Snail is currently paused and is not making new matches right now. You can register your interest in joining a future cohort.
You send all mail to our PO Box, and we forward it on to your match. With our (un)patented envelope-inside-an-envelope system, you’ll seal a letter to your match in the inner envelope to protect your address and theirs. It costs you an extra stamp, but it’s worth it for your peace of mind. Your match only sees your letter, your first name, and your photo. Nobody at Snail will read your mail, other than your intro letter.
We’ll provide envelopes, but not stamps. Your intro letter only needs one envelope, which you should provide yourself.
That’s up to you. We will follow up with you after some time to see whether you took things (off-)offline.
We’re based in NYC, and the first pilot needed geographically viable matches. Future cohorts may begin locally in NYC or wherever there is enough interest to support thoughtful matches.
You are welcome to join the future cohort list from elsewhere. This helps us understand where there is demand.
Email us, and we’ll remove the offender from Snail.
If matching resumes, a human will make all matches. We do use an open-source, locally-hosted language model to help us parse and code your intro letter. We do not share any identifying details with language models. We are serious about protecting your data.
We’re not thrilled about the AI revolution / coup and its socioeconomic or environmental implications, but we do use AI in the strictly limited capacity outlined above in order to make our startup social enterprise project economically feasible.
Snail is a social enterprise (at this stage, more of an experiment than a startup) whose mission is to facilitate offline human connection and creativity. We see this work as an investment. By extension, we also want you to invest.
Snail is paused, and pricing for any future cohort is TBD. We’ll share timing, pricing, and participation details before asking anyone to begin matching.
No. You are encouraged to handwrite because it’s a nice ritual and produces a nice artifact. But anyone with poorly legible handwriting should type and print out their letters. We don’t allow you to email your letters to Snail in order to preserve everyone’s privacy.
USPS has a 97%+ delivery rate. We encourage you to take a photo of your letter to safeguard against this possibility. We will follow up with both partners when we suspect a letter has been lost.
We like mail. Mail is special. For more, see Walter Benjamin.
If we don’t hear from you for a while, we will deactivate your account, but you can always request reactivation.