Answers
Porchlight, in plain answers
Short, factual answers about Porchlight: what it is, what it costs, who it is for, and what it deliberately is not. Everything here matches what you will find on the rest of the site.
What is Porchlight?
- Porchlight is a daily check-in phone call service for older adults. A chosen companion voice calls at the same time each day for a warm, unhurried conversation on the phone the person already uses. Minutes after the call ends, the family receives a plain-language summary with a simple 1–5 signal.
What is a daily check-in call service?
- A daily check-in call service places a short scheduled phone call to an older adult every day and reports back to their family. It is a conversational alternative to cameras, wearables and constant checking-in texts. Porchlight's version turns each conversation into a written summary rather than raw audio for the family to sift through.
How much does Porchlight cost?
- Plans start at $39 a month for Check-In, $69 a month for Family Circle, and $99 a month for Peace of Mind+. Yearly billing is available at a lower effective monthly rate. There is no contract, no equipment to buy, and you can cancel at any time.
Does the older adult need a smartphone or an app?
- No. Porchlight calls the phone they already use, including a landline, and there is nothing for them to install, charge or learn. The app and dashboard are for the family, not for the person receiving the call.
Is Porchlight an alternative to a medical alert button?
- It solves a different problem. A medical alert button responds after something has already gone wrong, while a daily call is about noticing gradual change — energy, mood, clarity — before it becomes a crisis. Porchlight is not a monitoring device or an emergency response system, and in an emergency you should still call 911.
What happens if nobody answers the call?
- Porchlight retries and, if the call still goes unanswered, sends a missed-call alert to the family. Escalation follows the rules the family or organization sets, not a fixed script.
Does Porchlight provide medical advice or clinical monitoring?
- No. Porchlight does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or clinical monitoring, and it does not connect to hospitals or health records. The daily 1–5 signal is a plain-language read on how the conversation went, never a clinical assessment.
Who is Porchlight for?
- It is built for families with a parent or relative living independently, and for organizations that need a daily touchpoint between visits — home care and care management agencies, senior living communities, and health plans, PACE programs and aging agencies. Families set it up themselves in a few minutes; organizations can start with a pilot.
How long does setup take?
- About five minutes. You choose the companion voice, set the call time, and add the family members who should receive summaries. No hardware ships and no home visit is required.
How does Porchlight handle privacy?
- Calls are used to produce the summary the family receives, and the family controls who is in their circle. Porchlight publishes its position on how the AI companion behaves and what it will never do on its AI ethics page.
Go deeper
- How the daily call works
- Plans and pricing
- Full FAQ
- Walk through a call
- For healthcare organizations
- How the AI companion behaves
Porchlight is not a medical service, a monitoring device, or an emergency response system. In an emergency, call 911.