04/27/2026
Families today live far from the cemeteries where their relatives are buried. Different cities, different states, sometimes different countries. The need to care for a resting place doesn't go away with distance — but the way it gets done has to adapt.
Our founder Artem on what technology is actually changing in the death care field — and what it isn't ⬇
The funeral industry is one of the last major sectors to undergo digital transformation. And yet, few industries touch families more directly.
That gap between importance and technological maturity is exactly where meaningful change is now happening.
The numbers back this up. The U.S. funeral homes market was valued at $13.03 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 5.92% through 2030. Funeral home software alone is expected to grow from $13.98 billion in 2025 to $26.58 billion by 2035. The shift isn't theoretical — it's already funded.
✅ Transparency and Operational Clarity
For decades, the back-office of a cemetery or funeral home ran on paper, spreadsheets, and memory. Payment plans for burial plots tracked in notebooks. Records managed in Excel files prone to error. Payments missed. Records duplicated. Families given inaccurate information at difficult moments.
The operational fallout is still visible today. Recent industry coverage documents a widening Connecticut prepaid-funeral mismanagement case in which a former multi-location owner allegedly misused prepaid funds from over 100 mostly older and vulnerable clients between 2011 and 2025 — the kind of case that becomes possible when record-keeping lives in filing cabinets.
Technology fixes this at the foundation. Digital inventory, automated billing, integrated record-keeping — these aren't luxuries. They're the baseline for running a professional operation.
Insiders describe a sector where digital tools, AI, and a stronger online presence are no longer optional. For the people working in this industry every day, digitalization means less time managing chaos and more time serving families.
✅ Accessibility for Families — A Gap Exposed by the Pandemic
The events of 2020 made visible what insiders already knew: families had almost no way to interact with the funeral industry online. When someone passed away in another state, arranging services remotely meant phone calls, faxes, and uncertainty. There were no tools. There was no infrastructure.
That moment accelerated years of change. Families now expect the ability to plan, coordinate, and make decisions from wherever they are.
Today, just over half of NFDA-member funeral homes offer livestreaming for services, and 47% offer their own virtual funerals — a structural change in how geographically dispersed families participate in memorials. Livestreaming at a funeral was unusual five years ago. It's now close to standard.
✅ Caring for Graves Across Distance
One of the most overlooked problems in this space is simple: people can't always get to the cemetery. They live in different cities, different states, different countries.
The distance isn't hypothetical. Industry data shows families are often geographically dispersed, and research on U.S. migration finds that the median distance Americans live from their hometowns is 30 miles, and among those who live in a different state or country, 70% said they had to leave their hometown to live the life they wanted. The result: grandparents and parents often remain buried where the family originated, while adult children and grandchildren live hundreds of miles away.
At the same time, cemeteries themselves are under pressure. Industry experts note that the maintenance of monuments is generally the responsibility of families, but often becomes neglected over time — and once a cemetery is full, there is no new money coming in to pay for maintenance.
Thousands of cemeteries across the United States are no longer actively maintained. A grave doesn't get overlooked because the family stopped caring — it gets overlooked because nobody is within driving distance to check on it.
Technology creates the infrastructure to bridge that gap — connecting families with trusted local professionals who clean and restore monuments, tend graves, and send back photos and clear reports. What was once difficult to delegate becomes a reliable, documented service.
✅ A Cultural Shift — and a Bigger Mission
How families relate to gravesite care is changing. People move more. Families are more dispersed. Future generations may not live near the cemeteries where their relatives are buried.
At the same time, traditional arrangements are shifting too. The U.S. cremation rate is projected to reach 63.4% in 2025, more than double the burial rate of 31.6%, with long-term projections forecasting cremation surpassing 82% by 2045. The families still choosing burial are, on average, a smaller and more intentional group — and they're the ones most likely to need long-term care for a physical monument.
The need to care for a resting place doesn't go away with distance — but the way families do it has to adapt. That is the larger role technology plays in this field: not disruption for its own sake, but helping families continue caring for graves despite distance and time.
Technology in the death care field is about giving people what they've always needed: clarity, reliability, and practical care — built for the world we actually live in.
