The basics
What is Franked?
An email address, yourname@franked.email, that delivers to the inbox you already use. People you know get through free. First-time senders pay a small refundable deposit you set before their message reaches you.
Who is it for?
Anyone whose inbox is valuable and flooded: founders, investors, executives, recruiters, journalists, and businesses with public addresses like contact@ or press@.
Will people I already know be charged?
No. Addresses and whole domains on your allowlist always pass straight through, and anyone you refund is added to it automatically.
What happens to newsletters and bulk mail?
Mail that identifies itself as bulk, list or automated is held without a payment link and deleted when the hold period ends. To keep a newsletter, allowlist its sending domain.
How do I get an address?
Join the waitlist at franked.email/waitlist. We're letting people in gradually and will email you when your address is ready. To see what a stranger sees first, email nariman@franked.email and you'll get the payment notice, without needing to pay.
Deposits and refunds
Do I keep the deposits?
No. If you refund, the sender gets it back less card processing. If you don't, Franked donates it to the charity you chose when the hold period ends.
How much should I charge?
Enough that sending to thousands of people is expensive, low enough that one person with a real reason pays without thinking. Most people pick between $3 and $25.
Why is there a minimum deposit?
Card processing has a fixed fee per charge, which makes very small card deposits uneconomic. Prepaid sender credit and machine payments for AI agents will make smaller amounts practical.
How does the sender get a refund?
You refund from your dashboard, usually after replying. The deposit returns to their card less processing, and they are let straight through from then on.
AI agents
Does Franked block AI agents?
No. Franked doesn't try to tell people from software. It makes breadth expensive. An agent sending one message for a person with a real reason pays like anyone else. An agent sending fifty thousand pays fifty thousand times.
Can agents pay today?
Not yet. Payment links already return machine-readable terms over HTTP 402 to non-browser clients. Settlement over the x402 standard is on the roadmap.
How does Franked relate to Cloudflare's Monetization Gateway and Amazon CloudFront's x402 support?
Those charge automated clients to consume content and APIs. Franked puts a refundable deposit in front of people: inboxes, forms and support queues. They complement each other and share the same x402 payment standard.
Custom domains
Can I use Franked with my own domain?
Yes, in three levels. Today you can forward a public address on your own domain to your Franked address. Next, Franked will recognise your own addresses natively. Later, Franked will run directly on your domain or inside your mailbox.
Level 1: how do I forward an address to Franked today?
Keep your domain and mail provider. Forward the addresses that attract strangers, such as contact@, press@ or partnerships@, to yourname@franked.email with one forwarding rule in Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 or Cloudflare Email Routing. Franked holds, challenges and releases as usual, and delivers to the inbox you choose. Payment notices come from your franked.email address, and a sender whose message loses its authentication in forwarding is held without a notice.
Level 2: what will native aliases add?
Franked will know that an address like contact@yourcompany.com belongs to you, after verifying you own it. Payment notices and your dashboard will use the address the sender actually wrote to, and you can protect several addresses with different deposits. This is planned.
Level 3: will Franked run directly on my domain?
That is the long-term goal, in one of two forms. As a mail gateway, your domain's mail would pass through Franked before reaching Google or Microsoft. Through the Gmail and Outlook APIs, Franked would hold unknown senders inside your existing mailbox with no DNS changes, which also works for personal Gmail addresses. Both are being explored and neither has a date.
Do I have to change my MX records?
Not for levels 1 and 2. Only the gateway form of level 3 would require it.
Privacy and security
Can Franked read my email?
Technically, yes. Like any email service, Franked must receive a held message to deliver it later, so it passes through our systems readable. What we do about that: we never log message contents, we encrypt held messages with a separate key for each message, we delete a held message as soon as it is delivered, discarded or expires, and we don't use contents for anything but delivery. Senders who encrypt their mail with PGP or S/MIME stay encrypted end to end, because Franked delivers the original message unmodified. Longer term, we plan to hold mail inside your own mailbox so contents never leave your email provider.
Is my mail stored?
Only while it is held. Each held message is encrypted with its own key and deleted the moment it is delivered, discarded or expires. After delivery the only copy is in the recipient's inbox. The sender, subject and payment details of paid messages are kept with payment records.
Is mail to Franked encrypted in transit?
Wherever the sending server supports it. franked.email publishes an MTA-STS policy in enforce mode, which tells sending servers that support it to deliver only over a verified encrypted connection.
How do I sign in to the dashboard?
Enter your Franked address or your delivery address and Franked emails a single-use sign-in link to your inbox. There is no password to leak.
How do senders know a payment link is genuine?
Payment links always start with https://franked.email/pay/ and checkout runs through Stripe. Franked never asks for card details by email.