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What's free, and what's worth paying for
Every guide and tool on Pimpernel is free, forever. My Pimpernel turns them into your plan — your stage, your deadlines, your next steps. Keep it on this device for nothing; let Pimpernel Life save it to your account, watch every deadline, and put a real person on the questions that matter. And when something's genuinely high-stakes, a human checks it before you rely on it. Because the costly mistakes people make moving to France are almost always the avoidable ones — the wrong visa route, the deadline nobody flagged, the form sent back — and keeping you clear of them is the whole point.
Free to start · a human for the moments that matter · nothing sold to you that we don't believe in
To be clear: everything you can read on Pimpernel stays free, forever. A membership doesn't lock the guides away — it does the work on top of them.
What Pimpernel Life adds
The Move Pack gets you to France. Life keeps you on top of it — the renewals, deadlines and second-language admin that never quite stop, watched and handled year after year so French bureaucracy never catches you out. All saved to your account and kept current as your life changes.
01
The arrival planner, but saved and yours — a dated, personalised plan that remembers where you are, ticks off what you've done, and reshapes itself as your situation changes. One place that always knows what's next.
Built on your answers02
The ones that genuinely bite — validating your visa in the first three months, the carte de séjour renewal, your first tax return, even the fosse inspection. We remind you before, not after, so nothing lapses while you're busy living.
Reminders that matter03
Priority email to one of us on the questions that actually matter, long after you've landed — not an AI guessing from the open web. And when something has to be exactly right — a letter, your dossier, your first tax return — a proper human check is a click away.
The bit you can't get from ChatGPT04
Every wizard set to your exact situation, the downloadable guide library to keep and print, and the full Library in depth — all in one account that travels with you from the first "should we?" to your tenth year in the village — plus the members' forum, where the real conversations happen.
Everything, in one placeWho's actually on the other end
There's no shortage of information about France now — plenty of it generated fast, sounding confident and answerable to no one. Pimpernel pairs the two things you actually need: tools that find the answer quickly, and a real family who made this exact move to make sure it's right for you. It's us: Will and Jenny, who learned most of it the hard way; our children, who now win arguments in French; and a menagerie that got comprehensively out of hand — the dogs, the cats, the (many) chickens, and the donkeys we genuinely did not plan on.
Here's the split we believe in: AI finds it fast; a human makes sure it's right for you. We put good tools to work on the legwork — then, on the pieces where a mistake actually costs you, one of us steps in. So when Life checks your letter before you send it, or weighs in on the question that really matters, it's a real person reading it — someone who has stood in the same préfecture queue. That's the safety net: anyone can generate an answer now, and we're here to make sure it's the right one — and to still be here when it counts.
— Will, Jenny & the menagerie
Where we stop — on purpose
Pimpernel is practical guidance and a human sanity-check: the plain-English "here's what to do next", and a real person to catch the mistakes before they cost you. What we're not is regulated legal, tax or immigration advice — and we'll never pretend to be.
So when a question genuinely needs a notaire, an avocat or an expert-comptable, we say so plainly — and make sure you walk in prepared, with the right questions and your paperwork in order. Knowing where that line sits is part of the service.
On your own, or with us alongside you
| Free | Move Pack one-off | Life £15/mo | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Every Library guide, kept current | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| The free tools & wizards | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Your personalised plan, saved & living | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Deadlines watched for you | — | the move | every year |
| Document & dossier checklists, Where-to-live detail | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Wizards tuned to your exact situation | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| The downloadable guide & PDF library | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Priority email to a real person | — | your move | ✓ |
| Letters & dossiers checked by a human | — | add-on | add-on |
| The members' forum — post, reply & the full archive | Read a little | ✓ | ✓ |
One-off human checks — a letter, a dossier review, a first tax return — are à la carte for everyone, from £15. Buy one when you need it, or let the Move Pack handle the whole move.
The Pimpernel ladder
Four clean steps — and each one only exists because the last wasn't enough. Most people never need more than the first two.
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Free
Every guide, every tool and the newsletter — and you can start My Pimpernel, kept on your device. Forever, no account.
Start free →Pimpernel Life · membership
£15 /mo
My Pimpernel, in full. Your plan saved to your account across every device, every deadline watched with a reminder before each one, your documents in one place, and a real person for the questions that matter. £150/year. Cancel any time.
Pimpernel Checked
from £15
A real person reviews the high-stakes piece before you rely on it — a letter, your carte-de-séjour dossier, your first tax return. One-off, whenever you need it.
See what we check →Pimpernel Concierge
from £500
The genuinely complicated ones, done with you — a full household visa dossier, a knotty tax or inheritance case, a move with a lot of moving parts. We take it on.
Talk to us →Prefer to pay once and be done? The France Move Pack handles the whole move for a single £60 — your personalised plan, every deadline watched, and the paid detail unlocked across the tools. No subscription, yours to keep.
The occasional, genuinely useful note: new guides, the rule changes that actually affect British life in France, and the deadlines worth diarising. No noise, no hard sell.
No spam, ever. Unsubscribe any time.
Questions, answered
The Pimpernel promise stays the same whether you ever pay us a penny: honest, current, British-in-France know-how, with nothing to sell you that we don't believe in. The Move Pack just does the work.