Ollie AI Is Shutting Down: What Families Who Texted Ollie Can Use Instead

Ollie, the personal AI assistant that lived in your text messages, is sunsetting on November 6, 2026. The announcement is a short farewell letter on the official Ollie site, signed by Bill Lennon on behalf of the team: "We've made the difficult decision to sunset Ollie, effective Nov 6, 2026." Ollie and Ollie for Meals subscriptions are being cancelled, with refunds for any partial or unused months, and Ollie will text each user an export of their data.

If your family ran on Ollie, there is very little runway. Here is what the farewell letter says, what to do with the export, and an honest guide to the alternatives.

Ollie shuts down on November 6, 2026. Subscriptions to Ollie and Ollie for Meals are cancelled with a refund for unused months. Ollie texts every user an export of their data to carry to another assistant. The farewell letter gives no reason for the closure.

What Is Happening to Ollie?

Ollie was a family assistant with no app. You texted it over iMessage or SMS, and it remembered what mattered, set reminders, kept to-do lists, planned meals and built grocery lists, sent a daily briefing, and, once you connected Google or Outlook, read your calendar and school emails. A separate product, Ollie for Meals, handled the "what's for dinner" loop through to an Instacart, Amazon, or Walmart order. It was free to start, with Everyday and Always-On plans priced by the number of messages Ollie sent back.

On the farewell page the team writes that it has "poured our heart and soul into Ollie over the last few years" and knows "how many of you have come to rely on Ollie." The letter does not give a reason for the shutdown. The homepage and pricing page were still live without a sunset notice when we checked on November 5, so some users will find out by text.

Nothing here is a criticism of the product. On our own ranking of AI family assistants Ollie sat at number three, and we called it the lightest way into a family AI. Lightness cut both ways: an assistant that lives inside whoever is texting it is easy to adopt and just as easy to lose.

What to Do With Your Ollie Export

Three steps, in order:

1. Watch for the text. Ollie says it will text you an export of your data. Save it somewhere you will find again, not just in the message thread. The reminders, lists, and preferences Ollie held are the open loops you will need to rebuild.
2. Check your refund. Billing is cancelled automatically, and any partial or unused month is refunded. If a charge still appears after November 6, the contact in the letter is hello@ollie.ai.
3. Rebuild by job, not by product. Ollie did several things at once: reminders, lists, meals, calendar, email triage, and a daily briefing. Decide which of those your family actually leaned on, then pick the replacement that does that job well. The next section sorts the options.

The Best Ollie Alternatives in 2026

The honest answer depends on which job Ollie did for your family.

For the simple shared calendar and lists: Cozi. The long running classic. Color coded calendars, shopping lists, and a meal planner that grandparents adopt without help. It is almost entirely manual, so the noticing and remembering stay with whoever runs it, but as a dependable shared system it is the easiest landing spot.

For shared household admin between two adults: Ohai. An AI household assistant that manages calendars and to-do lists and pulls events out of school emails, at its best when both adults work from the same shared system. It requires a subscription.

For a visible kitchen command center: Nori. A family hub built around a shared screen for the home, fed by voice, photo, and email. It requires buying hardware, which is its charm and its constraint.

For school and activity email automation: Norton Family Assistant. An AI agent that connects calendar, email, and school portals and acts only with your approval. Still in beta.

For the person carrying the load: AlphaMa. We are honest about our angle here: AlphaMa is our app, and it works on a different layer than Ollie did. Ollie managed logistics for whoever was texting it. AlphaMa is built around the person who does the remembering, most often the mother. You talk to it naturally, by voice, while your hands are full, and it captures the tasks, appointments, and worries on its own. It reads family logistics from Gmail, syncs Google Calendar, plans meals, and hands chores to your partner over WhatsApp, so your partner needs no new app. And it supports the person underneath the load, with conversations built on cognitive behavioral techniques, at 2 PM or 2 AM. It is free right now on iOS and Android.

If what you loved about Ollie was texting instead of tapping, read why moms text, not tap. A fuller ranked comparison lives at best AI assistant for families and best AI apps for moms.

Milo in January. Maple in December. Now Ollie in November.

Ollie is the third family assistant to announce a closure in 2026. Milo, the SMS based family assistant backed by OpenAI, shut down in January after six years. Maple, the free all in one family organizer, closes on December 31 after its team was acquired. Ollie, which we called the closest thing to Milo on the market, now follows it.

Three closures in one year is not a coincidence. Family coordination is a hard, low margin business, and the text based model Milo and Ollie shared is the hardest version of it: every reply costs money, and the assistant has to be right about a child's schedule often enough to be trusted.

That has a practical consequence for the family relying on the app. When a family assistant closes, the data arrives as an export, but the load does not go anywhere. Every open loop the assistant was holding (the recurring orthodontist appointment, the soccer carpool, the diaper subscription timing) lands back in one person's head, usually the mother's. The mental load is exactly the work of holding those loops, and app churn is one of its hidden taxes.

So whichever replacement you choose, choose it on two questions. Does it actually reduce the invisible work, or only display it? And is the team behind it building for the long run? We built AlphaMa around the first question, and we publish our research so families can judge the second. Wherever your family lands, save your Ollie export the day it arrives.

Related reading:

• Maple Family Assistant Is Shutting Down: What Families Can Use Instead
• How to Use AI to Run a Household: A Working Mother's Setup