For independent visitor attractions

A narrated audio guide
for your castle

StorieD turns your site into a fully narrated audio guide that visitors follow on their own phones. No handsets to buy, charge, clean or chase. You build it in an afternoon. Visitors scan a QR code at the gate and go. No app, no developer, no contract.

Start building, free Try a live guide

Build your guide free, no card needed. Publish it, and your first month is on us.

Hear it for yourself

This is what your visitors hear when they scan.

Hereford
The Old House
Sample stop · Hereford guide

Fifteen seconds of the real narration from a live StorieD guide. No app, no download, no handset. This is exactly what a visitor gets by scanning a QR code on your site.

Visitors walk past your best stories without ever knowing they're there.

They're round the whole site in forty minutes

Without something to follow, visitors move at the pace of the room they're bored in. A narrated route gives them a reason to stay, and a longer visit is the one number that moves the café, the shop and the return rate together.

£

Handsets were always the reason you said no

Buy them, charge them, clean them, take deposits, replace the ones that walk off, and staff the desk that hands them out. Most independent sites price an audio guide up once and quietly shelve it. StorieD has no hardware at all.

The good tour depends on one person being free

Everything worth knowing about your site sits with two or three people, and it only reaches visitors on the days those people are on. The rest of the week, it's a laminated sheet nobody finishes reading.

“
We've been meaning to do something like this for years.

What people tell us first

How StorieD works

What if you could build the guide yourself, in an afternoon?

You tell StorieD about your site and the route you want visitors to take. It drafts the narration for each stop, finds photos, and writes three visitor facts. Where the detail is yours alone, the gatehouse date, the family story, the thing only your guides know, you add it as you edit.

You review every word, reorder the route, rewrite anything that isn't right, and walk the whole guide on your own phone before it goes live. Nothing reaches a visitor that you haven't approved. When something changes, a room closes, a new exhibit opens, you update it yourself in minutes. No developer, no waiting, no extra cost.

When you're ready, you publish. Visitors scan a QR code and the guide opens in their browser. No account, no download, no handset to hand over.

The StorieD operator dashboard, showing a guide being built with stops listed down the side
1

Map your route

Name your site and list the stops, room by room or across the grounds. StorieD drafts each one and you keep the ones that belong.

2

Check it and walk it

Correct anything that isn't right, reorder the route, then walk the whole thing on your own phone. Free, before you commit.

3

Publish and put the QR at the gate

Go live in one click. Print the QR code on your admissions sign, ticket, leaflet or room labels. Visitors scan and start.

What changes when the guide goes live

A longer visit, and more spend before they leave

A 60-minute guide turns a quick look round into a proper visit. Visitors who stay longer buy the coffee, browse the shop and come back with someone else.

A guided tour on days nobody is free to guide

The guide runs on every open hour, in the shoulder season, on the Tuesday when your best volunteer is away. No handset desk, no rota, no deposits.

Your history, in your words, checked by you

You choose the voice, edit every line, set the route. This is your site's own account of itself, not a generic one. Nothing goes live that you haven't walked and approved.

Numbers for your trustees, or your funding bid

StorieD counts every scan, every stop reached and every completed guide. Real engagement figures for a board report or a grant application, not good intentions.

This probably isn't for you if

✕

You're after a bespoke app build with custom features. We do one thing really well, and we do it for the price on the page.

✕

You need a signed three-year contract before you can move. StorieD is monthly, cancel anytime, which is a feature for some buyers and a problem for others.

✕

You don't have anyone willing to spend an afternoon building the guide. It's self-serve. Someone who knows the site has to drive it.

✕

You already have an audio guide your visitors use and you're happy with it. We built this for the sites that have never had one, usually because the handsets never added up.

Pricing

Three plans. No contract. Two months free if you pay annually.

Your first month is free on every plan. Build it, walk it, show it to your board.

Trail
£59/mo
or £590/yr, two months free
  • One audio guide, up to 10 stops
  • A house route, a garden walk or a single trail
  • Full, professional narration
  • QR pack, posters and live visitor numbers
Get started
Most attractions start here
Town
£99/mo
or £990/yr, two months free
  • Everything in Trail, plus:
  • Three guides running at once: the house, the grounds, a children's route
  • 20 stops on each guide
  • Add a seasonal or event guide the moment you want one
Get started
Destination
£199/mo
or £1,990/yr, two months free
  • Everything in Town, plus:
  • Unlimited guides and stops
  • A whole estate, several sites, or a full events calendar
  • Onboarding call and hands-on setup
Get started

No VAT to add. We are not VAT registered yet, so the price shown is the price you pay. Pause your plan in the quiet months and pick up where you left off when visitors return.

Real people on hand to help, on every plan. No contract, cancel anytime. Your guide unpublishes and your build is kept. To have us build it for you, tell us about your town and we will quote before you commit to anything.

Build it, walk it, show it off. Before you spend a penny.

You have a full month to build the guide, walk it live on your phone, and put it in front of your trustees, your family or whoever else has a view. If you decide it isn't right for your site, you close the tab and owe us nothing. The risk sits with us until you're sure.

Live now

Try a real StorieD guide before you build your own

Open one on your phone in ten seconds. No account, no app, no download. This is exactly what your visitors would get.

Hereford Cathedral
On-site guide

A guide built for a single site rather than a town: the route, the rooms, the things visitors walk straight past. The closest thing to what yours would be.

Try the guide
Hereford
Live

Our home town, and the first full StorieD guide. The one we walk ourselves.

Try Hereford
Hammersmith
Live

Built the same way, on the ground in London. Proof the format travels beyond our own patch.

Try Hammersmith

Who's behind StorieD

Mark and Louise, founders of StorieD

We're Mark and Louise. We've been building tools and businesses together for over ten years under The SetUp Crew, and StorieD is one of those things.

Before that, Louise spent nearly a decade at the National Trust as a Visitor Services Manager. A lot of this comes from there: seeing how much of a good visit depends on someone being on hand to tell you what you're looking at, and knowing that the budget sitting behind that is one an independent site is never going to have. StorieD is our attempt at the same effect, at a price a small site can actually sign off.

We built the first guides for our own home town of Hereford and for Hammersmith, partly because we wanted to walk them ourselves, and partly because cautious buyers reasonably want to see the thing working before they commit.

Louise runs marketing and project management. Mark runs the build. We tell you what it costs, what it does, and what it doesn't do yet. If you want an audio guide for your site, we'll help you put one live, and we'll tell you plainly if we think it isn't the right fit.

Questions you'll probably want answered

Do we have to buy handsets?
No. There is no hardware at any point. Visitors use the phone already in their pocket. Nothing to buy, charge, clean, insure or take a deposit against, and nobody on the desk handing them out. This is usually the reason an independent site never got an audio guide in the first place.
What about mobile signal? Half our site is behind three feet of stone.
A fair question, and the one we get most from castles and rural sites, so here is exactly how it behaves.

When a visitor opens the guide at your entrance, the words for every stop load in one go and stay on their phone for the rest of the visit. Signal or no signal, they can always read the story in front of them.

The narration works differently. It's fetched when they press play at each stop, so that part needs a signal where they're standing. Somewhere with no signal, the guide falls back to the phone's own built-in voice reading the text aloud, and the map won't load. It still works, but a synthetic voice is not the same as our narrator and we won't pretend otherwise.

So wifi at the ticket desk gets everyone started, but it doesn't carry the audio deeper into the building. If your interior is a dead spot, visitors get the words and a robotic voice rather than the full narration.

Tell us where your dead spots are and we'll tell you plainly whether this works at your site before you spend anything. For a lot of houses the answer is wifi that reaches the main rooms. For some sites the honest answer is that it isn't the right fit yet.
Do visitors have to download an app?
No. They scan a QR code and the guide opens in their phone browser. No account, no download, no install. It works on any modern phone, and there's nothing for your staff to talk them through.
Who writes it? We can't have the history wrong.
You have the final word on every line. StorieD drafts each stop and you correct it, rewrite it or delete it. Where the detail is particular to your site, and at most independent attractions a good deal of it is, you put it in yourself as you work through the draft. Nothing goes live that you haven't read and approved.
Can we charge visitors for it, or include it in the ticket?
Either. Some sites put the QR code on the admissions sign and give it away as a reason to visit. Others bundle it into a premium ticket or a members' rate. That's your call, and it doesn't change what you pay us.
We're only open March to October. Do we pay all year?
You do not have to. Pause your plan when you close for the season and your guide is kept exactly as it is. When you reopen, switch it back on and pick up where you left off.
How much does this actually cost us per year?
Trail is £59/month, Town is £99/month, Destination is £199/month. Annual billing gives you two months free, so Trail works out at £590 a year, Town at £990, and Destination at £1,990. There's no contract and no setup fee. For comparison, a set of handsets alone usually runs to four figures before anyone records a word.
Who else is using it?
The product is live, with published guides in Hereford, Hammersmith and The Arc, and an on-site guide we built for Hereford Cathedral. You can try any of them before you decide. We're being honest about where we are: early, working, and looking for the next few sites to go live.

Give your visitors somewhere worth walking.

Build the whole guide in an afternoon. Walk it yourself. Publish when you're ready.

Start building with StorieD

Free to build  ·  First month on us