Hi! My name is Andrew and I started this website with my friend Josef in October 1996 (even before Google was around) as a way for people all over the world to find penpals. Back in 1996 there were a few penpal websites, but the problem was that you couldn’t sign up. The only way to get your name added to the list was to e-mail the website owner and ask them to include your e-mail address.

That is when Josef said, “I can write a program that will make it automatic” and in three months we were the largest website for finding penpals.

Over time we changed our website from www.penpal.net to www.penpalnet.com, and changed our code to make everything easier, but we kept all the same members.

In November 2009 I launched a new penpal site here at www.penpal.net for all the new functionality that was not possible on the old website.

Who knows what the future holds, but we hope to continue being the best place to find penpals online for the next 13 years!