📍 FamPing
Real-time family locations and place alerts — without selling your location data.
Life360's free tier is deliberately crippled to push the $99.99+/year Plus and Platinum plans — and the company has a well-documented history of selling aggregated location data to data brokers. FamPing does the same core job — pings every 5 minutes, named-place arrival/departure alerts, a real-time family map — on a server only you control, with a $39 introductory price locked for the first 1,000 licenses before it moves to $299.
FamPing, as it actually looks — a real screenshot, not a mockup.
Features
5-minute location pings
Every family member's phone reports position automatically to your dashboard.
Named-place geofences
Mark home, school, work — get an alert the moment someone arrives or leaves, no third party ever sees the address.
Full-day path per member
The same stop-clustering engine as Door Tracker draws each family member's day as a route with numbered, timed stops.
Multiple family members, no per-seat fee
Add everyone in the household on one license — Life360 gates member count behind paid tiers.
Android app for family phones
Simple login, background ping with a visible indicator, battery-friendly interval.
No data-broker business model
There's no ad network or data-sale revenue stream to fund — the app has no business reason to look at what it collects.
Place-time history
See how long someone was actually at school, practice or a friend's house, not just a pin on a map.
Self-hosted or desktop
Deploy to a VPS for real-time family access, or run it as a single desktop dashboard for local-only monitoring.
FamPing vs Life360
Life360 at $99.99+/yr (Plus) runs roughly $100/year — $200 over two years. FamPing is $39, once.
| FamPing | Life360 | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $39 intro (1,000 licenses), then $299 — once | $99.99+/yr, forever |
| Cost over 3 years | $39 | $300+ |
| Sells or shares location data | No — can't, it's your server | Documented history of data broker deals |
| Member limit | Unlimited, one license | Gated by plan tier |
| Geofence alerts | Included | Included on paid tiers |
| Full-day path + dwell time | Yes | Limited/basic |
| Account required with the vendor | No | Yes |
| Source code | MIT, on GitHub | Closed |
One year of Life360 Plus costs more than 2.5x the FamPing license — and FamPing's price never renews.
Three steps, no subscription
Buy once on Whop
Introductory $39 while the first 1,000 licenses last, rising to $299 after — no per-member or monthly fee ever.
Deploy the dashboard
docker compose up on a $5 VPS for real-time access anywhere, or run the desktop build for local-only monitoring.
Family installs the app
Each phone logs in with a device key; the dashboard fills in with live pings, geofence alerts and daily paths.
Honest answers
Is the $39 price permanent?
It's an introductory rate for the first 1,000 licenses. After that cap, new licenses are $299 — but your purchase price never changes once you've bought.
Does FamPing sell or share location data?
It can't — there's no company in the middle. Location data goes from the family phone straight to the server you deployed, and nowhere else.
Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes — MIT source at github.com/bensblueprints/famping. The Whop price buys the packaged installer, Android app build and updates.
How is this different from just sharing location in Find My/Google Maps?
Those show a live dot but not history — FamPing keeps a searchable log of where someone was and for how long, plus alerts the moment they arrive or leave a named place.
Can I run this fully offline / local network only?
Yes — deploy to a machine on your home network instead of a public VPS if you only need in-home dashboard access, or use desktop mode for a single-device setup.
Own FamPing forever
$39 once. Deploy on your own server — your data never leaves it. No renewal, no account with us, no meter. Or build it yourself from the MIT source — it's the same app.