Gifting Piou Premium: why it matters and how it works

If you want someone to read your messages in their own language, they need Piou Premium: translation is personal, and your subscription only translates what you receive. So you can gift them Premium from the app or the website, picking them from your contacts, by email or with a link. You pay, and you manage or cancel it anytime in Settings → Premium, in the section for subscriptions you’ve gifted.

Why gifting matters: translation is personal

On Piou, every message stays in the language it was written in and is translated on the recipient’s phone, if they have Premium. Take Mike in Chicago and his mother-in-law, Rosa, in Guadalajara:

• Mike has Premium. Rosa writes in Spanish and Mike reads in English, with a “Translated” label and “Show original” under each message.
• Rosa doesn’t have Premium. Mike’s messages, and his kids’, arrive in English, exactly as typed, and Rosa can’t read them.

Rosa, for her part, sees a banner once a day in the conversation, in Spanish on her phone, offering to show her the message in Spanish; tapping it starts a Premium trial with her own card. Mike sees a suggestion: “Gift Piou to Rosa so they can read you in their language.” If he gifts it, he pays, and each of them reads the other in their own language.

Two details. To message each other, both need Piou, and messaging is free. And a gifted subscription belongs to the person you gift it to: to read their messages translated, you need Premium yourself.

What your loved one gets

With Premium, in their own language, they get:

• automatic translation, with no taps, of messages, polls and status text;
• voice messages transcribed and translated, with the original audio still playable;
• live Translated subtitles during voice and video calls;
• Face to face mode, which translates an in-person conversation on a single phone, even offline once languages are downloaded.

For a grandmother who mostly sends voice messages, the translated transcripts matter most; for in-laws who love a Sunday video call, it’s the subtitles. Everything else stays free for everyone, with or without the gift: chats, groups, photos, videos, disappearing messages and calls between Piou users.

How to gift Premium, step by step

1. In the app or on the website, open “Gift Piou to someone.”
2. Choose the person: from your contacts, by email address, or with a link you send them.
3. Confirm payment, through Stripe on the website, the App Store on iPhone or Google Play on Android. The 7-day free trial also applies to a gifted subscription: your card is required, nothing is charged for 7 days, and the subscription then starts automatically at the price shown unless you cancel before the trial ends.
4. Your loved one gets a notification announcing your gift.

To use it, they need Piou installed, with their language set in Settings → Language & translation. Installing is free, on iPhone (iOS 18 or later), Android (8.0 or later) or as a web app. If your parents aren’t comfortable with phones, set it up together on a video call or during a visit.

Managing, canceling and gifting to several people

Everything lives in Settings → Premium, in the section for subscriptions you’ve gifted: you’ll see the subscriptions you pay for others, and you can cancel any of them at any time. Canceling takes effect at the end of the current period. After that, your loved one goes back to the free version: they keep full messaging, but see messages in their original language again.

You can gift Premium to several people: both parents, a sister-in-law, a grandfather. Each person is one subscription, at the price of a regular Premium subscription. In the US, that’s $5.99 a month or $47.99 a year per person, so the annual plan for two parents comes to $95.98 a year; in the UK, it’s £4.99 a month or £39.99 a year. The exact price for your country is shown before you pay, in local currency.

Three situations where a gift makes sense

• In-laws abroad. They read your messages, and their grandchildren’s, in their language; with Premium on your side, you read their replies in yours.
• Grandparents who don’t share a language with the grandkids. Plan one subscription per grandparent, since each reads on their own phone.
• A couple living between two languages. One partner already has Premium and gifts it to the other, so messages, voice messages and calls work both ways.

Explaining the gift

A gift nobody understands ends up in a drawer. Once the subscription is active, send a simple first message, which will arrive translated:

• “Rosa, I gifted you Piou Premium. My messages now show up in Spanish. To see what I originally wrote in English, tap the option under each message.”

Then, on a video call, show her the useful moves: playing a voice message and reading its translation, turning on Translated subtitles during a call, opening Face to face mode. Let her know she has nothing to pay, since you manage the subscription. And if she’d rather talk than type, tell her to send voice messages in Spanish: with Premium on your side, they reach you transcribed and translated.

What translation can’t do, even as a gift

Premium translates messages, not photos, documents or PDFs. Machine translation can stumble on humor, idioms, proper names, typos and messages that mix two languages; “Show original” is always there. Politeness levels, which run deep in languages like Japanese, Korean or Thai, are often flattened, so a translated message can look curt when it isn’t. For medical, legal or financial matters, check with a professional or a human translator.