A Simpler Penzu Alternative
Penzu is the private online notebook: you sign in, you get a blank page, and you write as much as you like. Entries and whole journals can be locked, there’s search and tagging, and the paid tiers add encryption and export. It’s been around a long time and it does the private-long-form thing well.
The blank page is also the reason a lot of Penzu journals go quiet. A page with no size to it implies a real entry, and real entries need an evening with something left in it. Miss a week and the next visit starts with the feeling that you owe the journal a proper catch-up, which is a good way to not visit at all.
exactly one year ago
Tuesday, Jul 8, 2025
★
The old market street with Maya. Scooters, steam, a hundred small kindnesses.
Your memories come back
Write one line tonight and that’s your journaling for the day. Seven days on it turns up again, and after that it keeps turning up.
- a week later
- a month
- three months
- six months
- a year
- every year after
little memory
now
Exactly 1 year ago
Peaches at the stand. Bought far too many.
Have it come to you at an hour you pick, or leave notifications off and find them waiting the next time you open the app.
Just one sentence
Little Memory is the opposite shape. It’s a journal for people who have a hard time keeping a journal: one sentence about what happened today, about fifteen seconds. There’s no page to fill and no catch-up owed, so a gap is just a gap.
Then the good part, and it’s the part Penzu doesn’t really do: your old lines come back to you on their own — what you wrote a week ago, a month ago, a year ago. A private notebook will keep your writing safe for years, but you have to remember to go back and open it, and almost nobody does.
I started using little memory five years ago. then I was still in high school, and now I’m an adult trying to find my way in life. I often go back and look through my memories to encourage me, and remind me of how much I’ve changed.
M., reader letter
Little Memory vs. Penzu
| Little Memory | Penzu | |
|---|---|---|
| A day’s entry | One sentence, photo if you like | Open-ended page, as long as you like |
| Time it takes | About fifteen seconds | As much as you give it |
| Old entries come back | After a week, a month, a year — this is the app’s whole point | You go and find them |
| Reminders | A gentle email each evening | Optional reminders |
| Write by email | Yes — reply to the nightly reminder and the entry is saved | No |
| Export | Included, anytime | On the paid tiers |
| Locking | Private by default | Entry and journal locking, encryption on paid tiers |
| Plans | $0.99, with one optional premium subscription | Free tier, then Pro and Pro+ |
| Platforms | iPhone, plus journaling by email | Web, iPhone, Android |
The basics are all there too — search across every entry, streaks, most used words, emotion trends, automated nightly backups to Dropbox, and full export anytime. The little tour has the whole list.
Little Memory has been quietly running since 2011, and support comes straight from the developer.
Who should stay with Penzu
If you write long entries and you want them, stay with Penzu. Real long-form journaling on a full keyboard is a different activity from what Little Memory does, and this app would only get in your way. Same if password-locking individual entries matters to you, or if you’re not on an iPhone.
But if your Penzu has a few enormous entries from 2023 and nothing since, the problem was probably the size of the ask.
(There’s also a page on keeping a memory journal online, and one about getting back into it after a long gap.)
