How much does Penzu Pro cost?

Penzu Pro costs $19 US per year. There is no tax or extra charges. You can pay with VISA, MASTERCARD, and Paypal here. There is a 30-day money-back guarantee with all purchases. Read more about our refund policy here.

Can my entries be read by others?

No! Unless you specifically share your entry, it is completely private and accessible only by you. As long as you keep your password safe, your entries will never be read by anyone else. You can even lock your entries with a second password for increased security!

Is Penzu different from blogging?

Yes, Penzu is very different from writing in a blog. While a blog is more commonly read by others, Penzu is read  by you. Entries are private by default and if you want, can be shared. With blogs, entries are public by default and privacy is a second (often buried) setting.

So feel free to write and do anything – no one is watching!

How do I change my time zone?

To change the time zone associated with your Penzu account, follow these steps:

1. Go to your Settings page by clicking on the “Settings” link at the top right of your page:

2. Click on “Settings for Entire Account” at the top of the page:

3. Find the Time Zone setting at the top. Select your zone and click “Save”.

The date on all entries (future and past ones) will be updated, and even your reminders will adjust to your new timezone…

Why is there a $1 charge on my VISA bill after upgrading to Penzu Pro?

Some people might see a $1 charge on top of the $19 charge for upgrading to Penzu Pro. Don’t be alarmed, this is just an authorization done by our merchant bank to ensure that your credit card is valid. It will be refunded to you in a few days. We don’t have control over this, but apparently it helps prevent fraud and faulty cards. If the charge doesn’t get refunded after a few days, please email us at support@penzu.com to let us know.

What is your refund policy?

If you purchase or renew a Penzu Pro account and decide you don’t like the service, you can get a refund within 30 days of purchase. You can get a refund if on your Account page, the Downgrade button says “Downgrade & Refund”, like so:

If it just says “Downgrade”, you are not eligible for a refund.

We don’t allow partial refunds, only full refunds. So if you purchase more than a one year subscription, you can only get refunded for the full amount.

We don’t refund purchases made through referral links. We also don’t refund gift purchases if the gift has been redeemed.

Refunds are debited back to the original method of purchase and can take up to a week to see on your credit card. Paypal refunds are instant.

What happens to my entries if Penzu goes out of business?

There have been a lot of questions over the years as to whether free Penzu users will be able to export their data should anything happen to our company. We wanted to officially answer the question here and in our help section to put your minds at ease…

Should Penzu have to close its doors (very unlikely scenario at this point since we are a bootstrapped company), all users will have the ability to export their journals into an XML or TXT file. We understand that you invest a lot of time and faith in Penzu, so we want to ensure that you never lose your hard (and most personal) work.

Currently, Penzu Pro users can export their data whenever they please. There’s a limit on number of entries that can be exported to PDF, but we’re working on that. So if you’re really concerned, you can upgrade to Pro and save your journals somewhere else for extra insurance. We do, however, backup, protect, and encrypt everything you write.

So in the extremely unlikely scenario that Penzu can’t continue to operate, you will always have access to what you own, which is your data. If you have any other questions, feel free to email us.

Where are all of my saved entries?

Your saved entries can be viewed on the Entries page, which can be accessed by clicking the Entries tab on the side of the pad. A picture of the tab is below:

Is Penzu completely free?

Yep! You can signup and use Penzu (with unlimited storage) at absolutely no cost. But Penzu Pro, which provides users with many more features, including military-grade security, customizations, and exporting of data, is just $19 US per year. If you signup for more than a year, you benefit from an increasing discount the more years you subscribe!Sign-up now!

How does spell check work?

Spellcheck can be found in the Formatting toolbar.

To spell check an entry, simply click the spell check icon and incorrectly spelled words will appear highlighted in light red. Then RIGHT CLICK on those highlighted words and suggestions for the correct spelling will appear. Select the desired spelling or ignore the word if you want the spelling to remain. Click on the screen-shot below for more detail:

Which browsers do you support?

Currently supported browsers are Firefox 3+, Google Chrome, and Safari 4+. Using Penzu on other browsers shouldn’t be too bad but there are definitely some known bugs. Please be patient while we fully support other browsers.

How do I pay for a Pro account using Paypal?

To pay for a Penzu Pro account using Paypal, choose “Paypal” from the Select Payment Method drop-down menu on the Pro Sign-Up page.

Check the “I agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.” box and click the green Submit button. From there you must login to your Paypal account and then just follow the instructions on the screen to complete your purchase.

How can I manually renew my Pro account?

To manually renew your Penzu Pro account, you must first turn-off auto-renew from your account page. Then you can manually renew your Pro account by following these steps:

1. Go to your Account page at https://penzu.com/account:

2. Click on “Billing Information”:

3. Then click on the “Renew” button in the payment info box:

After that, a renew popup will appear where you can enter your payment info if required. You can renew for multiple years (up to 5) and get a discount!

Does Penzu have a storage limit?

With both the free and Pro accounts, there is no storage limit. You can write as many entries and upload as many photos as you would like!

Can I change the date of an entry? (Pro)

Currently, you can only change the entry’s date if you have a Penzu Pro account. If you have a Pro account, simply click the date on the entry and select the  date you wish from the date picker dropdown. If this isn’t working for you, please ensure that in your settings the “Entry Display Date” setting is set to “First Created (default)”. You can learn more about how to change that: http://help.penzu.com/settings/can-i-change-the-display-date-on-entries-to-show-the-date-created-instead-of-edited/

How do I permanently delete my account?

To permanently remove your Penzu account from our system, please follow these steps:

1. You must first deactivate your account. To deactivate your account, visit your Account page:

2. Scroll down the page to the bottom and click on the “Deactivate” button:

3. Once deactivated you will receive an email confirmation. Then, you are required to make a request in writing via email to support@penzu.com to permanently delete your account. We will manually remove your account and all of your entries within 48 hours.

How do I search my saved entries?

To search your entries, visit your Entries page.

1. In the top right corner, you will notice a search box.

2. Enter your search term (or terms) and click on the “Go” button. Your results will appear below. To clear the search field, delete the words or letters in it or click on the “x” in the blue Search filter bar to display all of your entries again.

Search indexing isn’t in real-time, and can take up to a minute for our system to acknowledge certain words. For instance, if you write an entry at 8:01 pm that has the word “trip” in it, searching for “trip” may not yield any results until after 8:02 pm. Sometimes it’s faster (and sometimes slower), but this is something we’re constantly improving.

Note: We can’t search encrypted entries. For Pro users that have entries that have been locked with encryption, unfortunately we can’t search the contents of that entry until it has bee unlocked.

Do I have to lock each entry?

The reasoning around locking is for extra security. Penzu is already secure enough that you don’t have to lock each entry. To give you an example, using Penzu is like using a paper-bound diary with a lock on it—a really strong lock, not like one of those flimsy locks that comes with a Hello Kitty diary. The key to that lock is your login password. If you want to ensure that someone doesn’t get into your account, make sure your password is impossible to guess and contains letters and numbers.

Continuing with our metaphor, entry locking is like writing certain entries in your own made-up language. So even if someone does break the lock on your diary, certain entries they will not be able to read.

Penzu Pro, then, is like writing certain entries in a made-up language that was created by the CIA—not even the smartest people in the world would be able to decode your entry and the only person that could ever read it is you. It is so secure that if you lose the password to a locked entry, that entry becomes irretrievable.

So, to sum up, no, there isn’t a way around locking each entry. But, you shouldn’t have to lock each one as your account is already extremely safe and secure.

Penzu won’t accept my credit card…

If you are trying to upgrade to Pro and can’t, or are receiving this error: “Credit Card Transaction Failed” it could mean that you have entered incorrect information or that your credit card is invalid.

Please follow these steps to solve this problem:

1) Make sure all of your information is correct and your name, card number, expiry, and CVV match up properly with your credit card. We accept only VISA and MASTERCARD so Amex and other cards will NOT work.

2) Double check that you have entered your information properly in the checkout fields as indicated.

3) Try a different credit card if you have one.

4) A method that is sure to work is to signup for Paypal. You can add funds to your Paypal account from your bank account and then pay for a Pro membership with those funds using the Express Checkout payment method on the Penzu Pro sign-up page. While this isn’t ideal, and might take a while, it will work every time so long as funds can be transferred to your Paypal account.

5) Finally, as a last resort, you can use a friend or family credit card and pay them back. After all, it’s only $19!

Please contact support (support [at] penzu.com) if you are still having issues. We sincerely apologize for any people that are experiencing trouble upgrading.