Your inbox, with a price on it. People pay to send you a note or subscribe weekly. You reply from one inbox, when it suits you, and Stripe pays you. Run it free on your own server, or let us host it: 30 days free.
You know the DMs. "Quick question." "Can I pick your brain?" "Love your work, could you…" Some of them matter. Most get buried, and none of them pay.
Hotly gives those messages a front door with a price on it. Share one link. People pay to send you a note, or subscribe weekly, and you reply from one inbox when it suits you. Want to send something special back? Lock a photo and set the price.
Our first creator (536K on Instagram) shared it once with the fans she already had. 217 of them paid to write to her, across 921 conversations. She banked $22,400 in that stretch: about half from those fans, the rest from brand deals.
Today we're opening it up:
• Hosted: we run it for you. 30 days free, and Stripe's fees are on us • Open source: the whole thing is on GitHub. Run it on your own server, 0% commission
One question for you: if people could pay to write to you, what would they write about?
Very interesting, seems a bit more decentralised than the subscription models like of Substack and BMaC, and a bit like Topmate.
What situations you think this will be best utilised for?
The one-off note and weekly subscription feel like two quite different expectations for the inbox. I would be interested in how you make the expected reply time clear before someone pays.
About Hotly on Product Hunt
“Get paid to answer your DMs. Open source.”
Hotly launched on Product Hunt on October 21st, 2026 and earned 89 upvotes and 5 comments, placing #15 on the daily leaderboard. Your inbox, with a price on it. People pay to send you a note or subscribe weekly. You reply from one inbox, when it suits you, and Stripe pays you. Run it free on your own server, or let us host it: 30 days free.
Hotly was featured in Messaging (52k followers), Open Source (69k followers), GitHub (41.4k followers) and Monetization (1.7k followers) on Product Hunt. Together, these topics include over 64.4k products, making this a competitive space to launch in.
Who hunted Hotly?
Hotly was hunted by Saloni Girhepuje. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
Want to see how Hotly stacked up against nearby launches in real time? Check out the live launch dashboard for upvote speed charts, proximity comparisons, and more analytics.
Saloni Girhepuje
Hi Product Hunt, I'm Saloni from Hotly.
You know the DMs. "Quick question." "Can I pick your brain?" "Love your work, could you…" Some of them matter. Most get buried, and none of them pay.
Hotly gives those messages a front door with a price on it. Share one link. People pay to send you a note, or subscribe weekly, and you reply from one inbox when it suits you. Want to send something special back? Lock a photo and set the price.
Our first creator (536K on Instagram) shared it once with the fans she already had. 217 of them paid to write to her, across 921 conversations. She banked $22,400 in that stretch: about half from those fans, the rest from brand deals.
Today we're opening it up:
• Hosted: we run it for you. 30 days free, and Stripe's fees are on us • Open source: the whole thing is on GitHub. Run it on your own server, 0% commission
One question for you: if people could pay to write to you, what would they write about?