Portable North Pole is a big deal at this time of year: it’s the online service that parents can use to get personalised video messages from Father Christmas. We’ve seen how popular the service is in previous years, but now we know what it has planned for Christmas 2014 – its seventh year in operation.

The Portable North Pole app is returning for Android and iOS devices, as a free download that lets you add your child’s picture, age, where they live and what they want for Christmas, before getting a personal video in return. There’s also an advent calendar with a mixture of videos and other surprises.

How does it make money? There’s a “Premium Video” option that costs £2.49 here in the UK ($3.99 in the US) that lets you upload more pictures, and get a richer video. And if you want to create as many premium video messages as you like, there’s a £6.99 Holiday Pass option – otherwise you’ll be paying £2.49 each time.

The company behind Portable North Pole reckons that its videos will be watched more than 100 million times this year around the world by excitable children. We’ll be giving it a try soon to see how it rates, because 2013’s app got a lot of criticism from parents unhappy at the way it worked (or rather didn’t work). Hopefully any gremlins have been ironed out this time.

PNP – Portable North Pole 2014 is a free download for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, and will also be a free download for Android – it’s due out imminently, so we’ll update this story with the link when it does.

And if that’s not enough Portable North Pole fun for your kids, there’s a separate PNP – Santa Sprint game available for iOS too. It’s a maze exploration game, with bonus video stories. It’s also free to download, but expect to pay £2.49 to unlock the whole game, and £1.49 to unlock all the videos.