Global Penfriends Reviews 

I've been using the site for a week and I'm deleting my profile. I'm not satisfied with how it works; there are much better pen pal clubs out there.

Turns out, that site does not only restrict free members with one daily message (which I could live with), but also - without specific reasoning - forbids free members contacting 20% of members (new ones allegedly "that they wouldn't receive too many messages" and paying customers, I assume).

That 20% has been 90% of all the "smiles" I have given and received. If either can do more than "smile" to each other, the options are to pay overprized membership or to get out of the site, which does not help to find friends.

It also restricts content of messages: giving any contact information outside of the site itself for a month (people are tied to month of "chatting" instead of actual letter-writing) - like e-mail addresses, phonenumbers or other social media accounts are forbidden. While I don't mind phonenumbers and personal info being restricted, I find it strange that people can exchange postal addresses, which I would find more questionable than sharing social media account... and a month of chatting is a rule without any other reason that power in wrong hands, if people wish to be writing letters instead if chatting online.

Yes, I agree with the rest: the site isn't easy to navigate, space for writing introduction is awfully limited and people with same preferences hard to find. Generally I don't care what people pick as their interests from the long list - I care what people choose to write about themselves.

Customer service - not making any improvements. There are better sites for free where people can contact whomever they please - isn't the purpose connecting people?
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Reply to to global penfriends:

Thank you global penfriends for your reply - I truly appreciate the ostensible interest and effort (especially if its not AI generated reply) on sunday of all days. However, I can't agree with all what was stated here, and it seems you either misunderstood parts of my review but at least ignored the root for my complaints. In fact it seems that you are more interested of being right than for considering any changes based on wishes from unwanted members (free).

Frankly, I don't believe there are many people who are giving you any honest feedback at all - whether positive or negative - unless being completely disappointed and frustrated (like me) or pleasantly surprised (must be paying customers and new people on this hobby without knowledge of better). Majority don't care enough of your site's existence to write down any reviews at all, so assuming to know how people truly think of your site based on your claimed feedbacks alone, does tell a story of your actual understanding about the matter. These reviews around here aren't exactly commended, so where is all this positive feedback from your happy customers? Oh, let me guess... only paying customers can see it?

I am a free member, with zero interest for paying of a membership, while the assumed cons wouldn't benefit me enough. I am known for appreciating quality over quantity, so that surely is not the root of my complaint. I am keeping only a few penfriends and am not seeking many more - that should give an idea of how actively I wish to send out messages to members on your platform. I have been writing letters roughly for 30 years - just as long as you have been keeping this site up, but while I have improved as a writer - have your site improved as penpal platform? I appreciate quality penfriend-sites over quantity / yours is not on top of the list.

For your information - I did not claim that there is only one message-limit with already existing conversations - I claimed there is one to start new conversations. While I am a member seeking for quality and contacting a new person maybe once within six months or even a year (yeah, your selection is not as outstanding as you would like to think for actual writers) the limitation of contacting only one new person does not bother me even if it would be once a week or a month - restricting who a free member can be contacting does.

The "smiles" are like clowfaces with this issue - noone knows who can be writing a message and who cannot. While your site still sends out daily penpal-matches even for free members - could you not recommend people who cannot be contacted with your restrictions?

I also disagree that any writer with decent writing skills, and some expectations would consider 1400 characters "substancial". Could you remove the section of introducing one's location, and let people use those saved characters for properly introducing themselves and explain what they are seeking instead, if manual labour workers can handle only so much characters?

Oh, and your add-free campaign does not impress me much, but congratulations for the achievement.

I may not be a quality member nor you a site.

Very very Unfair. My messages to penfriends have been blocked. Our USA penfriend simply stated that she wanted to trace her family ancestors. All I said was that a friend of our family is a successful geneologist but that she would need our penfriends family name to start work. For that we have been blocked for gods sake. No appeal no ability to get s response from GPs We feel like criminals what on earth have we done wrong. Chris snd Sue UK

I had my account closed because I am residing in a mental hospital. This is not explicitly forbidden, but prisoners are which I understand. But I felt offended by the curt questions they asked me in an insensitive manner. A smattering of understanding on their behalf would go a long way. The website looked nice but they rely on an annoying pay model- free accounts may only send one message a day. If you need extreme caution and be ironically afraid of strangers, perhaps this website is ok.

They deleted my profile without any warning. I had made really good friends and I lost everything because I tried to share my contact information discreetly. They said my account was fraudulent and I breached their terms. Why should an AI program decide who is being genuine or a scammer? It should be up to me to decide when I trust someone with my phone number, but they make up these silly rules and destroy your happiness just like that.

This is a parasitic company that exploits both the emotion and time people invest in creating on line penpals.
I joined in April of this year and over the course of a couple of weeks started writing to four people in America. Over the weeks I established polite and entertaining conversations with all of them, enjoy UK/US banter. More recently a couple more people contacted me. However, I did not reply as I did not want to be overwhelmed with too many correspondents.
So this morning I went to reply to the penpal I had been writing to the longest and her last message (which I had read) and discovered it had disappeared. At the bottom of the page it stated my mailbox conversations were full. And of course immediately afterwards was the cynical "UPGRADE NOW" to read your conversations. As I stated I only have four penpals, and two others that have contacted me, but I have not replied to.
I am sure many people join this website just to have the occasional person to write to. I take a rather more cynical and critical view . I believe this company allow you enough time to build online relationships and friendships and then pull the rug out from under your feet.
In reading their responses to negative reviews there is an attitude of we are right, and if you criticise us you are automatically in the wrong. I daresay this review will receive a similar response. That's fine, I will be deleting my profile forthwith. I do not take kindly to being taken advantage of.

I spent a lot of time and effort writing honest descriptions of myself and the kind of longterm penfriend I was looking for, but my account was immediately deleted. Rather depressing and puzzling. It would be good if some communication were made as to why accounts are deleted.

Update: second attempt successful, done on separate device.

I got in, I searched for matching profiles, found a promising candidate after a little bit-- and it turns out this is one of 20% of members I am not allowed to message. No explanation. Something is just off about that approach, it gives me a bad feeling. If they want free members to suffer, close off parts of the functionality -- don't offer it *sometimes*. I wish I hadn't registered at all. It's too unpredictable. I don't want to spend time reading profiles only to find out I'm not allowed to message them.

Very disappointed with my recent experience with Global Penfriends. I tried more than once to communicate respectfully and resolve what I believe was a misunderstanding, even reaching out further for help, however there seemed to be little interest in actually engaging or helping resolve the issue.
What concerns me most is the lack of care shown toward the genuine friendships and connections that can suddenly end because of poor communication and dismissive customer service. A simple conversation could have resolved everything, instead the approach felt arrogant, unapproachable and at times almost like a God complex.

Thank you for the reply, however it still feels like a standard response rather than genuinely listening to or addressing the concerns I raised. I acknowledged the misunderstanding, apologised respectfully, and tried to resolve the matter in good faith, yet there still appears to be no real willingness to review or mend the situation. That is the most disappointing part of all. You need to start to properly care and not treat this like just a business model.!!

You ruined a friendship that was blossoming. You didn't care what I tried to explain to you. Everything said about how you operate is clearly right. What was the point of asking for further details you did nothing. Shameful company.!!

Its a good club. I notice that most people that use the site properly manage to find penpals. I found some wonderful friends from all around the world. So glad that a club is finally safe and removing profiles that are non genuine! yay GPF!!

It is not recommended ever to subscribe for premium or pay for any add-on services
people has been denied access to their profiles, including old account which they paid before the update and they struggled with the refund

I had account with this platfrom since 2021, when I finally subscribed to premium(out of respect) and for my passion to the site misson, my profile get deleted without warning, and the money was only partially refunded,( can monthly subscription is consumed in one day!)
and the reason was as they stated my profile looks like dating, despite me putting at the end of my profile I clearly that im on the site for frienships only.

the right soultion would be warning users if they mistakenly write something wrong in their profiles, not just delete and steal the money, this is so awful, and there should be a warning because you can't judge people for a word that they might accidentally put or for mentioning social media! no site ever deletes people's history and messages without prior warning
And if I didn't subscribe to premium, that wouldn't have happened to me it is my fault I sent money!!!!
He replied : "refund has been arranged"
It is not fully refunded as I said above they stole half of the money

I joined Global penfriends many years ago and then I thought it was a good site. Then over time they started taking privileges away from the user one at a time. Now this once friendly user experience is all about money. The ads are insane! I was charged $10.00 to be able to see all my mail messages and now you can only show messages from 5 pen-pals. So, what happened to what I paid for? Also I have to pay if I want to send more than one message a day to someone new. When I contacted them about privileges being removed I was told how they had to pay people to keep up the site. I know it takes time and work to keep up a site but not like these people are charging. Soon, at this pace, the site will stop having free access at all. They may reply to this review explaining themselves but the site was once a place to bring people around the world together and now it's about how much money they can make.

Global Penfriends was honestly a huge disappointment. The site feels outdated, clunky, and frustrating to use, like it hasn’t been improved since the internet was running on dial-up. Navigation is confusing, basic features feel unnecessarily limited, and the overall experience comes off as cheap despite expecting users to take it seriously.

What’s worse is how inactive and low-quality the platform feels. A lot of profiles seem abandoned or fake, and actually making meaningful connections feels nearly impossible. The matching system is weak, responses are rare, and the whole thing feels more like a ghost town than an active pen pal community.

For something that claims to connect people around the world, it does a terrible job of creating a smooth or trustworthy experience. There are way better platforms out there that don’t feel stuck in the past. Would not recommend unless you enjoy wasting time clicking around a broken-looking website hoping for something decent to happen.

Be very careful if you are a woman and ask for penfriends of both sexes. Two men wrote to me and both were scammers. One was detected very quickly but the other I wrote to for two months before he asked me for $50,000. Avoid being taken away from the website onto WhatsApp, men talking about their future with you almost instantly, love bombing, anyone working on oil rigs, people who say they were born not in the country they live in.
Watch out for Charles Raphael Laurent or any combination of those names in particular, who lives in St Denis, Paris. Report any suspicious texts to their admin straight away.

Joined many years ago and wanted to let people know that this site is a gem and works well IF you are just after friends from around the world. I now have friends from all over.

I'm just placing my response to my previous review as another review here to possibly hear something back from GP:
*Edited Reply:
Thank you for your response! I am grateful that a Global Penfriends team member took the time out of their day to look over my review, however; the explanation provided in response to my review still does not exactly aid with helping me solve my issue. When I was a member of the site I had no social media, so sharing "social media information" could not have been flagged. Secondly, from what I can recall, my penpals and I exchanged mailing info far into our online messaging journeys, and we continued to keep in touch through mail. If fraud had occurred, it would have been reported to Global Penfriends from my penpals' end or mine. Essentially, my main issue with this approach to potential fraud is that it will inevitably remove many users who are acting in good faith, effectively penalizing genuine human connections made over years (that some may not be able to reach again) because they don't fit a rigid algorithmic pattern. By prioritizing automated flags over the actual lived experience of the users, the platform creates a "guilty until proven innocent" environment, and yet I haven't had the chance to prove my innocence. I would truly appreciate it if I could receive a reply to the email I had sent to the Global Penfriends provided contact so that the specifics of my case can be more directly discussed! Who knows, maybe the issue with my account may not exactly be related to fraud and could be something else that I am unaware of? I apologize for rambling, but I really enjoyed using this site, and it would be great if I could access my account again.

I have used this site for a while and managed to reach out and correspond with some lovely people from some fantastic places. I do not understand the negative reviews. It is what it is a safe secure place to find Penpals.

UPDATE: As usual, just like in other reviews, they gave a reply that doesn’t make sense. They said there’s no way to verify that it’s me, even though I offered to record a video of myself. They didn’t even try to investigate the situation or contact me first.
They also claimed that many people blocked me, which I don’t remember happening. It’s strange that they only brought this up now after I returned to use the platform.
I’ve never seen a business that wants to lose customers like this.
I recommend using InterPals instead.
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Very bad experience and no appreciation for loyal members at all.

I had an account with them for many years. I recently came back to use it and updated my profile picture. Suddenly I found that my account had been completely removed.

When I contacted them, they said it was because they found my photo online and automatically assumed I was using someone else’s picture, even though it is 100% my photo and the social media account where it appears has the same name as mine.

I even offered to provide my ID or record a video to prove that the photo belongs to me, but they did not seem to care or offer any way to restore my account.

Please be careful. You can create an account, build connections, and invest time on this platform, and then suddenly lose everything without a clear or reasonable explanation.

I regret using this site for all these years, as I feel there is no appreciation for long time loyal members.

Their new security features flags you for even mentioning a social media platform.
The system will send you an email warning you of account suspension and that a manual review (reading my private message) has been done to confirm.
I emailed them telling them that I had NOT given out personal information and they bragged about what a good job their new security system is doing.
After this, my account looked normal, but I was never again able to receive a message from the one close friend that I had on there.
We are now seperated for life. Very sad, I deleted my account today.