Product Guide
Huddled is a private, real-time shared media space. Invite a group, and everyone's photos, videos, and files land in one feed — with reactions and comments — instead of scattered across chats and cloud drives.
Overview
Think of Huddled as a private Instagram for one specific group of people — a family, a wedding party, a trip, a team.
You create a Space, invite people, and everyone contributes to a shared, real-time feed. No one has to collect files afterward or hand out access to a personal cloud drive. A Space can live forever (a family album) or be tied to an event (a trip) — when the event's over, uploads lock but the memories stay viewable for good.
Huddled works for one person as easily as for a whole organization. Behind the scenes it's built on organizations, seats, and roles, so a personal account and a company account use the same foundation — the extra machinery simply stays out of your way until you need it.
- Private by default — only invited members can see a Space. Media is served through short-lived, signed links scoped to your membership.
- Real-time — uploads, reactions, and comments appear live for everyone in the Space, no refresh.
- Kept forever — time-bounded Spaces lock after their deadline but stay viewable indefinitely.
The model: Organizations & Spaces
Two ideas run the whole product. Most people only ever need one of them.
- Space — a single shared album/feed, the thing you and your people actually use. Photos, videos, and files live here, along with reactions and comments. Every Space belongs to exactly one Organization.
- Organization — the billing & administration container: who pays, who has a seat, whether SSO is required. Billing is always tied to an Organization, never to a person.
When you sign up, Huddled quietly creates a Personal organization just for you, with you as its owner. You never see it — you just see your Spaces. The Organization concept only surfaces once you belong to more than one (for example, after a company invites you), at which point an organization switcher appears.
In short — an Organization is who pays and who's allowed in. A Space is one shared album. Personal users just make Spaces and never think about organizations.
Spaces
A Space holds the shared media for one group and one purpose.
Permanent or time-bounded
Every Space is one of two kinds:
- Permanent — an ongoing album, like a family Space that never ends.
- Time-bounded — tied to a deadline (a trip, a wedding, an event). Members get a reminder as the deadline nears; once it passes, the Space automatically locks.
Lifecycle
A Space moves through three states: active → locked → archived. An active Space accepts uploads. A locked Space is view-only — nobody can add media, but everything stays visible forever. Time-bounded Spaces lock themselves when their deadline passes.
Storage
Each organization has a storage pool set by its plan (2 GB on Free, up to 10 TB on Business), shared across all its Spaces. Uploads count against it; deleting media frees it back up. See Plans & pricing for the numbers.
Roles & permissions
Each Space defines its own roles, built from five permissions, so you decide who can do what. Every role grants some combination of:
canView— always on: if you're in a Space, you can see it.canUploadcanCommentcanReactcanInvite
canInvite is effectively the "space admin" permission: it also governs managing members, changing roles, editing the cover, moderating, and removing others' media.
The built-in roles
Creating a Space seeds four roles you can use right away:
| Role | View | Upload | Comment | React | Invite |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Owner (protected) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Admin | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Contributor | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — |
| Viewer | ✓ | — | ✓ | ✓ | — |
The Owner role is protected — it can't be edited, deleted, or handed out. Anyone with canInvite can create additional custom roles with any mix of the four editable permissions.
Photos, videos & files
Upload images, video, or documents. Everything shows up in the Space feed with an optional caption.
Photos
Images upload directly and appear in the feed immediately. Add a caption when you upload — only you can edit your own captions later.
Videos
Videos are transcoded to adaptive streaming (HLS) and play back smoothly in the viewer. While processing, a video shows a processing state, then becomes ready. Maximum length depends on your plan:
| Plan | Max video length |
|---|---|
| Free | 1 minute |
| Pro | 10 minutes |
| Ultra | 60 minutes |
Documents & files
Spaces aren't just for photos — you can upload almost any file type (PDFs, docs, spreadsheets, zips…). Files render as a downloadable card with their original name, and download with that name intact. For safety, executable and script files are blocked (for example .exe, .msi, .sh, .js, .jar, .apk, .dmg) — this is enforced on the server, so renaming a file won't get it through.
Quota — uploads count toward the Space's storage quota. If an upload would exceed it, Huddled asks you to free space or upgrade the plan. Deleting media returns its space to the quota.
Viewing & downloading
Open any item in the viewer to see it full-size, play video, react, comment, or download. You can also report a piece of media to the Space's admins.
Reactions & comments
React and talk about media right where it lives — in real time.
- Reactions — tap to react with an emoji. The picker offers a set of favorites, but any emoji works. Reacting again toggles it off. The uploader gets notified.
- Comments — leave comments (up to 2,000 characters) on any item; they appear live for everyone. You can delete your own comments. A Space admin can mute a member — they stay in the Space and can still view and react, but can't comment.
Activity & notifications
The Activity page is your inbox: new comments and reactions on your media, new uploads, deadline reminders, plus pending invitations (accept or decline) and join requests to approve. A bell badge shows your unread count.
How you're notified
- In-app — everything shows in Activity.
- Web push — enable notifications per device in Settings to get browser push even when Huddled isn't open.
- Email — for Space invitations and account emails (verification, password reset), sent as branded Huddled emails.
Preferences
In Settings you control notifications by category — comments, reactions, new members, and product updates — each on by default.
Members & invites
Two ways to bring people in, depending on how much control you want.
- Email invite — invite a specific person by email. They get a join link; existing Huddled users also get an in-app invitation. Accepting joins them straight to the Space.
- Share link / QR — a reusable link (or QR code) per role. Opening it creates a request to join that an admin approves — handy for events where people scan to jump in.
Only members with canInvite can invite others. Each plan caps how many members a Space can have (10 on Free, 100 on Pro, unlimited on Ultra). Admins can change a member's role, mute them, or remove them — the Space owner is always protected from these actions.
Search
Filter your Spaces list by name from the Spaces page. Full-text caption search across your media is available on Pro and above, so you can find a shot by what was written on it.
Moderation & recovery
Any member can flag media for review, which notifies the Space's admins. Admins (and the uploader) can delete media. Deletions are soft: removed media is recoverable for 30 days before it's permanently purged, so an accidental delete isn't the end of the world. Organization admins can restore within that window from the Admin console.
Signing in
Sign in with a password or a social account — with enterprise SSO where required.
- Email & password — passwords are at least 8 characters. New emails are verified with a 6-digit code.
- Google & Apple — one-tap social sign-in.
- Enterprise SSO — if your work domain requires single sign-on, Huddled routes you through it (and blocks password login for that domain).
- Password reset — request a reset from the sign-in screen; you'll get a branded email with a secure link. For privacy, Huddled always says "check your email," whether or not the address has an account.
Organizations & teams
Your Personal organization is invisible and free. When you create or join a team organization, an org switcher appears and you can act within whichever org you choose. Team organizations use these roles:
| Org role | What it can do |
|---|---|
| Owner | Full control, including billing. Always holds a seat. |
| Admin | Manage members, seats, SSO, and settings. |
| Contributor | A regular paid member of the organization. |
| Guest | An external person invited to a Space — free, never consumes a paid seat. |
Guests are free — when someone outside your organization joins one of its Spaces, they're added as a guest and don't use up a paid seat, so opening a Space to clients or family never costs extra.
Admin console
Everything an organization owner or admin needs, in one place at /org/admin.
- Overview — seats used, guests, storage, active Spaces, and your monthly bill at a glance, plus recent audit activity.
- Seats — promote members to paid seats or drop them to free guests. Invite teammates by email.
- Billing — manage your subscription and seats, and view invoices, through the Stripe billing portal.
- SSO — enforce single sign-on for your domain.
- Audit log — an append-only record of role, seat, SSO, billing, and governance changes.
- Groups — group related Spaces together for larger organizations.
- Branding — set your organization's colors and logo to theme the app for members.
- Consent — show external guests a consent/guidelines form before they join.
- Recovery — restore soft-deleted media within the 30-day window.
Plans & pricing
Start free. Upgrade when a Space needs more room, longer video, or more people.
| Free | Pro | Ultra | Team | Business | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $0 | $4.99/mo · $47.99/yr | $9.99/mo · $95.99/yr | $12 / seat / mo | $24 / seat / mo |
| Storage (organization) | 2 GB | 200 GB | 2 TB | 1 TB | 10 TB |
| Members per Space | 10 | 100 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Video length | 1 min | 10 min | 60 min | 60 min | 60 min |
| Active Spaces | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Full-text search | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Developer platform | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Storage is an organization-wide pool shared across all your Spaces. Annual billing saves ~20%. Free stays on a single active Space — creating a second one, or exceeding 2 GB, prompts an upgrade to Pro. Team and Business are billed per seat; guests are always free. All billing runs through Stripe, and you can manage or cancel anytime from the billing portal.
For developers
Build on Huddled with a REST API, webhooks, and an MCP server for AI agents — create Spaces, upload media, post comments and reactions, and subscribe to events. It's available on Pro, Ultra, and Enterprise plans. See the Developer Docs for the full reference.