Hotly, at a glance.
Hotly at a glance: the product, pricing, payments, license, team and contact, in one place.
Updated
- Name
- Hotly. Penpal is the name of Hotly's paid-message inbox; some older pages and the install command use it.
- What it is
- Hotly is a paid inbox for creators. Share one link. People pay $5–$20 to write to you. Reply when it suits you. Stripe pays you.
- Who it's for
- Creators, coaches and experts whose DMs fill up with questions, brand pitches and thank-yous they answer for free.
- What fans pay
- $5–$20 per message. The creator sets the price to unlock a photo.
- Plans
- Hosted: $5.99/mo + 20% commission, or $9.99/mo + 10% commission on Hosted Plus - servers, updates and backups included. Self-hosting the free code has 0% commission but costs about $430/mo in servers and developer time, plus ~$600 to set up.
- Payments
- Fans pay by card when they send a message. Stripe pays you out to your bank. Self-hosted, it's your own Stripe account.
- Open source
- Yes, under the Apache 2.0 License. Code on GitHub
- How to start
- Request a hosted plan - no card needed - and we'll email you to set up your inbox. Self-hosting needs a Linux server, Docker, a domain, and your own Stripe, Firebase and SendGrid accounts.
- Team
- Bhavneet (engineering), Kimora (marketing), Saloni (design), Ray (product).