How to Create a Free Online Memorial for Your Pet
You can create a free online memorial for your pet at app.scan2remember.com in a few minutes — upload photos and video, write their story in your own words, and share a link with anyone who loved them. No subscription, no credit card. If you want a step-by-step walkthrough and some honest guidance on what to actually put on that page, keep reading.
Why an Online Memorial Feels Different from a Post or an Album
A social media post disappears into the feed by Thursday. A camera roll folder stays private forever. An online memorial sits somewhere in between — it has a permanent address you can return to, and it gives other people a place to land when they want to say something but don't know how to start a text to you.
It's also just for them. Not for your vacation photos or your opinions about coffee. Just for the dog who pressed his nose against the car window every single time, or the cat who sat on exactly the one piece of paper you needed.
What You'll Actually Need Before You Start
Nothing complicated. But it helps to gather a few things first so you're not hunting around mid-session when you're already feeling raw:
- A handful of photos — not necessarily the "best" ones. The blurry one from her last birthday where she's covered in cake. The one where he's asleep in the laundry basket. Those ones.
- A video clip, if you have one. Even fifteen seconds of them walking across the kitchen floor. Sound matters more than you expect when someone is gone.
- Their full name, whatever you actually called them — which might be their registered name, or it might be "The Little Guy" or "Biscuit" or something completely personal.
- Dates, if you know them. Approximate birth years are fine. Nobody is checking.
- One specific memory you want to write down. Just one to start. You can always add more later.
Step by Step: Building the Page
1. Create a free account
Go to app.scan2remember.com and sign up. The pet memorial page is free to create. You'll be asked for basic information — their name, their dates, their species if it's not obvious from context.
2. Write something true, not something polished
This is the part people stall on. They want it to sound right. But the pages that actually mean something are the ones that say things like "He hated the vacuum cleaner and once dragged a whole rotisserie chicken off the counter and looked completely unbothered about it." That's the stuff. Write the way you'd tell a friend who never got to meet them.
3. Upload photos and video
Start with two or three. You can always add more. If you have a video where you can hear them — barking, purring, the sound of their nails on the hardwood — upload it. You will be glad you did six months from now.
4. Open the guestbook
This one surprises people. When you share the link with family or a vet's office or a neighbor who used to give her treats, they often have memories you've never heard. The guestbook becomes a small archive of your pet as other people knew them, which is its own strange gift.
5. Share the link
Copy the memorial's URL and send it wherever feels right — a group chat, an email, a note to the vet who cared for them at the end. You control what's on the page; you can update it anytime.
If You Want Something Physical Too
Some people want the memorial to exist somewhere tangible as well — not instead of the digital page, but alongside it. Scan2Remember makes a pet memorial plaque that mounts near a grave or a favorite spot, with a QR code that links directly to the online page you built. Someone visiting can scan it and see everything: the photos, the video, the stories people left. The physical and the digital end up pointing at each other, which feels right — because grief doesn't live in only one place either.
There's No Wrong Way to Do This
A one-paragraph page with two photos is enough. A page you build out slowly over years is enough. Some people add to theirs every time an anniversary comes around, or when they remember something they hadn't thought about in a while — the specific way she used to sneeze, or the fact that he only ever sat on one particular cushion and no other.
The point isn't to make something impressive. It's to put something true somewhere it won't disappear.