes, and structured collaboration prevents conflict. The most common approach: one person writes the first draft, circulates it with a firm review deadline tied to the newspaper's submission cutoff, collects feedback, and makes final decisions. A decision log documenting who approved the wording, photo selection, and publication channels prevents post-publication disputes. The challenge is managing this process under time pressure with people who are all grieving — communication templates with built-in deadlines make it mechanical instead of emotional.