Slowly: Make New Friends

This app is a treasure! I have mainly used it for language practice and I find that it's a great method because you get to have real conversations without the pressure of coming up with a response quickly. While some conversations lasted longer than others, I found everyone to be kind and not judgemental. I recommend it to anyone who is curious about other cultures, is learning a language, or just wants to replicate an old school penpal experience.

The "remove" feature doesn't work as nicely as hoped. Ideally, if a user removes you, you will visually see that they blocked you. meanwhile, In reality if a person blocks me, I become "shadow banned". I can still send letters to them, but they will not receive them. I wouldn't want to spend time writing a letter to someone who won't even receive it, or keep a person on my friends list who I can no longer contact. Besides that, the app is basically perfect.

Wouldn't let me sign up no matter what nickname I put in. I tried characters, no characters, no upercase, etc. the message is the same: "the name contains characters that are not allowed". The nickname system is very unclear. What is not allowed? It is frustrated to get stuck and not know why. I tried installing and reinstalling, as well. Please, fix this issue and have an explanation of what's allowed and not allowed.

Great for finding pen pals if you can write. But my drop in rating is mainly coz of the greed with ad revenue. They went from 15 mins to one hour between ads citing not enough ads. But there seem to be enough ads for you to watch 2-3 ads worth a minute for just one coin every hour now. So 25-50 minutes worth of ads just to unlock one stamp. Terrible deal. And I have been a Plus subscriber before. Didn't offer much better benefits than the free version. eg Photo sharing is very slow and limiting.

I really love this app since it helps me find language partners a lot easier than any other app! I have met one of my best friends through this app and so many like minded people with similar hobbies, so I highly recommend it! I have noticed an issue with drafts to friends though. After the letter becomes longish, I can no longer scroll up to see what I typed. The letter stickies to where I last left off. I also recommend to change age range search to increments of 2 or 1 instead of 5.

It's an interesting concept and one I have been enjoying since day one. You sign up, fill your profile with a bio, interests, and an avatar, and find people to connect with from anywhere. You can add some filters or be automatically matched based on interests. When someone sends you a letter, you get notified who it is, where it's coming from (a general area for privacy), and how long until you receive it. You can't read it ahead of time which is part of the fun and appeal! Highly recommended!

Works well, and my pen friends so far have been fun to talk to. Conversation is not as shallow as other apps. And I'm learning about people around the world. I love it! (No technical errors at this time, smooth app.) My only requests would be more stamp designs and the ability to add minor customization to the avatars (I like that they are used rather than usual social media pictures).

2/15/20 update: nothing but error msgs for 2 days. I've been using Slowly since December 2018 and really like it. It's easy to use and has good filters for finding friends by age, interest, language, etc. I love the virtual stamps, too. Like other pen pal services, it's hard to find pals who write more than a couple letters before they get bored or realize it's more work than they thought, then they disappear. That's not the fault of the app, it's just the way things are. 🤷‍♀️

PLEASE DO NOT PAY THEM ANY MONEY!!! Paid for a subscription. Haven't been able to open the app in two days. Reinstalled and did that whole dance but it still won't work. It's frustrating throwing my money away like this. EDIT: Support reached out to me and couldn't fix it. Told me they'd look into it. That was eight days ago. Three devices and the app doesn't work on any. Istg it has to be my account somehow. My PAID account. I'm beyond livid at the lack of support.

I would say slowly is pretty good and it's honestly one of the only places where you can send long form letters and create actual friendships. I don't usually move my friends off of the slowly platform since I'm just fine sending letters back and forth. If you're trying to find a friend for texting on another social media platform, you can but make sure the other person is comfortable with it. Don't be pushy, as I've had people that are pushy with that kind of stuff and I usually block them.

This app is fun. I just hope it they improve the character count part when I am constructing my letter. I'd like to write as little or as much as I want without having to meet the criteria of the character count. When writing, it's annoying because I first set up the introduction section, then next page is the body. It's confusing. On "Messages in a Bottle" app it's all on one page and I can write as much or as little as I want without the sections broken up. Overall it's a pretty good app.

update! My notifications are working again - it was totally my fault, my phone turned off notifications as a battery saving feature. Have been using this app since 2020 to write letters back and forth with my partner, and we love it. Note: not an issue anymore! At some point in the last couple years, it stopped notifying me when I received letters. last time this happened, I triple checked my phone settings and the push notification settings. just now, I opened it to see I'd missed three.

I recently got Slowly, and the experience it gives is different than many other apps I have. You can create your own profile and describe what topics interest you. Based on that, you can find other people with similar interests. So far, I was only faced with a very welcoming and kind community. Unlike many other apps, you don't have to lie about your age. I truly believe you can find the perfect pen pal on Slowly, the just right person.

There's actually quite a lot of people on here, and I started getting messages quickly in Spanish and English. I am waiting for my first responses in the language I'm studying most. The filters are helpful and profiles are good. You use avatars instead of real photos and usernames if you don't want to use your real name. People write silly stories and serious letters. It's a fun range.

I have found a lot of penpals to write but most of them quit writing within a month or two, I understand people get busy. I don't like how one avatar item or one stamp can cost over 50 coins when the videos only give me under 10 each time a gift pops up. However, the app works wonderfully. I look forward to meeting new friends on there and in real life. The only problem is with really long letters, the app lags and makes it hard to type out. My Penpal said PC works better (:

I really like this. What they're doing is really cool, and they offer the experience ad-free, which as an anti-capitalist, I love lol. You can buy stamps (that you can use over and over, they're not one time use), that are very cute. I never do in-app purchases, but I even decided to buy some, because I wanted to support the developers. I already have 3 pen pals and it's only been 3 days!

I really like this app. However, I think it would be way better if it allowed users to be creative. By that I mean in the letter writing process maybe have different font styles and sizes, different "paper" colors (or patterns, frames...) different text colors, maybe even add some kind of feature to draw doodles, add stickers (we would therefore be collecting both stamps and sticker packages we send each other). I don't really know how doable these will be but the app has so much potential!

Sincerely, I recommend this app for everyone. It's very simplistic in terms of aesthetic and overall practical use. The ability to collect stamps is quite fun, and the sheer joy of being able to talk and meet with people across the planet is fantastic. If you're looking for ways to make pen-pals for social reasons, study reasons, language acquisition, you'll find all that and much more on Slowly. So yeah, 10/10.

It's a good app to try and, find friends. The lay-out, design & how it all works is simple and not complicated. And you can find some great people.Though the reason why I give it four stars is of some missing features. One I wish the age range wasn't just to 0-20. I think there should be a feature where you can customized people around your age group. Because if your 12 and, getting people who are 17 that isn't good. And I wish the voice messages were longer than 30 seconds.

What a brilliant idea! I really like making friends and know different cultures, ways of life. Also I want to learn languages. This app really works for this. I tried other apps which were all instant message types, and my experience had been that conversations ran shallow, never really got to know much about their ideas, aspirations, etc. My experience with Slowly has been quite the opposite. Instead of one liners, I send and receive letters with full concepts.