PenpalsNow! -- Help Desk: Frequently Asked Questions

What is PenpalsNow?
PenpalsNow is a FREE pen pal service intended for people of all ages who wish to find pen pals with full range of interests.

How many pen pal ads are available at PenpalsNow?
This information is daily updated and visible on our home page. More than 50 people submit their pen pal ads to PenpalsNow every day.

I don't have an e-mail address and want to find some e-mail penpals...
If you access the internet from your office or school and don't have an e-mail address there, use free e-mail service such as Hotmail.

Submitting Your Ad to PenpalsNow

My country is not listed among country selections. What should I do?
Look again! Now all countries are listed as options in PenpalsNow ad submission form.

When is my entry added to PenpalsNow database?
Most ads are added to our database the moment you submit them, but not all of them - ads in 12-15 and 16-18 age groups need to be approved by PenpalsNow before appearing in our listings. The same goes for all ads that contain potentially improper languge. These ads will be screened by a real person and added to PenpalsNow if they are approved. This may take a couple of minutes or up to 48 hours.
In any case, if you submitted pen pal ad with your e-mail address listed, you should receive a confirmation e-mail when your ad is added to PenpalsNow.

Modify Function

What is this "Modify" function?
Modify function lets you edit your ad or completely delete it. You need to know the email address and password which you filled in when submitting your ad to PenpalsNow.

My password doesn't work and I cannot login!
This can only happen when you mistype your password or e-mail address.

I forgot my password!
Use Password Lookup page to lookup your password and have it sent to you via e-mail.

Somebody added my email address to PenpalsNow and I don't want it there.
You should have received e-mail notification from PenpalsNow including information needed to delete your entry, so removing yourself from our database should be no problem.

Security and Privacy

How secure is PenpalsNow?
PenpalsNow is almost completely open to public, meaning that anyone can view your pen pal ad, and not only those who have also submitted their ads (in other words, members) which is the case with many other pen pal services.

Your PenpalsNow! password is not listed anywhere and cannot be accessed via World Wide Web - no one but you can edit or delete you pen pal ad!

Finding a Penpal

How do I find a penpal at PenpalsNow site?
There are two ways to do so. You can browse our dynamically generated penpal listings by category (Browse section) or you can use PenpalsNow search engine, which lets you specify sex. age group, country, hobbies and displays only ads that match your criteria.

About penpal listings... are penpals listed in any particular order?
Yes, most recently added penpal ads are listed first.

Are only e-mail penpals available?
Yes - mandatory ad activation by e-mail was introduced in 2006, making e-mail a required field and effectively disabiling snail mail ads. Snail-mail only feature might be added again in the future.

I want a snail mail penpal. How do I find one?
Since ad activation was introduced in 2006, snail-mail-only ads cannot be submitted anymore (i.e. ads without valid e-mail address). You can still find snail mail penpals at PenpalsNOW as some people write their full addressed in their ad.

Penpal Ads, Listings,...

I tried sending e-mail to a person whose address I found at PenpalsNow, but received an error message saying the address does not exist.
Some e-mail addresses in PenpalsNow ads are no longer valid or used by people who submitted the ads. This is beyond our control. You should try finding an ad that was recently added to PenpalsNow, as older ads are the ones that tend to include no longer used e-mail addresses.
If you find an ad with out of date information, please let us know and we will remove the ad in question.

I submitted my ad to PenpalsNow weeks ago and still got no replies!
PenpalsNow is not a matchmaking service, we only list pen pal ads and make it possible for other people to view them. Whether you get any replies or not mostly depends on your ad - interesting pen pal messages will help you get noticed sooner.

Why is my country not listed in Browse by category section?
Browse section of the site does not include all the countries of the world, just those that frequently appear in our pen pal ads. In other words, we will list a country there if we have over 50 ads from that country in our database.
If you are looking for pen pals from countries not listed in Browse section, you can still do so using our Pen Pal Search...