Keeping our sanctuary alive together

I built Our System Sanctuary because someone I love is part of this community. When I learned Simply Plural was closing, something didn’t sit right with me. I couldn’t understand how a tool this vital could be built and then taken away a few years later. So I started building.

I’m not here because I share the lived experience. I’m here because I care, and because I have watched how hard the day-to-day of plurality can be. I cannot control any of that. What I can control is me, and what I decide to put my time and money into.

So the essential tools, the ones that matter most day to day, will not go away. They are deliberately small and inexpensive to keep running, and keeping them running is a commitment, not a stretch. The bigger features are different: their costs grow with every member who uses them, and a sanctuary that leans on any one wallet is not stable enough for this community. The paid tier will exist so those growing costs are carried sustainably, together. That is why this page is here: to be honest about which parts are foundational, and which parts will, at some point, ask the community to help keep them going.

These are the foundations. They are not “free for now” promises. They are the everyday tools you and your system rely on, and they will not be paywalled.

• Journaling (regular entries, private journals, edit history)
• Members: profiles, roles, identity history
• Front log and switch tracking
• Internal weather, passive influence, internal polls
• Letters and internal messages between members
• Whiteboard sticky notes for the whole system
• Privacy Veil and Sealed entries
• Crisis resources and grounding tools
• Notifications for the things you care about
• Mobile access as a PWA
• Imports from Simply Plural / Apparyllis, PluralKit, Tupperbox, and Octocon
• Full data export, any time you want it
• Account management and sign-in
• Trust, Terms, Privacy, Site Guide, and Mission pages

The community feed, rooms, group chats, and direct messages are free today, and I want them to stay that way. They are also the part of the sanctuary whose costs I control least: every public post and room name passes through an automated safety check (described on the Trust & Privacy page), and every uploaded file is scanned for malware. Those checks are paid services, and their bills grow with every new member.

So here is the honest version, instead of a promise I might not be able to keep: if those costs ever outgrow what can be carried sustainably, the community layer may need to change. That could mean community features joining the paid tier, or an open community conversation about other ways to run them. Safety comes first in any of those conversations. I will not quietly switch off the protections that keep these spaces safe, and any change would be weighed against its risks before it happens.

What I can promise: nothing about the community spaces changes without an open conversation here first and real notice in the app, and your private system tools stay untouched and free through all of it.

• The first 50 members who signed up are free for life. That is in the database, not in marketing copy.
• I will never paywall a feature that already exists for you without telling you, in the app, before it happens.
• I will never sell, license, rent, or aggregate your data. Not to advertisers, not to brokers, not to insurers, not to AI training partners. The Trust & Privacy page is the binding version of this.
• Data export will always be free and one-click. Everything you put into Our System Sanctuary, you get to take with you.
• Pricing changes will be announced on the website first, with a clear before-and-after, and with at least thirty days’ notice. (When iOS and Android apps exist, the in-app announcement will run alongside.)
• This is my project, and I am not selling it or stepping away from it. Our System Sanctuary is here to stay. And if life ever made that impossible, the sanctuary would not vanish: the commitment to real notice, a long export window, and a careful handover is written out on the Trust & Privacy page.