Help & guides

Everything you need, in the order you'll need it. Stuck anyway? hello@snailsy.app - a human reads it.

🐌 Start here

Snailsy is members guiding members past deceptive pricing. A Snail Trail is a short tip left on a website - "the $25 fee appears at step 4", "this trial converts at $29.99/mo", "this site is completely fair". Before you pay on any site, check its trails. After you pay, leave one. That's the whole habit - ten seconds that saves the next person real money.

Reading is open to everyone. Loving, commenting, and leaving trails requires a free account - that's what keeps the map honest. Become a member →

💻 On your computer (Chrome extension)

• 1 - Download: grab snailsy-chrome.zip and unzip it anywhere.
• 2 - Enable Developer mode: open chrome://extensions and flip the toggle in the top-right corner.
• 3 - Load it: click Load unpacked and choose the unzipped snailsy folder.
• 4 - Use it: on any website, click the 🐌 icon in your toolbar. Sign in once and you can love and leave trails from the popup.

This is the standard early-access install; the auto-updating Chrome Web Store version is in review. Join the waitlist to get one email when it ships.

📱 On your phone (web app)

Phones don't allow Chrome extensions - so on mobile, Snailsy is a web app with everything members can do.

• Android: open snailsy.vercel.app in Chrome → menu ⋮ → Add to Home Screen. From then on, on any pricing page tap Share → Snailsy and that site's trails open instantly.
• iPhone / iPad: open snailsy.vercel.app in Safari → Share → Add to Home Screen. To check a site, copy the page's link and paste it on the trail page.
• No install at all: the trail page works in any browser - paste a link or type a site name.

📄 Page trails vs. whole-site trails

A trail can anchor to a whole website ("this store's checkout is fair") or to a single page of it ("this ticket listing has a $25 fee at step 4"). When you leave a trail from a specific page, the composer asks which you mean - 📄 This page or 🌐 the whole site. Paste any page's URL into the search box to see that page's trails first, then the site's; a site's page also rolls up every page trail it has, so trails on pages that later disappear are never lost.

Why did Snailsy say my link "looks personal or temporary"? Some URLs are unique to you - they carry session codes, sign-in tokens, or long one-time IDs - or they expire within hours. Anchoring a trail there would mean nobody else could ever land on it, so Snailsy strips tracking and session codes automatically and, when the whole link looks personal, anchors your trail to the site instead and tells you so. Tip: prefer the clean address of a page (the one you could send a friend) when you want a page trail.

✍️ Being a member

Your username is your whole identity. No real names, no photos. Your email is used only to sign in and is never shown to anyone.

Leaving a good trail: any thought that's worth your followers' time - a sharp review, a warning (where the fee appears, what the trial converts to), a gem you found. 280 characters max. Every trail wears the 🐌 Snail Trail badge; add #hashtags like #hiddenfees or #allclear to give it a topic.

Following & your feed: follow members from their profiles and their trails become your feed - every website they visit, every thought they leave. Comment on trails, reply to comments (replies can be ❤️'d too), and @mention any member to loop them in - they'll see it in their activity.

#Hashtags are topics: put #hiddenfees (or any #tag) in a trail and it lands on that topic's page. Follow a hashtag and Snailsy flags any page you visit whose trails carry it - your topics come to you. Browse them under Search → # Tags.

Your look & your privacy: pick an avatar on your profile (an emoji - no photo uploads, nothing to trace back to you), and flip "Show my follow lists" off if you'd rather keep who-follows-whom to yourself. You can also remove any follower from your own followers list.

Loves & karma: earned, never bought. Every ❤️ other members give your trails and comments builds the karma on your public profile (you can't love your own). Moderation: report anything that doesn't belong - three distinct reports and it disappears.

The stamp: when you leave a trail your browser quietly solves a small puzzle (about half a second). You'll never notice it; a spam bot posting thousands would. That's why the map stays clean without captchas.

Leaving Snailsy: delete all your trails, comments, loves, and follows anytime from the extension's settings, or email hello@snailsy.app to delete your whole account within 30 days. See the privacy policy.