Family that doesn’t fit in one country

Some families live the same week in three countries. Grandparents in one place, parents working in another, kids at boarding school somewhere else. The family chat needs to work across borders, time zones, and patchy hotel Wi-Fi.

Shoal is designed for this. There’s no SIM card, no phone number, no country-specific signup. Anywhere there’s an internet connection, Shoal works the same.

Does Shoal work abroad?

Yes, wherever there’s an internet connection, and in the same way as at home:

  • No roaming charges. Shoal runs over the internet. Your data plan, hotel Wi-Fi, café Wi-Fi — all the same to Shoal.
  • No phone numbers required. Some apps insist on a phone number for sign-up, then break in interesting ways when you change country. Shoal sign-in is just an email — or a Google or Apple account.
  • Encrypted on your device. Messages are encrypted before they leave your phone, inside an encrypted connection. The only thing a hotel network sees is a stream of ciphertext between your device and Cloudflare’s edge.
  • Multiple families, one account. If you have an extended family in two countries, you can keep a separate family for each side, and switch between them with a tap.

Privacy in places where it matters

When you’re travelling through networks and countries with different attitudes to privacy, the model matters. Every message is encrypted on your device before it reaches the network, so the hotel, airport, or café Wi-Fi you’re on — and whoever runs it — only ever sees ciphertext, never your conversations. Sign-in is just an email link or code — or a linked Google or Apple account — with no phone number or SIM tying your account to a country.

We’re careful not to overstate the rest. Shoal isn’t end-to-end encrypted: we hold the keys, because that’s how family admins can read children’s chats. No code path exists today that decrypts content, so Shoal staff can’t see your messages — but because we hold the keys, we could be legally required to build one, wherever you happen to be. We set out exactly where that line sits on our security page and in our privacy policy.

Notifications across networks

Notifications work almost universally. Whether you’re on a 4G connection in Buenos Aires, hotel Wi-Fi in Reykjavik, or your home broadband in London, notifications arrive within seconds.