Global Penfriends

If I could give 0 stars, I'll do it immediately.
I tried this site only to improve my English, I suggest to avoid it. A few years ago I was contacted by some time-waster (and bored) people, they wanted only information about my country because they were lazy to find them in the Net (they weren't really interested in my country and culture)
A lot of guys are not interested in other languages and cultures, they're narcissists and vain persons (they are know-it-all). No one of the users I contacted and I've been in contact was really interested in my mother tongue (Italian) and culture. Some of them insulted me with racial epithets, I reported them to the admin and nothing changed, they're still here. If you try to contact anyone, a few people will answer you: profiles are not reliable, and 5 stars reviews you find here are exaggerated.
If you're lucky to find someone who answer you, it doesn't last for a long time.
Messages you send to others are spied; if you write too personal questions, your profile will be blocked (you will be able to login, but if you click on my profile, you'll put out immediately). Many profiles are restricted unless you pay, it seems to be an extortion. This site is advertised as free, but in practice you have to pay if you want to use it. About the address you find on the site, you look on google maps and there is no building, only usual houses, perhaps this society is located elsewhere. Do you want to use it? It's up to you…

Global Pen Friends has a few things going for it. The search function is easy to use, and it's relatively easy to find people from the countries you're interested in and who are in the general age range you're hoping for. Compare this to Interpals, a site that I've previously said (and continue to think) is the best site like this, where the search function can be haphazard at times.

The obvious downside to this site is that registration can be a little more time consuming than it is for other sites like this. Unlike with other sites where you can fill out your profile at your own pace and as you see fit, this site requires that you fill out something for just about every part of your profile straight away, and with a minimum number of characters filled.

That might be fine for someone who naturally has a lot to say about themselves, but it's not so great for people who might prefer to talk about themselves with other people as opposed to writing about themselves on a public profile. It doesn't help that the minimum number of characters for the "What you're looking for" field is 90. The statement, "I'm looking for penfriends from the United States of America" takes sixty characters, which I personally think would be fine as a reason for that field when you're first signing up. You're almost forced to follow it up with some low level joke like, "Oh, and for someone to scientifically prove that Tonight Alive isn't the best pop punk band ever created."

Once you've filled out the profile, it can take at least two hours, and they say profiles are usually registered within ten hours. Maybe they've had huge issues with spammers in the past that I don't know about, but this is still an incredibly slow sign up speed. With other sites like this such as Interpals, Students of the World, and Pen Pal World, the registration speed is faster--almost instant, in fact; you just need to click the link they email you and it's fine.

The only way to get around this is... to pay a premium fee. And that tends to be one of the common issues with sites like this: they'll do a couple of things really well, but then they'll follow it up with a thing that's either weirdly limited, or they'll want you to pay them money to get the additional features which are more or less standard in other similar sites.

While I understand the logic behind doing stuff like this, I don't think it's really a viable thing when you have sites like Interpals and, for school kids, Students of the World which offer every feature they have for a premium account. Surely a better solution would be to have certain aesthetic things you can put on your profile if you pay a donation or something, but otherwise have it as is.

The other big downside to this site is that it assumes you'll only be interested in a single culture. While they'll try to hide this by asking you to pick a continent rather than a country, this is still implicitly the case. What if you're interested in both German culture and Indian culture, for example? Well, the site assumes that's not going to be the case and doesn't seem to allow for it.

While the search function is great, I think it suffers from a few glaring issues in the registration process. Surely there's been a number of people who've been driven from the site just because they feel it takes a little bit too long for their liking.

It's a really good website! However, some people don't reply back when I say that I want to be pen pals/friends, maybe they're Internet bots. Other than that, I have made some long lasting friends, thank you global penfriends!
Angel

They make it hard to be a free member and enjoy any services. They find ways to pressure you into paying which doesn't feel worth it. You'll find someone's profile that looks interesting, you'll go to write them and it'll say "20% of profiles are randomly blocked, please upgrade for unlimited access." But it seems like far more than 20% of profiles are blocked. Their interest isn't really in facilitating penpal friendships but just in getting paying subscribers. They should be more upfront about that and not tease users with the idea of a free site.

I wanted to quickly jump on here and let others know that I received the most wonderful feedback from the GPF team. I was enquiring about why it took so long for my profile to be reviewed and approved - they responded that they were ensuring that all content including profiles were socially responsible to ensure the website was adding to society rather than detracting - Wow i thought. If only the bigger social sites out there had the same philosophy! Great site - great admins!

I had high hopes of meeting friends on this site. Unfortunately, I met one person who was inappropriate and another who tried to scam me out of money. When I closed my account, due to this abuse, even offering to pay a partial amount and have them prorate a refund, all I got was nastiness. Stay far, far away from this site.

I was looking for a international penpal site that was purely for making new friends. There are so many penpal sites related to dating - but I was only interested in friendship - Thank you Global Penfriends for providing a safe and friendly environment to find genuine friends. I now have 2 new friends from countries that I hope to visit one day and I couldn't be happier. They have been my ray of light during uncertain times.

First of all, you write to the contact address they gave (*******@globalpenfriend.com), they will never ever answer.
They have deleted my account without notice and my photo is there. I asked them for explanation, I received nothing. I asked them I am concerned about my privacy because my photo is there, never received any answer.
Stay away from Globalpenfriends.com if you don't want headache and the most terrible service.

Well, the first thing is that I only got the two credits they gave in the beginning and both of them got spent sending a message to one person, so I think that it is a bug. And you don't know on what basis it gives out credits and so it sucks if you don't have premium.

I usually don't submit reviews but felt that in this day and age with all the uncensored websites around, its great to finally find a family. Content friendly site. I have never seen or met any unsavoury characters on Global Penfriends. Everyone I have met over the last few years have been so friendly and some have become what i hope will be lifelong friends! I joined as a free member for the first 2 years and eventually bought a membership to help sponsor the site and support their effort to keep a clean and safe website. You won't be disappointed with this club, their platform is obviously a labour of love.

I sent in an application for my daughter in August 2021 and we have yet to hear anything. So much for my daughter having a pen pal from this site. Do not waste your money.

Global Pen Friends has been an amazing website. Registering is super easy, you just insert a few questions about yourself (Interests, What You're Looking for in a Pen Pal, etc). I joined in 2020 during Covid, and met so many people. When life got back to "Normal," I stopped using it. Fast forward to 2023, I joined again, and have so many pen pals (About 8-10), and I'm still pen pals with one I met in 2020! Overall, I could say so many nice things about this website, but it would take too long! I definitely recommend joining, as it's a safe website with many amazing people! :)

I wish to say that Global Penfriends is probably the "Premier" site for finding and communicating with pen pals. I have been on other sites, but GPF is in a class by itself. My compliments to you.

I can't believe how bad this group discriminates against their members. The people you DO find aren't even real and their 5 Star reviews aren't authentic either. Save your private information and go somewhere else!

I wish I had seen the reviews of this site earlier. I am a medical professional and was interested in making a Spanish speaking pen pal to improve my rusty Spanish. They ask you to set an age range of people you're open to communicating with, so since it's supposed to be for making friends in other countries and not fir dating or hookups, I set the range for 21 and older. (I am in my 40s.) Next thing I know, they are writing me back implying that it is "unsafe" to set the age limit to over 21. Say what? I dont know if they are trying to present it as a penpal/friends site but actually running a dating site, or what, but along with the other comments who said this site was racist, they seem to be shady and dishonest about the kind of site they are running. Very odd.

Set up an account and used it for a couple of weeks. Now I cannot access the site. Would give it zero stars if allowed

I have been a member for over 7 months, and have yet to make a single friend. This site only allows you to send one message a day without paying. If you find someone you are interested in messaging, they will be randomly blocked, and then they will say "consider upgrading." GPF may not be as bad as Penpalworld, but its still pretty bad. No one wants to be your friend or learn a foreign language. The site is full of young women in their early 20's hoping to find a foreign prince charming, and full of dirty old perverts and scam artists. What a waste of time!

Being a person of color seems to be a red flag in and of itself for the white European admin staff of GPF. Ironically, I used to have an account with them which I paid for monthly (and for several years). Eventually I left for a few years when I didn't have the time to maintain a presence there.

Anyway, I recently tried to re-join the site only to find that this time they just deleted my profile after their "approval period" (which by the way they claim takes 8 to 10 hours but in my case took four days). As another reviewer mentioned, there was no explanation, no email, no request for further information to prove I was who I said I was. Just an arbitrary decision by a random individual, presumably based on their own personal prejudice.

Whoever runs this site now has clearly developed biases based on the color of one's skin. I'll take my monthly subscription and pay to join one of the competitors instead. Just be aware that if your face doesn't fit, your application will be denied.

I recently heard about team of journalists prepping a piece in which they're trying to root out racial bias online and who submitted the profile of a blonde female. It was totally fictitious yet readily approved by the GPF administrators. I think this says everything you need to know about the types of people running this site and in my opinion it's time they were called out on their practice of racial profiling.

A good example of a site that does one thing really well. If you want penpals for international friendship, its perfect. Its funny but it seems the only negative reviews for this club are from men that probably tried to use the site for dating :) Good work Global Penfriends for providing a family friendly and safe place to meet penpals.

First of all, I saw an article somewhere that said perhaps you could find a potential date on a penpal site. The first time I was signed up with this site, I tried doing just that. I had no problem with any administrator telling me otherwise. I was looking for a "potential" date but I wanted to make some friends. I know it's not a dating site but I didn't think I was doing any harm by putting the word "date" in my profile. What I came across was several, and I mean SEVERAL fake profiles of people that I had seen on other dating apps, so I knew they were all fake. I believe I complained to the company about this and of course, they did nothing. ----- Now, the second time I signed up, I guess I must have put the word date again because this time, they just went ahead and removed my entire profile without even telling me. Unbelievable. It would have been nice to inform me first before doing so, so that I could have just removed the word date. They didn't have to remove my profile like that but oh well, guess what? They're not hurting me by doing so. They just did me a FAVOR because I just read other reviews about how other people have also come across several fake scammers on that site as well. ---- Very very nasty behavior of the site administrators. ---- Oh, and the only reason I went back on this site in the first place was because I thought that maybe it would be different this time. I guess I was wrong. Never again would I even want to use this site; even if they asked me to come back on it. Obviously, they were not professional. Period.

I have been penpalling for my whole life and was happy to discover Global Penfriends about a decade ago.
The site was recently refreshed and its made my favourite site, even better!

I am usually a basic member but occasionally i will upgrade when i need to find new penpals. The basic offering is pretty good, you get to make a new contact every 12 hours and once you have made a contact - you can converse with them as much as you like.

The site is safe and i don't receive spam or middle aged men looking for a partner - i have set up my profile to ensure only females contact me - so perhaps this helps!

I have encouraged my grand children to check it out also - they love it also and have started sending real letters by post! It is so fantastic to see. With all the distractions of todays world - there is hope for our younger generation to find some quality communications.

Anyhow - i just love having penpals and was happy to share this wonderful site with others.

Fifteen years ago, I joined the Global Penfriends Penpal Club and found an extraordinary friend who has become an integral part of my life. Through handwritten letters exchanged by post, we shared everything about life, nurturing a deep and meaningful friendship.
Global Penfriends provided a genuine platform for forging connections and lasting friendships. From the very beginning, my pen pal, and I connected on a profound level. Through our letters, we discussed our dreams, fears, and triumphs, offering support and encouragement to one another.

The beauty of pen pal communication lies in the freedom to express oneself openly and without judgment. Despite the physical distance, our friendship flourished, untethered by appearances or societal expectations. We learned to truly listen and understand each other through our written words, cultivating an authentic bond.

Thanks to GPF, my penpals and I were brought together despite the distance. The club's commitment to privacy and safety fostered an environment of trust, enabling us to share our lives.

I have tried many different penpal sites in the past - now I stick to just this one.
I like that the club is focussed solely on International friendship rather than dating.