Understanding the Willful rating
Willful are helping to raise the profile of the online Will writing industry.
Without doubt, they have the highest marketing profile of all the businesses that we reviewed.
Willful's CEO is prolific across all media, they have the largest outside investment having raised around $1M of funding.
They are also working on additional rounds of financing to boost their marketing efforts.
Even though compared to LegalWills, LawDepot and FormalWill they are much newer, they have perhaps become one of the best-known service providers.
Although the service is well designed, with some clever user interface elements, the options presented are actually quite limited,
particularly when it comes to naming Executors and describing the distribution of assets.
What we like
Willful shares some design elements with Epilogue.
It is a very pleasing service to use, and some of the design elements, like sharing the estate between multiple beneficiaries, is extremely intuitive.
It may perhaps be one of the fastest ways to prepare your Will, if the options presented match your intentions for distributing your estate.
What needs work
We do not love the restrictions in Willful's pricing and packaging.
There is no couple's package for a Will, and you cannot order just a Power of Attorney for Finances or a Power of Attorney for Health Care (Living Will).
You are forced into purchasing quite pricey packages with few other options.
There are few bells and whistles with the service – it simply allows you to prepare your estate planning documents,
and the options within these documents are quite restrictive. Ultimately, for the price point, it is not a very flexible service.
Writing a Will at Willful.co
There is one particularly clever interface element to Willful's design:
At any point, you can click on the drawer at the bottom of the screen to see a summary of your input.
This one feature makes Willful's design one of the easiest to use.
Having said that, sometimes the summary can be quite confusing. After selecting our options, we weren't really sure how the estate was going to be divided.
Willful have taken a similar approach to Epilogue by significantly restricting what you can do within your Will,
particularly with the distribution of your estate. Many sections of the distribution plan leave you with just one option and nothing else.
For the alternate plan using our contingent beneficiaries, we were given absolutely no choice other than to make an even split.
This is a huge assumption, and it's not unusual, for example, to want to have an alternate plan that leaves a little bit to
charity with the remainder being divided between children. This is not supported by Willful's interface at all.
Unfortunately, Willful's system is another that gives no preview of your documents whatsoever, unless you purchase the service, which is a shame.
It is nice to be able to see a sense of the final document before committing to a purchase.
Pricing and Packages at Willful.co
A basic Last Will and Testament at Willful starts at $99 but this only includes unlimited updates to the document for 90 days. Thereafter, it is $19 per year.
A couple's package is only available for their full estate plan which includes their PoA and Living Will.
The Estate plan for an individual is priced at $189 (the PoA and Living Will cannot be ordered without a Will, and a couple cannot buy just the Will service).
The couple's complete estate plan package is $329. The pricing is restrictive but simple.
There are no other additional extras available. There are no options for having your documents reviewed by a lawyer, or printed and mailed to you.
Complementary services at Willful.co
Willful offer the Last Will and Testament, Power of Attorney for Health Care and Financial Power of Attorney.
There are no additional services to complement these basic estate planning documents.
Customer support at Willful.co
This is an area in which Willful shines. Their live chat is quite readily available during business hours:
They also have an "answer bot" and plenty of educational content.
However, like Epilogue, you cannot just phone them for a quick question, you are required to book a 15 minute phone call.
When we tried to book a call, there was nothing available until FIVE days later. No support phone number is published on their website.
Customer reviews
Willful collects reviews on Google, Facebook and Trustpilot.
They currently have a 4.9 star rating on Google with 300 reviews, 4.7 star rating on Trustpilot with 147 reviews, and 5 stars on Facebook with 20 reviews.
With a total of about 470 reviews, Willful has the second highest number of independent reviews of all of the services that we looked at, after LegalWills.ca (2,000+ reviews)
Overall experience
Willful has to be commended on their marketing and their exposure.
Also on their design implementation.
But they are trying to offer the most intuitive service to "most" of the population.
Anybody who, for example, wants to leave their entire estate to their spouse, with the remainder divided equally between their children
will be able to step through the Willful service very quickly.
But as with Epilogue, the ability to do anything a little different is quite constrained.
Willful are the second most expensive Will service in the review, but ultimately, the service lacks the flexibility that many people will need.