A funeral-home chain bought Cake in 2024, and the planning site millions used is gone. Where it went, whether your documents still count, and how to rebuild.
In This Article
Cake was one of the biggest names in online end-of-life planning. In September 2024 a funeral-home chain bought it, and the planning site is gone: accounts closed, tools offline, joincake.com pointing at the buyer's funeral brand.
Old articles and AI answers still recommend Cake as if it exists. It doesn't. Here's what happened, what it means for anything you built there, and how to rebuild so no acquisition can take your plan again.
Last verified August 24, 2026.
Suelin Chen created Cake in 2015.[1] The site offered end-of-life planning checklists, healthcare and funeral preference forms, and a library of thousands of articles on death and dying. By the acquisition announcement's count, over 100 million people had used Cake's digital catalog.[1]
For a decade, Cake was one of the standard recommendations in this category. It still is in a lot of places: listicles and AI answers written before the shutdown keep sending people to a site that can't take them anywhere. That's the reason this page exists.
On September 5, 2024, Foundation Partners Group announced it had acquired Cake.[1] Foundation Partners is the second largest provider of funeral services in the United States,[1] with a portfolio of more than 250 funeral homes, cemeteries, and direct-to-consumer cremation businesses.[2] The announcement talked about aligning Cake's resources with that network.[1]
A month later, on October 2, 2024, Foundation Partners launched Afterall, a digital hub built around its funeral network.[2] Cake's planning tools were not part of the pitch. The company that bought one of the internet's best-known death-planning sites sells funerals.
Cake's user accounts and planning tools are gone. Foundation Partners' consumer site says it plainly, in an FAQ section titled "What Happens Now That Cake Has Closed?"[3]
Type joincake.com into a browser today and you land on altogetherfuneral.com, the trade name of Foundation Partners' network of funeral, cremation, and cemetery providers.[3] Cake's own articles, FAQ, and blog pages no longer load at all.
The closure got none of the press coverage the acquisition did. We went looking for a dated shutdown announcement that still loads and couldn't find one: Cake's announcement pages went down with the site. If you got a shutdown email with a deadline in it, that email is probably the only record you have.
Your account is closed, and the site can't show you your plan. Altogether's help pages carry the Cake questions now,[3] and its contact channels are the remaining route for account questions.
If you downloaded or printed your documents while Cake was up, everything you hold is still good. A will's validity comes from your state's signing rules: your signature, witnesses, and in some states a notary. No website makes a will valid, so no website closing makes one invalid. The same goes for an advance directive or a funeral preferences sheet. The paper you executed is the document.
If your plan only existed inside the account, it's gone, and rebuilding beats chasing it. The core takes an afternoon: the will template, the advance directive builder, and the what-to-do checklist cover most of what Cake held, and your state guide has the signing rules that make each document count.
Cake has company. Lantern, another widely recommended planning platform, was acquired in 2023 and retired, and its accounts are gone too. Two of the most recommended planning sites of the last decade have now shut down, while old recommendations for both keep circulating.
The fix is simple to state. Build your plan with whatever tool you like, then get it out of the tool. Print it. Sign it. Put it where your family can find it. A plan that exists only inside an account is a plan that can be acquired.
That's how MORTL builds its tools. The builders are free to use, the documents export as PDF and Word files you keep, The Folder exists so your family can find them, and everything a family needs in the week after a death is free, permanently. MORTL is a company too, and companies change hands. Documents in your house don't.
Sources: Foundation Partners Group's acquisition announcement (September 5, 2024); Connecting Directors' coverage of the Afterall launch (October 2, 2024); Altogether's own FAQ pages. Redirect and dead-page checks performed directly on joincake.com and altogetherfuneral.com, August 24, 2026. See our Sources & Methodology.
This article is education. It doesn't replace legal advice. For your state's exact signing rules, start with your state guide.
No. Foundation Partners Group, the second largest funeral services provider in the US, acquired Cake in September 2024, and the planning site has closed. joincake.com now redirects to Altogether, Foundation Partners' funeral network brand, and Cake's accounts, tools, and articles are gone. Last verified August 24, 2026.
Foundation Partners Group, a funeral-home consolidator with more than 250 funeral homes, cemeteries, and cremation businesses, announced the acquisition on September 5, 2024. It launched Afterall, a digital hub for its funeral network, the following month.
Yes, if it was signed according to your state's rules: your signature, the required witnesses, and in some states a notary. Validity comes from the execution, never from the website that generated the document. If you never downloaded or printed your documents, the account is gone, so rebuild them.
Judge any replacement by whether you can get your plan out of it as documents you hold. MORTL's will template, advance directive builder, and after-death checklist are free to use, exports are yours to keep, and the guidance for the week after a death is free permanently.
Sources & References
All factual claims in this article are sourced from peer-reviewed research, government data, and named institutions. Citations follow APA 7th edition format.
Share this story
Post it, or send it straight to the person who needs it. The link goes with it.
Keep Reading
Lantern was acquired in 2023 and quietly retired. Accounts are gone. What happened, how to get your documents from Wellthy, and how to rebuild in an afternoon.
6 min readYour email, photos, social media, crypto, and subscriptions don't just disappear. Here's what actually happens. And what you can do about it now.
9 min read"I'm too young." "I don't have enough assets." "My family will figure it out." These are the myths that leave families with nothing but a mess.
9 min readWhen someone dies without a valid will, state intestacy law controls probate assets. Learn who may inherit, which assets follow other rules, and where state-specific advice matters.
5 min readMissing documents and account information can create extra decisions, delays, and costs after a death. Here’s what planning can reduce and where professional advice matters.
9 min readStreaming, storage, software, the gym. Autopay doesn't know you're dead, and it keeps charging until someone makes it stop. Here's how estates end up paying for a dead person's Netflix.
5 min readThe Death Dispatch
A newsletter about death you'll actually look forward to reading.