S'moresUp Alternative: What to Use Now

Published August 13, 2026 · Family Tasks Team · 8 min read

Short answer: S'moresUp is still alive — but its price has roughly doubled since mid-2025 and its developer's energy has shifted to a brand-new app. If you're moving on, pick by what you actually used it for: Family Tasks (disclosure: that's us) for kids' chores and routines, Cozi for the shared family calendar, BusyKid for chores-for-allowance. Switching takes about an evening.

First, the honest status check: is S'moresUp dead?

No — and we're not going to pretend otherwise to sell you our app. Here's what we verified, as of August 2026:

• Still on the App Store. S'moresUp (by Rotation 5, LLC) is live with a 4.2-star rating from roughly 900 reviews.
• But the last iOS update was October 23, 2025 — about ten months ago at the time of writing. For a subscription app, that's a long quiet stretch.
• The price has climbed fast. S'moresUp Premium was $4.99/month until July 2025, then $7.99/month, and since July 5, 2026 it's $9.99/month or $99.99/year for new subscribers. Existing subscribers were grandfathered at their old rate — credit where due, that's a family-friendly way to raise prices.
• The developer's focus has moved. Rotation 5 is building It's a Family Thing! (IAFT), which they describe as the next evolution of S'moresUp, and they've been promoting bundle offers that fold S'moresUp access into an IAFT subscription. They say S'moresUp will keep running alongside it.
• The old help center is gone. S'moresUp's original Zendesk support site now returns a "help center closed" page; support runs through the app and main site instead.

Put together, that's not a shutdown. It's something subtler: a mature app in maintenance mode while its maker bets on a successor. Some families are perfectly fine with that. Others — especially anyone who lived through the OurHome shutdown — read those signals and start packing early. Both reactions are reasonable.

What S'moresUp genuinely got right

If you're leaving, it helps to name what you're replacing, because no single app does all of it:

• Smart chore scheduling. S'moresUp's "ChoreAI" auto-assigned and rotated chores between kids so parents didn't have to re-plan every week. It was one of the first chore apps to take planning off the parent's plate rather than just digitizing the checklist.
• A real family calendar. Chores, events, and schedules lived in one place — closer to a household hub than a simple chore list.
• Points-based rewards. Kids earned points toward rewards parents defined, without forcing real money into the system.
• Family communication. "Campfires" gave families a private space to talk inside the app.

The honest flip side, echoed across years of reviews: the app tried to do a lot, and plenty of parents found it heavy to set up and busy to navigate — review sites consistently note there's "a lot happening" and a real learning curve, and Android users have long reported stability rough edges. If S'moresUp felt like more app than your family needed, that's worth remembering when you pick a replacement: the fix is usually a more focused tool, not an even bigger one.

The quick pick: match the replacement to the job

Head-to-head: S'moresUp vs the three alternatives

Prices and update dates verified August 2026; check each app's store listing for current figures.

Family Tasks — if kids' chores were the point

S'moresUp's chore engine was built around a smart idea: the app, not the parent, should carry the mental load of who-does-what-when. Family Tasks takes the same idea further and strips away the rest. Each child gets their own kid-friendly app with today's tasks, streaks, and timed reminders — so the app does the nagging, not you. Parents plan the whole week for every child on one dashboard and keep sports and clubs (with coach contacts) in the same planner.

The feature S'moresUp never had: AI weekly and monthly progress reports per child. Instead of scrolling an activity log, you get a summary of what your child completes on time, where they struggle, and how their independence is trending — so you coach with data once a week instead of policing every missed task in the moment.

• Pros: separate parent/kid apps, AI reports, week planner, activities with coach contacts, 6 languages
• Cons: iPhone only for now; no family calendar or shopping lists; no real-money payouts
• Price: free to download, premium family plans by subscription — under S'moresUp's current $99.99/year

Download Family Tasks

Not sure which chores fit which kid after the move? Our chores-by-age guide maps realistic tasks from toddlers to teens — useful when you're rebuilding your chore list from scratch anyway.

Cozi — if the family calendar was the point

Plenty of families kept S'moresUp less for the chores and more for having everyone's schedule in one place. If that's you, Cozi is the calendar-first veteran: a color-coded family calendar, real-time sync across everyone's devices, and genuinely useful shared shopping lists. The free tier covers the core; Cozi Gold runs $39/year as of August 2026.

The trade-off is the one we covered in depth in our Cozi vs Family Tasks comparison: Cozi's to-dos are shared family lists. There's no per-child app, no timed reminders on a kid's device, and no progress tracking — so it replaces S'moresUp's calendar half, not its chore half.

BusyKid — if allowance was the point

S'moresUp kept rewards in points; some families always wished chores paid real money. BusyKid is built exactly for that: kids complete chores, earnings land in save/spend/invest buckets, and an optional debit card makes it tangible. As of August 2026, the family plan is $48/year covering up to five kids, with extra debit cards at $7.99/year each.

Before you wire chores to a paycheck, though, it's worth ten minutes on the philosophy — paying for chores works brilliantly for some kids and backfires for others. We break down the research and the middle-ground options in allowance vs rewards. The short version: many families keep everyday responsibilities unpaid and pay only for extra jobs, which you can run in any of these apps.

If you decide to stay with S'moresUp

Staying is a legitimate choice, especially if you're grandfathered at an older price and the app is doing its job. Two practical suggestions if you stay:

• Write down your setup anyway. Chore lists, point values, reward catalog. If the IAFT transition ever turns into a forced migration, you'll rebuild in an hour instead of from memory.
• Watch the update cadence. A subscription app that goes a year without updates while its developer ships a different product is telling you where the roadmap lives. Check the App Store "Version History" every few months — it's the most honest changelog there is.

How to switch in one evening

1. Export your system on paper (15 min). List each child's recurring chores, point values, and any unredeemed reward balances. Screenshot your S'moresUp setup before canceling anything.
2. Rebuild in the new app (30 min). In Family Tasks, add each child, then recreate the week on the parent dashboard. This is a good moment to prune — most families discover a third of their old chores were dead weight.
3. Settle the points ledger (5 min). Honor outstanding S'moresUp points with a real reward or convert them into the new system at a stated rate. Kids remember confiscated points forever.
4. Run both apps for one week, then cancel. Let the new routine prove itself before you delete anything — and cancel the S'moresUp subscription in your Apple ID settings, not just by deleting the app.

FAQ

Further reading: 10 best chore apps for kids in 2026 · Kids chores by age · Allowance vs rewards · OurHome alternative