Preserving Family Memories Since 2015
Memory Fortress helps families turn photographs, videotapes, slides, movie film, negatives and other older media into digital collections they can actually use, organize and share.
It Started With 15,000 Photos and a Really Frustrating Digitizing Project
Memory Fortress did not begin as a business plan. It began with a very large family collection, no real idea how to digitize it, and the discovery that getting thousands of memories converted properly was a lot harder than it looked.
Flashback to 2009
We were staring at roughly 15,000 loose photographs, at least 25 camcorder tapes, and several thousand slides and negatives. We had the memories. What we did not have was the equipment, the experience, or any desire to spend months learning how to digitize all of it ourselves.
So we did what a lot of families still do today: we packed up several boxes and sent them to a digitizing company on the other side of the country.
Weeks later, everything came back — the originals and the new digital files. The problem was that the finished job was mediocre at best. There were mistakes, things that needed correcting, and enough cleanup afterward that we spent dozens of additional hours fixing the project ourselves.
That experience was frustrating, but it planted an idea: this could be done better. Better communication. Better organization. Faster turnaround. Fewer surprises. A service that treated the project like something important instead of just another box moving through a system.
In late 2015, Memory Fortress went live with its first website and a small Google Ads campaign. The phone rang on the very first day. Within a few days, we had our first paying customer.
Then We Needed an Office
The business grew quickly enough that in early 2016 we moved into a small office in the Atlanta metro area. Over the course of the next decade, we grew into one of the largest tenants in our office building.
After merging with Nostalgic Media in early 2026, we are now one of the top digitization services in the United States. We have substantially more space, more equipment, and a much larger operation than we started with.
Shipping Was Part of the Plan From the Beginning
Memory Fortress was built to serve customers well beyond Atlanta. Throughout our history, 80% of our customers have shipped their boxes of memories to us, while the remainder walked in the door.
To this day, families across the country send us photos, tapes, slides, film and other media, while local customers can still bring their collections directly to us.
The Scale Has Changed. The Reason We Do It Has Not.
Since 2015, Memory Fortress has digitized enormous quantities of family media — from everyday photo and videotape orders to large collections spanning generations. But every project still comes down to the same basic idea: these are somebody’s memories, and they deserve to be handled like they matter.
A Lot Has Changed Since That First Phone Call
What started in 2015 as a small Atlanta digitizing business has grown into a much larger operation serving families across the country. The equipment has changed, the space has grown, and the projects have gotten a lot bigger — but we still do the actual work here ourselves.
A Real Place, Not a Shipping Label
Our work is done by our own team in Atlanta. Customers who live nearby can bring their collections to us, and customers farther away ship their media directly to the same operation doing the digitizing.
Most of Our Customers Never Walk Through the Door
Memory Fortress was designed as a nationwide service from the beginning. Every week, boxes arrive from families who may live hundreds or thousands of miles away but still want a smaller company they can actually talk to.
Family History Usually Comes in a Messy Mix
Photos, slides, negatives, videotapes, movie film, audio recordings, albums and discs often show up together. Over the years, we have built the equipment and experience to handle that reality instead of asking families to split everything among different companies.
Some Families Send a Few Tapes. Others Send a Lifetime.
A typical project might be a box of old videotapes, a few hundred photographs, or several slide carousels. But we also work with inherited collections, estates and family archives containing many boxes and several generations of material.
The size may change dramatically, but the basic responsibility does not: understand what the customer sent us, do the work carefully, communicate when something needs an answer, and return both the originals and useful digital files.
A Bigger Company Than We Were in 2015 — But Still the Kind You Can Actually Reach
Memory Fortress has grown a great deal since the early days, but the basic philosophy is still the same: do the work carefully, stay reachable, communicate clearly, and treat every collection like it matters.
Whether someone is sending a few tapes, a box of family photos, or a much larger archive, we want the process to feel personal, understandable, and dependable from start to finish.
- All work handled by our own Atlanta operation
- Serving customers nationwide since 2015
- Real people available when questions come up
- From ordinary family orders to large multi-format collections