Self-service obituary announcements have turned into a big success for software developer Wave2.

The iPublish AdPortal version is scoring a 50-80 per cent adoption rate in nearly 100 markets where it has gone live.

And it's not those anticipating their demise who are taking up the option, but funeral directors which have previously found preparing obituaries "an uncertain and time-consuming process", the company says.

"Self-service obituary announcements offer publishers a reduction in costly backend processing and a substantial increase in obituary revenue," says a spokesperson.

A proof and lineage-based price is created for approval, and the completed notice exported for publication and upload to Legacy.com.