PenPalWorld

I do believe this site has been online one year less than *I* have! Seriously, that's pretty impressive. How long have you been online? Meaning *after* you spent ages denying you'd ever touch the internet? (Those were the days and I remember them!)

Yes, yes, yes, people are paranoid on PenPalWorld, just like they are paranoid on most "social" sites minus the major names out there that remove inhibitions like alcohol does. The thing is there are a ton of options for searching on this site and this is a major advantage to the other sites. You can look for recently joined, recently logged in, age, gender, whatever the person feels safe enough to share or lie about. (Of course!) Those search options are the thing you really want to investigate and get a good sense of to find who you are looking for.

The other really great thing with Pen Pal World is they give a big list of smileys which show a theme of interest and if you look for others with that smiley interest you shall be very intrigued. (The best one for postal mail geeks is "I feel like Snail Mail". Really! That darn thing works!)

So what many of these reviews lack is pointing out the major options in the search parameters. That is the big advantage at Pen Pal World, along with their longevity. I recommend this site and forking over some cash if you can, especially when you do find decent pals. Might as well return the favour. It's great to have other options but considering, well, "Interpervs"? Y' gotta admit this ain't lookin' too bad!

(My User-Name is Sir Simon Milligan on PPW, btw. ;)

I joined and was blocked within about 30 minutes. On receiving email notifications that I had messages, I tried to log in and was told that my account had been blocked. That's it. No further information. No way to contact them and ask about it as their contact page is missing (404).

I hadn't written anything untoward in my intro and had not even put up a profile picture.

Waste of time, but at least it wasn't much time. Other sites are available. Interpals seems fun, so far.

I was member since more than one year (I think 15 months). Suddenly, they blocked my account without any explanation. And they have no mail to contact, no staff who explain the reasons my account was blocked. I didn't anything bad, I always had a good behavior and can't understand their decision.
I had friends, people with I was used to talk to... all is lost. Thank you Penpal, you are a very very bad website

I upgraded my subscription to Pen pal world, to be able to send more than 3 messages a day. Nothing happened after I paid. There is no contact information on the site. On the privacy page there is a link to a contact from, which leads to a 404. So, I wrote Pen pal world on their PayPal email address, no response. Except that my profile got blocked the same day. I will try to get my money back through PayPal. When I login, it says; 'profile has been cancelled', but this very same page also asks for donations... In any case, Pen pal world's site looks as if it has been made in the 90s and support is nonexistent.

Use to have an account years ago made friends that have still lasted. I decided to join again only to be messaged by scammers and perverts. Don't trust anyone on this site, not worth the head of dealing with scammer $#*!s in the state of the corona virus

I noticed a lot of people complaining about scammers and fake profiles. This is almost inherent to the internet today. Any and every platform has the same issues- FB, IG, etc. Where this becomes a problem is if your inbox is flooded by scammers and you're on a free account.

With a free account you can send 3 messages per day and read (perhaps up to the last 10 send to you). I understand the frustration, but if you're dedicated to finding genuine people and have good intentions, the cost of VIP is worth it.

With VIP you can block countries, write more emails and comments, and have a few dedicated features.

Contrary to other reviews, I've always received a reply from support when something is awry. I have support tickets from 2016 to 2020. - See attached photo

As far as I know, each banned profile is done manually. It's a small team who approves every single photo and every ban. There is no community ban algorithm. If you get banned, you did something wrong, your message was reported and reviewed, or you tried to do something you're not allowed to do (like pander for relationships other than friendship).

The bad:

The website is a bit dated and the interface could use work or upgrading.

Yes, there are scammers, but with VIP you can block certain countries who are prone to scam, and access all of your inbox/messages. Just like any other social media platform, block is a great tool.

Yes, people ghost you. It happens everywhere else too, including texting someone. It's no fault of the website that someone doesn't want to talk to you.

Blocked me for no reason other than to. Never approved profile photos.
Rude and mean spirited.
Filled with 60-75% fake profiles.

90% of the profiles are fake on this site. No one wants to be your friend or learn different languages, unless your a 25 year old woman with a racy profile picture. Was a member for 6 months off and on. Everytime I would reactivate my profile, it didn't take long to remember why I deleted it in the first place.

I'd stay away, especially if you are a female! The idea is great but in fact there are many African males on there who are pushy and I don't think they got the best intentions. I decided to delete my account after 1 day. I thought it would be fun to have a few people from over the world to write to but not via this website (or any other for me, I'm done). Shame!

It seems pointless to leave a profile description especially when you say "NO MEN" women Only please. And MEN message you anyways! Plus there is no "Contact" to ask a question to! I have made some Great Friends there, but the fact that men don't understand NO MEN, is ridiculous.

I'm a New Yorker in Japan. A penpal in Arizona recommend PenPalWorld.com to me. I joined yesterday (12/9, JST), and I wrote a decent profile. Within a few minutes, I got a page saying my account was "temporarily blocked" for 24 hours. So I waited.

Today, I signed in again, only to see the page declare, "Your Account Is Blocked / Your account has been blocked at PenPal World." I searched around the site to contact technical support. I found a link to the "support page." Yet I got this message:

"That's An 404 Error - Page Not Found / You have tried to open a page at PenPal World which does not exist."

The day I had joined, I received two confirmation emails from site founder/webmaster, one Jakob H. Herrmann. The email address was noAnswer(at)penpalworld.com. In other words, there's no way to contact anyone about what happened to my account.

My time and effort were completely wasted. Frankly, the experience with PenPal World was a major disappointment.

I joined as a 13 year old girl, my 13 year old daughter was excited by her experience on this site. As a 44 year old woman I did not expect such easy access... to young children! My opinion is this is dangerous and I will ensure my child has no access. I could easily have been a 55 year old man portraying a child no barriers no age check no safety! In this day and age things should be more secure

I was thinking of registering my teenage child but found the racist term, Nigerian scam used in the site, despite dating scams now a worldwide phenomena. As my teenager is Nigerian-british, we don't feel we can trust a site that already racially profiles her.

There are lots of nice people there, a few nasty ones and lots of scammers. I reject anyone who gives me their contact details immediately. Chat with the people there by messages and if ye like each other, then start chatting off the site. I've started writing letters to 2 people there within the last 10 weeks. I highly recommend the site but you need to be patient & vigilant.

I joined Penpal World on a months subscription on September 28th 2020 but on 12th October they informed me that i needed to renew my VIP Membership and yet i still had 2 weeks to run also when i tried to contact them its impossible because they removed there support page? How very Convenient?

Can't create an account because apparently my country is blocked. What a nice profiling you did there. So apparently when we're from certain countries we're automatically a scammer, no chances given.
But reading the other reviews tells me that it's a blessing in disguise anyway. I don't want to waste my time on a website full of perverts and scammers.

I joined in the hopes of finding interesting people from around the world to chat with, and was contacted non stop by people who would ask for your Email address. Many seemed legitimate, until you never received a reply. With the only 3 message a day credit limit (which is absurd!) You kind of understand why someone would ask for this. Over 95% of the profiles are fake, with images of syndicated photos taken from the internet. Mostly young attractive women... perfect for a scam artist to con pathetic sings men. My advice is stay away from this site! I have activated and deleted my profile several times. Every time it is a bad experince! I have never found a sing legitimate friend on this site, that claims to have such success ratings. I do not know if better site exist, but this one has been an absolute joke!

Any one rating this site above a 1 is probably one of the scammers or a pervert. There are 55 yo men seeking 5 yo female's. This is just a hub for child trafficking. The owner must be one of the pervs to allow it. The men send dic pics and video dic pics and the site won't block them. The Feds need to take this site down permanently. Just run from it.

I've been a member since 2007. Met some very nice people, a couple whom I wrote to for quite a few years. However, 12 yrs down the track, I've decided to pause my account for the time being. I need a bit of a break. Recently, I've had a few women writing to me who turned out to be men. A couple of them came right out & told me, they thought it was a great joke! Why do the majority of people have to be someone they're not online? I don't get it. My trust in online friendships has been broken. Its very unfortunate, as I loved penpalling & meeting new people from around the world.

Having said all that, Penpal World is a great penpal site, run by a man who does things right for all the members. He is continually banning profiles of people who are scammers or have been complained about by others. The fees are good. I think they are very reasonable. I live in Australia & after being a member for a year or so, I decided to pay for a lifetime membership. I paid about $US110.00 & that is valid for 99 yrs. I think thats value for money, don't you? :) Lifetime membership entitles you to write as many messages/comments as you like each day. It also allows you to keep every message that is sent to you, & you also get to keep every message you send to others. As a lifetime member, you can enforce your penpal settings, ban countries, have a "hot list", & many more perks. It is money well spent, for sure. Lots of people complain about losing their messages because they are not a paid-up member. What's the big deal? Just pay the fee that is being asked. Its not much. And for you guys in the USA, you pay a lot less than I had to. If you don't want to pay for a lifetime membership, there are other monthly options available. People say they can't afford to pay. Are these the same ones who can afford to buy smokes & grog each week, or gamble, without even giving it a second thought? Food for thought:)

I may unpause my account on Penpal World at some stage, I may not. Haven't decided as yet. For the most part, it was a nice experience. If you are looking for penpals, I recommend you go with Penpal World. I think its the best out of all of them. I'm enjoying my friends in the "real" world at the moment.

Thanks to you all for taking the time out of your busy day/nite to read my comments. Cheers!

When it comes to penpal sites, this is a fairly typical, bland site. Its use isn't intuitive enough for it to be worth using as often as Interpals, and while there are some features you can get if you're willing to pay for them, I don't see why anyone would want to hang around long enough to sign up for that stuff.

I know the free features might seem generous to an outside observer, but consider this. Pen Pal World is extremely strict with the number of messages you're allowed to send per day on a free account--that number is three. While there might be limits on the number of messages you can send on similar sites like Interpals, that limit is high enough that you probably won't ever reach it unless you're just carpet bombing everyone you see with messages (and I believe with Interpals specifically, the limit is based on the number of individual users you can contact in any given day rather than the number of overall messages you can send).

While you might be inclined to pay for an account, I don't think there's any real reason to do that. You can get similar kinds of services on different sites that do it better and won't charge you for it.

For starters there are too many restrictions placed on non paying members. It's the most ridiculous business model I've ever encountered. As a free member you're entitled to a profile and three messages and three profile comments a day. If you receive four messages in your inbox the fourth one is automatically deleted never to be read again. There are plenty of crazy pervert scammers, so your inbox will fill up quickly and unfortunately anyone genuine responding to your profile will likely get lost in the shuffle.
Plenty of people will try to use the comment section in your profile to carry on a conversation with you but if you've already exhausted your limits for the day it could take awhile to exchange emails and get the pen pal relationship up and off the site. That sucks, if you're going to have a social site then communication should come easily. Some users bypass this problem by including their email address in their profile, but that's not my scene, at least PPW is fairly good about dealing with scamming or abusive users, I wouldn't want to have to sort through all that spam in a throwaway inbox.
One of the most annoying things I've found with the site is that you can't even delete emails that you've already read! I guess that's for paying members only? How cheap is that? And what members? This site has very low user inventory. Not many people are ever online. Again, it's such a hassle to be a member on the site, if there weren't so many restrictions I'm sure more people would sign up creating greater user inventory. There are literally zero incentives to have a paying membership. You pay something like $10 USD a month to get emails from spammers and to wait and hope for a few more real people to sign up. The site even looks like it was made in the 90s, the user interface is horrible and not well organised, unlike Interpals, PenPalWorld has messages, users and friend requests hidden under various tabs. It's not intuitive at all, it's confusing. Even marking your marital status isn't in your profile (which would make sense) it's under your account information but it's visible on your profile when people search for you -figure that out!
Overall, I would never use or return to the site unless they dropped the paid membership and cleaned up their UI.

This used to be a great page for finding friends. I originally signed up 5 years ago and actually found someone who I still talk to on a regular basis. However, it has gone downhill since then.

I deactivated my account in 2016 and reactivated it a few weeks ago. All the interesting people are gone. Now you'll get flooded with messages from entitled sleaze balls from god knows where that don't bother reading your profile. It's basically turned into a hunting ground for young men who are looking to prey on women from certain countries they want to live in. If you're from the U.S., the UK, Australia, or even Germany or Austria - buckle up.

Also, I don't understand why people can see who has blocked them. What's the point of that? If you block someone they should not be able to see that you blocked them and/or see your profile. They shouldn't be able to see anything you're doing.

I read a few reviews giving this site a bum review IMO so I thought I would write why I think it's a good site all things considered. I am not affiliated at all with the site just a user.

I know it's costly to run a website so not sure what people using it would expect for free. They only allow non paying members 3 messages a day for free which I think is fair considering that they ALSO have messages at each profile where someone can leave a short comment there up to 10 messages a day for free.

While I can't remember the name of another similar site that only allowed one or two credits a day if you are lucky if you are a non paying member there but in addition to that if you were on the free part of that site you could not send any messages to someone there that was/is a paying member there. No messages at their profiles other than the one or two a day that non paying members are allowed to send. At PenPalWorld they do allow non paying members to send messages to paying members.

You always have to watch out for scammers on any site but it's pretty easy to tell when you get spam and they do have a report/block on each profile that non paying members have access to.

The only reason I don't give a 5 star review is because you can only see the last 3 messages that are sent to you and that you send others if you are a non paying member so that's inconvenient especially for people that can't stay signed on and be there frequently to get their messages However, if you go to someone's profile there it will let you know if you have sent them a message before which is really good if someone is like me and can't remember if they sent a message to someone or not. I can't remember if it also reads that they have sent you a message before if they have sent one to you before, too.

It also allows people to see if someone has read their messages which is another plus.

No site can be blamed when a person doesn't get replies to their messages. It is up to individuals to reply or not so the owner would have no control over that.