The complete guide to Ella 101

The whole picture on one page, written for anyone deciding whether this belongs in their learning. Everything here describes the product as it works today — nothing is promised that isn’t built. Quick answers live in the FAQ; the deeper how-tos live in the help center.

What Ella is

Ella 101 is a one-on-one AI tutor for students of every age. Ella is voice-first: she talks with your student live, out loud, two-way. The student can push-to-talk, or switch on conversation mode and just speak — talking interrupts her mid-sentence, the way a real conversation works. As she reads, a karaoke marker follows the exact word being spoken, so eyes and ears stay on the same line.

She is a teach-first tutor: she teaches the lesson before she ever asks a question about it. Your student is never quizzed on material Ella hasn’t taught — the explanation comes first, the comprehension check after, and if an idea doesn’t land, she re-teaches it a different way instead of repeating herself louder.

It’s a teaching tool for your household, not a school: it isn’t accredited, doesn’t issue diplomas, and never replaces the account holder’s direction. You can hear her teach right now in the demos on the homepage — no sign-up needed to listen.

How a week looks

There’s no rigid program to follow — you set the rhythm, and the app keeps it:

• A weekly schedule you control. The app has a simple weekly schedule of learning blocks. You decide whether your student can edit it or only follow it, and you can lock it. You can even photograph the paper curriculum you already use, and Ella proposes a weekly schedule from it — for you to review and approve, never applied on its own.
• Sessions pick up where they left off. Every course keeps its place, so Tuesday starts where Monday ended instead of starting over.
• Teaching, then checking. Each session is Ella teaching out loud with comprehension checks woven in — not worksheets with a voice attached.
• Review comes back on its own. Ideas your student has learned are queued for review and resurface over the following days, spaced out so they stick — you’ll see what’s mastered and what’s queued for review in the account holder view.
• Your weekly skim. Most account holders’ end of the loop is the account holder view: minutes and sessions per student, the comprehension-check results, the concepts that needed extra tries, and any transcript you want to read in full.

How transcripts work

Every conversation your student has with Ella is recorded as text, and the account holder view is where you read it — the truth about each session, nothing more, nothing less:

• Read any conversation and save it as a text file; the report prints cleanly.
• Courses and mastery — what’s mastered, what’s queued for review, and how often Ella re-taught an idea a different way.
• Safety moments — if a conversation touches something serious, the record goes to you alone, never buried.
• The honesty ledger — the places a generated answer was corrected or withheld rather than risk teaching it wrong. Ella’s teaching is generated by an AI model and can be wrong; this is where you see it, never smoothed over.

Every number in the report is a plain count from your student’s real session events — no scores are invented, ever.

The safety model, in plain words

Four layers, all built, all on by default:

• Every message is screened before Ella answers. A safety check runs on what your student says on every turn, watching for signs of crisis, self-harm, or abuse. If something serious surfaces, Ella stops the lesson, points your student to a trusted adult (and, in the US, the 988 crisis line), and the record goes to you alone. A disclosure is never treated as a lesson answer.
• It fails closed. If the safety check itself ever breaks, the tutor does not carry on without it — the cautious path wins. Safety is never traded away to make Ella feel faster.
• Ella’s own answers are checked too. It isn’t only your student’s side that’s watched: when a generated answer can’t be trusted, it is corrected or withheld rather than taught wrong — and each of those moments lands in the honesty ledger for you to see.
• The student always knows it’s an AI. A small “AI” chip sits on Ella’s nameplate through every session — tap it and she explains plainly that she’s a computer tutor, not a person. And after three hours of continued learning, a friendly break reminder appears: time to stretch, and a restatement that Ella is an AI.

The fuller versions live in the privacy notes and the terms.

What $250 a month covers

Today: nothing — the beta is free, invite-only, with payments switched off in the software. No card, no trial clock, no auto-conversion.

Planned, after the beta: one plan, $250 per month, per student, everything included:

• The live one-on-one voice teaching — unlimited sessions, no hourly meter.
• Taught courses from any topic you can name in plain words, or any book or PDF you upload.
• Your family’s book library in every mode — read-alongs, audiobooks, radio-play performances, comic pages in the reader.
• The full account holder view: transcripts, mastery, safety moments, the honesty ledger.

Month to month, no contract, no tiers. The anchor is a human tutor, not an app store: private one-on-one tutoring runs $40–80 an hour — $480–$1,280 a month for a few hours a week. Ella is there every day. Details on the pricing section and the refunds page.

The trial, and cancelling

When paid subscriptions arrive, every one will start with a free trial week — 7 days of the full product, card on file, nothing charged at signup. Cancel during that week and you’re never charged.

After the trial, cancelling is self-serve from your account page — a real button in the app, built and working today, not an email address you have to chase or a phone call you have to sit through. The month you’ve paid for runs to its very end, and the next one never starts. The same account page also lets you export your family’s data or delete the account entirely, on your own. The whole policy is published early, on purpose, on the refunds & cancellation page.

Devices and browsers

Nothing to install. Ella runs in the browser on any reasonably modern device — one account, where your student opens the lesson and you open the account holder view. For talking with Ella, the device needs a microphone; the reading and listening modes work without one.

Courses from your own books

Two doors, same result. Name a topic in plain words — or upload a book or PDF — and Ella turns it into a taught course. Uploaded books become your family’s library in every mode: read-alongs, audiobooks, radio-play performances where every character gets their own voice, and comic or manga pages right in the reader. What you upload is stored in your account and stays yours.

Getting help

Ella 101 is built and run by one person, and the fastest route to help is his inbox: support@ella101.com. Questions, bug reports, beta codes, and deletion requests go straight to the person who can fix them. Billing questions and cancellations go to support@ella101.com. The help center has the longer how-tos, and the FAQ has the short answers.

Still weighing it? Write to support@ella101.com and ask the person who built it.