Coming from Skylight
It's well made, it looks lovely in a kitchen, and it gets the important thing right: when the plan hangs where everyone can see it, scheduling stops falling on one person. It's also $299.99 for the Calendar 2 or $599.99 for the 27-inch Max, with meal planning, imports and rewards in Skylight Plus at $79/year (myskylight.com, checked 13 September 2026). If that's more than you want to spend, household.email does the same job on the screens your house already has. And with or without a Skylight on the wall, it fills the plan in from the household's email so nobody has to type it.
Free early access. No spam, ever.
Everything in the Skylight column comes from Skylight's own published pages, checked 13 September 2026. Where they're better, we've said so.
| Skylight | household.email | |
|---|---|---|
| What you buy | A well-made wall-mounted touchscreen: $299.99 for the 15-inch Calendar 2, $599.99 for the 27-inch Calendar Max, plus optional Skylight Plus at $79/year. | Nothing to buy. A web app that runs on the phones, laptops and fridge tablet you already own — leave it open on a tablet in the kitchen and everyone can see the plan. |
| Ongoing cost | The device works without a subscription; Plus at $79/year adds meal planning, easy imports, photo screensaver, rewards and Disney Mode. | Free while we're in early access. Planned pricing is a free-forever tier plus Pro at $49.99/year — less than Plus, and nothing to buy first. |
| Email to calendar & todos | You can email schedules in for import to the calendar — one way, events only. | Core to the product: your household has its own address, mail becomes suggested events, todos and reminders you confirm, and the email itself stays in a shared inbox you can read and reply from. |
| Chores and fairness | Interactive chore charts with rewards — genuinely good for getting kids doing their bit. | Chores rotate automatically between the adults and children in the household, with a record of who actually completed what. Fairness between the adults is the part we're pointed at. |
| Shared shopping lists | Yes, lists on the Calendar and in the companion app. | Yes, on every tier. Shared in real time across web and mobile, with labels and tick-off built in. |
| AI assistant | Skylight Assistant, a newer AI scheduling helper alongside the Calendar. | A household assistant you can ask plain-English questions — "what's on this weekend?", "did anyone buy milk?" — answered from your own email, calendar, todos, chores and lists. Rolling out during early access. |
| Away from the wall | The companion app mirrors the Calendar on phones — well liked, 4.8 stars on the App Store. | The same app everywhere, at home, at work and at school pickup — whether or not there's a screen on the wall. |
| If you move house or change your mind | The screen comes with you; the $299–599 is spent either way. | Close the tab. Nothing bought, nothing mounted. |
Mostly it comes down to price, and sometimes to wanting more than a screen on the wall can do.
You're paying for a lovely object, and it is one. But the idea behind it — put the plan where everyone can see it — works just as well on a fridge tablet, a spare iPad on a stand, or the phones already in everyone's pockets, for nothing upfront.
The Skylight shows the plan beautifully, but someone still reads the school newsletter, finds the date in paragraph six and types it in. Email import exists, but it's one-way and events-only — the decoding work stays with whoever was already doing it.
Meal planning, easy imports and rewards sit behind the $79/year Plus subscription, on top of the device. Easy to justify once the screen is on your wall; a lot to pay while you're still deciding whether you want one.
A screen on the wall is lovely at breakfast. The plan also matters at work, at school pickup and in the supermarket, where it's the phone app doing the work — and the screen is the part you paid extra for.
Skylight understood the mental load before most of the industry — they commissioned real research on it — and "put the plan where everyone can see it" genuinely works, which tens of thousands of five-star reviews attest to. The chore charts and rewards are excellent for kids, and the screen itself is beautiful. If the budget is there, buy one. A Skylight and household.email make a fine pair: theirs on the wall, ours reading the mail.
There's no way to copy your Skylight data over, and honestly you wouldn't want one. Half of what's in there is stale. Instead, your household gets its own email address, and the emails you already receive do the setup for you.
One inbox the whole household shares, instead of school newsletters landing on one person's phone and nobody else's.
The class newsletter with three dates in it, the swimming term confirmation, the dentist reminder, the Airbnb booking. Forward them across, or connect your Gmail, iCloud, Outlook or most other email accounts and let them arrive on their own.
We read the dates, times and actions out of each email and suggest them back to you as calendar events and todos. You confirm or dismiss — nothing lands on the family calendar without a human saying yes.
Chores rotate between the people in your household automatically, so the bins aren't quietly one person's job forever. That part takes about five minutes and it's the last time you'll set it up.
Nothing to export. Nothing to re-type. Your old Skylight account can sit there until you're sure.
That's a lot to ask. Here's what we will and won't do with it.
There are no ads in household.email and no plans to add them. It's free while we're in early access and paid for by subscriptions after that — never by selling your attention.
Not to advertisers, not to data brokers, not to anyone. Your household's email, calendar and lists are yours — we're a subscription, not a data business.
We use AI to pull dates and tasks out of your mail. The AI companies we use are bound by their terms not to train their models on what we send them. We don't train models on it either.
Disconnect Gmail or any other email account you've connected, at any time, and we stop reading. When you want to go entirely, there's a delete button on your account page that removes your household and everything stored in it — email, attachments, calendars, todos, chores and lists — for good. No email to write, no waiting on us.
The details are in our privacy policy, written in plain English.
household.email is in early access. Join the waitlist and you get in free while we build. No card, no trial clock, no export to untangle later. If it isn't for you, keep what you've got — nothing lost.
One email when your invite is ready. No spam, ever.