Vancouver parents kept telling the same story: "I'm in four WhatsApp groups, two Facebook groups, and a Signal thread. 247 unread messages. None of them have a calendar. I still don't know if the playdate is happening." So we built the calendar. And the RSVP. And the chat that doesn't scroll into oblivion. And the bit that finds good kids' activities near you so the organizer doesn't have to Google it every week.
Everything else — the public feed, the algorithm, the ads, the "you might also like" dopamine slot machine, the "you might know" suggestions that are never people you want to know — we deliberately don't do. Those were never the point. They are, in fact, the whole problem.
Events, chat, polls and member lists are returned only to signed-in members — the server checks membership on each request. Photos are served at unguessable addresses and never appear on any public page.
Zero third-party ad networks, zero analytics SDKs that profile users. We host our own minimal telemetry on the same server as the app.
We make money from subscriptions and a small service fee on group money pools. Your family's data is not a product. If we ever wanted to change this, we would email every user first and offer a full export and delete.
Sign-in is email + password. We store only a bcrypt hash of your password — a one-way scramble, never the password itself. Sessions use signed JWTs with a 30-day refresh token that is revoked on the server the moment you sign out.
The Claude calls that power activity discovery never receive your name, your kids' names, or your chat content. They get a category and an age range, that's it.
Profile → Delete account removes your data with no retention window. Our own June 2026 audit found two technical gaps in deletion; they are listed on the Transparency page and being fixed. Want a copy of your data first? Email us and a human sends it.
Plain email + password, done properly. Here's the full flow:
It's the same email/account whether you're on the app or the website. One sign-in, all surfaces.
Villagely is built by PanBuddha, a tiny independent shop in Vancouver, BC. Same team that builds the MindBodyRitual and LaMirage apps.
Self-funded. No VC, no growth-at-all-costs mandate, no "we need to monetize the data to hit our metrics." The goal is simple: make the tool useful enough that organizers happily pay $2.99 a month, and keep joining free for everyone else forever.
Questions, feedback, ideas? admin@panbuddha.ca. Real humans, < 24-hour reply.
Free to join. $2.99 to run your group.
Open the app