Help center
Ten questions people actually ask, answered plainly. Everything here describes the product as it works today — if an answer doesn’t match what you see on screen, that’s a bug, and we’d genuinely like to hear about it. In a hurry? The FAQ page has the short versions.
1. What is Ella 101, exactly?
Ella 101 is a one-on-one AI tutor for students of every age. Ella is a voice-first teacher: she talks with your student live, out loud, two-way. Name any topic in plain words or upload a PDF and she turns it into a taught course; she also reads and performs the books your family already owns. You can hear her teach right now in the demos on the homepage.
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.
2. How does the voice conversation work?
Ella speaks with Kokoro, a neural speech engine — warm and human, not a robot reading a script. And she listens too: your student can push-to-talk, or switch on conversation mode and just speak — talking interrupts Ella mid-sentence, the way a real conversation works. Nobody waits for a robot to finish.
As she reads, a karaoke marker follows the exact word being spoken, so your student’s eyes and ears stay on the same line. In the Voice Lab there are 54 voices to audition, with speed and pitch you can shape. The microphone is only needed for talking with her — the reading and listening modes work without one.
3. What does the account holder view show me?
The truth about each session — nothing more, nothing less:
- Today at a glance — minutes and sessions, per student.
- Courses and mastery — what’s mastered, what’s queued for review, and how often Ella re-taught an idea a different way.
- Recent sessions — with the comprehension-check results from each one.
- Where it got hard — the concepts that needed extra tries.
- Safety moments — if a conversation touches something serious, Ella pauses the lesson and points your student to a trusted adult, and the record goes to you alone.
- 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.
- Transcripts you can keep — read any conversation and save it as a text file; the report prints cleanly.
Every number in the report is a plain count from your student’s real session events — no scores are invented, ever.
4. How do the free trial and cancellation work?
Right now, nobody pays: the beta is free and payments are switched off in the software — there is no card form, no trial clock, and nothing that converts into a charge later.
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 it, you can cancel anytime from your account page: the month you’ve paid for runs to its very end, and the next one never starts. The whole policy is published early, on purpose, on the refunds & cancellation page.
5. Is the student’s data safe?
The app records only what runs the product and what fills the account-holder report: account basics (with the password stored only as a scrambled hash), learning activity, the content you upload, conversation transcripts, safety moments, and the bug reports you send. Nothing is collected for advertising.
Your family’s data is not sold, not shared for marketing, and not used to train AI models on your student’s words. Account holders can read the records that matter in the account holder view at any time, and deletion is one email away: write to support@ella101.com and the account and its data are deleted. The fuller versions live in the privacy notes and the beta page.
6. What devices and browsers do we need?
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; reading and listening work without one.
7. How do courses from our own books work?
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.
8. How do beta invite codes work?
The beta is invite-only, and codes are handed out personally by the founder. Email support@ella101.com — a sentence about who’ll be learning (age, subjects) helps. The account holder creates the account with an email, a password, the student’s first name, and the promo code; registration asks for explicit parental consent before the account can exist. The full product is free while the beta runs — here’s how the beta works.
9. What does Ella 101 cost?
Today: free, while the invite-only beta runs — 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 teaching, courses from any topic or PDF, your family’s book library in every mode, and the account-holder reports. 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, which is $480–$1,280 a month for a few hours a week. Details on the pricing section and the refunds page.
10. How do I get help?
Email the founder: support@ella101.com. Questions, bug reports, beta codes, deletion requests — they go straight to the person who can fix them, and reports don’t go into a void. Billing questions and cancellations go to support@ella101.com.
Didn’t find your answer? Write to support@ella101.com — it goes straight to the builder.