FAQ
The questions people actually ask.
Honest answers to what people email about before signing up. If something isn’t covered, write to [email protected] and we’ll add it.
About Yewmark
What is Yewmark?
Yewmark is an AI-assisted personal journaling web app. You open a page and write. Mood and energy are two taps you can do after you save, never before. The AI is a button you press when you want it — not a chatbot interrupting the page. The product is shaped around the idea that writing should feel slow, that no choice should sit between you and the cursor, and that your entries are yours.
Who made it?
A solo operator who got tired of journaling apps that turned the act of writing into a productivity surface — streaks, badges, daily prompts that decide what your day is about before you do. Yewmark is the journal we wanted to use ourselves. More on /about.
Is Yewmark open source?
Not currently. The decision is on the table for later, but isn't load-bearing right now. The privacy and data practices are documented in /privacy and /blog/what-we-dont-measure, and the data export / account-delete affordances are real and one-click, regardless of source visibility.
What happens if Yewmark shuts down?
You can export every entry at any time as JSON or Markdown from Settings — before, during, or after any change in service. The export is the full record of your writing, in a format you can open in any text editor or import elsewhere. We'd give 30 days' notice of any wind-down and keep export available throughout. That's the commitment.
Pricing
Is there a free plan?
Yes. The Lite plan is free, requires no credit card, and includes unlimited written entries, mood and energy tracking, three real AI requests per day, and full JSON + Markdown export. Paid plans exist because the AI bills have to get paid, but the free plan is genuinely usable, not a teaser.
How much do paid plans cost?
Steady is $3/month (30 AI requests/day, voice journaling, daily summaries). Deep is $10/month (100 requests/day, GPT-4o as the primary model). Devoted is $25/month (effectively unlimited). All in USD. See /pricing for the current details.
Do you offer refunds?
Yes. Yewmark offers a 14-day no-questions full refund on paid subscriptions — not just EU/UK consumers, everyone. You can cancel any time from Settings; your plan stays active through the period you've already paid for, then drops back to the free Lite plan. The full policy is in the terms.
Do I need a credit card to try it?
No. The Lite plan is free and doesn't ask for a card. You can use Yewmark indefinitely without entering payment details. Upgrading is opt-in, never automatic.
Privacy and data
Do you use my entries to train AI?
No. Your entries are never used for training — not by us, not by the AI providers we route through. We use Groq, Cerebras, and OpenAI on their API tiers, which don't train on API traffic by default. Your writing is data we serve back to you, not material for model improvement.
What analytics do you use?
None of the usual ones. No Google Analytics, no Plausible, no Mixpanel, no Hotjar, no session replay, no tracking pixels in emails. We do count aggregate page views per day per path (no user identifier, no IP, no cookie) so we can tell whether anyone is reading the site. The full list of what we do and don't collect is in /blog/what-we-dont-measure.
Where are my entries stored?
On a single VPS in Europe, in a PostgreSQL database we run ourselves. TLS 1.3 in transit; disk-level encryption at rest. Daily off-VPS backup. The infrastructure is documented in /blog/how-yewmark-is-built.
Can I export my entries?
Yes — from Settings, with one click, in either JSON or Markdown. Your entries, your mood and energy chips, your AI digests, all included. No formal request needed.
Can I delete my account?
Yes — from Settings, also one click. Deletion is soft for seven days (sign back in within that window and the account restores). After seven days, the data is purged hard. If you have a paid subscription, it's flipped to cancel-at-period-end the moment you click delete, so you're not billed for a renewal that lands inside the grace window.
Are my entries end-to-end encrypted?
No. Entries are server-readable so the AI features can work on them. TLS in transit, disk-level encryption at rest, but not E2EE. If end-to-end encryption is non-negotiable for you, Yewmark isn't the right fit — Journey offers it on their paid tier.
Features
What does the AI actually do?
Four things, all opt-in. (1) Per-entry digest: a short recap, insight, and possible next step generated when you ask. (2) Continue in chat: pick up a thread with one of four AI personalities from any saved entry. (3) Optional daily summary: a quiet weekday email about the entries you wrote. (4) Optional weekly thread: a Sunday email about the week. None of it runs unless you opt in. More on the personalities.
Does it work on mobile?
Yes. The site is responsive and runs in any mobile browser. You can also install it as a PWA (Progressive Web App) on iOS, Android, or desktop — from Safari, Share → Add to Home Screen; from Chrome on Android, the install prompt appears automatically. There's no native app yet and there may never be; the web experience is the product.
Does it sync between devices?
Yes, automatically. Sign in on any device and your entries are there. No setup, no sync settings, no cloud account to configure separately.
Can I journal by voice?
Yes, on the Steady plan and up. Tap the microphone, speak, and a transcription comes back via Groq Whisper (or fallbacks if Groq is over capacity). The transcript becomes a normal entry you can edit. Voice isn't on the Lite plan because Whisper is paid usage and the free tier needs a sane bound.
Why no streaks?
We left streaks out on purpose. A streak counter turns journaling into a performance metric — the kind of system that punishes you for stopping for a week, then makes you feel like the page is for proving things rather than thinking. Some people find streaks motivating; for those people, Day One or Journey are honest options. We tuned for the other case. More on why.
Comparisons
How is Yewmark different from Day One, Penzu, or Journey?
Each of those is established, polished, and the right pick for some people. We wrote three honest comparison pages: vs Day One, vs Penzu, vs Journey — each one tells you when the other app fits better, not when ours does.
Is this just Notion or Obsidian with AI?
No. Notion and Obsidian are knowledge-base tools that happen to support journaling. Yewmark is the opposite of that — a journal that happens to support a few features. Notion's strength is structure (databases, templates, dashboards). Yewmark's strength is the absence of structure: an empty page that gets out of the way.
Still wondering?
Either write a sentence and see if it fits, or send a question.