Simily Review (Updated Feb 18, 2022)

Discover the Bizarre Secrets of Simily

A new content platform similar to Medium, but not.

Those who know me recognize that I put a lot of research into my work. And I’m determined to provide the latest up-to-date information possible. Of course, that’s all due to my background as a systems analyst. So, without further ado, let’s get into it.

If you haven’t heard of it yet, Simily is a content platform similar to Medium. They have no ads. Revenue comes from subscriptions. But there are many concerns which I’ll talk about.

Simily began developing its platform in January 2019 but didn’t register a domain until February 5th, 2021, and launched in August, 2021. So I suspect they were working on programming before going live.

The co-founders are Shannon O’Neill, Allegra O’Neill, and Katie Wilson. And Zach Taylor is on the support team.

Simily’s Payment Plan

Their ultimate plan is to compensate authors based on revenue sharing. That means they will pay authors a percentage of all paid subscriptions. However, since they don’t have enough paying readers at this beginning stage, they say they will pay 2¢ for every view no matter if it’s a subscriber or not.

That’s temporary and it’s not clear who is footing the bill for that. I hope it doesn’t turn out to be another situation like Bubblews.

Subscribers pay $6.99 per month for unlimited access to read all articles, although all the forums are open to all. The first month is only $1.99 for unlimited access.

As of mid-January 2022, there were 1860 members on Simily. But few of them have paid subscriptions. It seems that most people are selecting the free account, which is limited to reading five stories a month.

The free accounts never expire, and you can switch to a paid subscription later. H̶o̶w̶e̶v̶e̶r̶,̶ ̶i̶f̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶c̶e̶l̶ ̶a̶ ̶p̶a̶i̶d̶ ̶s̶u̶b̶s̶c̶r̶i̶p̶t̶i̶o̶n̶,̶ ̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶t̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶d̶e̶l̶e̶t̶e̶d̶.̶ ̶Y̶o̶u̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶’̶t̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶n̶g̶e̶ ̶b̶a̶c̶k̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶r̶e̶e̶ ̶v̶e̶r̶s̶i̶o̶n̶.̶

CORRECTION as of Feb 18, 2022: I learned from the founders that users can select to revert back to a free account rather than cancelling. So their content will not be lost.

Since most people only have a free limited account, the number of views is minimal. But we have to consider that Simily is still in a beta test phase, and the audience is growing daily. So that could improve eventually.

Some people think that getting in on the ground floor can be very rewarding in time. I agree with that, but with skeptisism due to what I’m about to tell you next.

Where Is Simily Located?

Wouldn’t you want to know this before you get serious with contributing content to the site?

They registered their domain using a privacy service to hide all contact information and location.

They are using a mailbox service at a UPS Store in Philadelphia, which they list as their address on their correspondence. Their address is 1735 Market St, Suite A188. When I checked that building, I discovered that all suites beginning with “A” are mailboxes at the UPS Store in that building.

UPDATE as of Feb 18, 2022: They no longer use the UPS Store, but began using a mailbox service with Parcel Place in Doylestown, PA, for their mailing address.

Will Simily Survive?

I have my doubts because of the secrecy I mentioned above. How can I trust a company that does that? Nevertheless, I created a free account to learn what they offer on the platform.

Their business plan is good, but I hope to see them become more transparent as an honest business venture that content creators can appreciate. I’ve predicted so many failures with alternative writing platforms that came to be true.

What I Like About Simily

Besides my concerns, I see a lot of potential for Simily. I consider it a well-designed platform, even though it still needs improvement. Here are a few of the things I like about it.

Payments Are Made Via PayPal

There is no need to give Simily your tax ID number because PayPal is a third-party payment processor and is required to issue a 1099-K for your tax information. I feel more comfortable with that since PayPal is a long-time trusted organization.

Searchable Topic Categories

They have specific topic categories for you to tag your stories. That makes it easy for people to search desired topics, such as fiction, non-fiction, horror stories, humor, poetry, romance, sci-fi, true stories, opinion pieces, satire, self-help, sports, and more.

Engaging Forum Groups

Anyone can create a group, and I found many that are already quite active. Hey, there is even one for Medium Expats. One of the most active is “Simily Discussions,” where we all chat about using Simily.

User-Friendly Content Creation

Despite the bugs, the edit feature is simple to use. It has excellent formating features to set text bold, italics, underline, H2 and H3 subtitles, numbered and unnumbered bullet lists, quotes, left and right justification, and you can embed images and videos.

Lines normally default to double spacing for a new paragraph when you press the Enter key. Poets will be glad to know they can do single line spacing for poems (same as on Medium) as I show with the following Test Story.

Simily Problems Never Resolved

Despite having registered their domain only a year ago (on Feb 5, 2021), one of the co-founders created her profile in January 2019. So they must have been testing for two years before going live. If that’s the case, I wonder why they still have so many unresolved bugs.

UPDATE Feb 18, 2022: I learned the reason for the bugs while chatting with the founders in a Zoom meeting in February. Simily is based on the WordPress platform, which is known to be buggy. So they plan to create a new platform using a better backbone in the future. See the details in my review of the Zoom meeting here:

Simily Bugs I Discovered

Bug 1: Free Reads include your own.

They give you five free reads a month if you only sign up for the free account. But those count toward reading your own content too! I’m sure that’s a bug they never fixed.

I quickly used up my five freebies when I proofread the stories I wrote. Therefore, I couldn’t preview my stories before publishing. When I click the preview tab in edit mode, it shows this:

So I could only see what I wrote by going back into edit mode. But that doesn’t display the same as others would see a published version.

Bug 2: Incorrect counting of image uploads.

Every time you upload an image to a story, the algorithm counts an addition. There is a limit to the number of images you can include in any story, but I didn’t count it to see what that limit is. So I can’t tell you.

The problem is that the counter does not decrement when you remove an image. So one day, I added and deleted the same image several times because I kept changing its size and dimensions. Then I suddenly got an error message saying:

I couldn’t continue working on that draft and had to start over.

Bug 3: Attribution under the main image displays in previews.

Each story’s first sentence is shown in the topic listings to help people find articles to read. That is the attention-grabber, but if you have attribution in the caption of the main image, that is considered the first sentence and is shown in the topic listings.

I avoided that problem by placing the attribution at the bottom of my articles.

Bug 4: The Online Instructions Are Out of Date

I read somewhere in the instructions that Simily uses Stripe to pay residuals. But they had dropped that method without updating all the instructions. In another location, it correctly says they use PayPal.

Unfortunately, they don’t seem to put much effort into maintaining their instructions. So we can’t have much confidence in its accuracy.

Bug 5: Numerous Server Errors

I see many posts in the forums that display a server error 403.

And once in a while this nasty Gateway Timeout error appears with the site going offline for many hours at a time:

Bug 6: Can’t see all followers

On the left side of our profile page (on desktops), it shows a few icons of followers with a link below that for more. But when I click that link, it incorrectly shows all members in the entire system. I would like to see only the people who are following me.

Where I Stand With Subscribing

I don’t feel comfortable buying a subscription at this time, based on everything I mentioned here. But I will continue to test the platform and communicate with others in Simily’s forum groups.

At one point, I thought I’d just pay for a few months and cancel if things didn’t go well. I already know of a few people who said they dropped out already.

I’m already noticing that views are slim and disappear entirely after a while. I am used to having my articles grow with traffic views on HubPages, where I’ve been writing since 2009. So to see the opposite is not encouraging. That’s another reason why I will remain with the free version for now.

✔️ Click to subscribe to see my stories whenever I publish.