Frequently asked questions

Readcrumbs is required reading without another account. You assign a document to the people who need to read it, they open a link and start immediately, and you see who hasn’t started, who’s in progress, who’s finished, and who’s acknowledged it.

The sender creates one document and shares it — either as an open link anyone can use, or as named links assigned to specific recipients. Readers interact with that same document rather than making separate copies.

Readcrumbs is for anyone who needs more confidence than “I sent it.” Common examples: policies, procedures, SOPs, safety documents, onboarding material, and important client documents.

The common need is knowing what happened after you shared something important: whether named recipients progressed through it, finished it, and acknowledged it.

Readcrumbs is not trying to become Google Drive, Notion, an LMS, a social reading network, a general AI chatbot, or a document marketplace. It is also not an e-signature product, and it does not certify legal or regulatory compliance.

Its focus is deliberately narrower: assign → read, with no account required → see what happened.

No. An LMS provisions people into courses and accounts before they can start; Readcrumbs deliberately skips that step — a recipient’s link works the moment you send it. An e-signature product’s job is a legally binding signature on a specific document; Readcrumbs’ acknowledgment is the recipient affirming, inside the reading session, that they read the document you shared — evidence for you, not a notarized signature.

If your process legally requires a signed e-signature or a certified LMS completion record, use those tools for that step. Readcrumbs is for the much larger set of things people need to read but that don’t require either.

Any signed-in user can create a document by pasting text or uploading a PDF. That document remains the single source readers open and interact with.

Basic Google sign-in may be available, but creating a document does not require Google Drive or Google Docs.

No. You do not need a separate author account. The same account can create documents and read documents other people share with you.

The primary ways to create a document are pasted text and PDF upload.

Google Docs and Google Drive are not required or promoted as import sources. DOCX, OCR, URL import, and other formats are not currently part of the primary creation experience.

You get a shareable link. Anyone who opens it reads the source document directly — Readcrumbs does not create a separate copy per reader, so content, reader activity, and your evidence all stay connected to one source.

You can also assign the document to named recipients as a required-reading campaign — see the next question for how that differs from an ordinary shared link.

An ordinary shared link (a “/r/” link) is open to anyone who has it. It’s built for reading and feedback — reading progress, notes, and reactions are tracked for that reading session, but unless a reader volunteers their name or email, you don’t know who they are, and there’s no due date, reminder, or acknowledgment step.

A required-reading campaign assigns a distinct link (a “/for/” link) to each named recipient. That link resolves to the same recipient every time, on any device, with no cookie or account involved. It’s what gives you outstanding recipients, due dates, reminders, and acknowledgment — evidence tied to a specific person, not just a reading session.

No — this holds for both an ordinary shared link and a required-reading campaign link. A recipient opens their link and starts reading immediately, with no account, no install, and no software to set up.

An optional account can make it easier for a reader to keep history across documents, but it is never required to read something you’ve shared or assigned to them.

Yes — this is a core part of the reading experience. Readcrumbs remembers reading position so someone can leave a longer document and return near where they stopped.

For readers without accounts, Readcrumbs associates that position with their reading session (or, for a required-reading recipient, with their own link) for the shared document.

The reading environment includes resume position, reading progress, lightweight feedback, bookmarks, and notes.

These tools support the act of reading without making the reader create or manage another copy of the document.

For any recipient, Readcrumbs can show whether they’ve not opened the document, are in progress, have completed it, or have acknowledged it, along with when they were last active and how far they got.

For a required-reading campaign specifically, you also get outstanding recipients (who hasn’t finished or acknowledged yet), due dates, the ability to send reminders, and — if you add them — section-level checkpoints along the way.

No. Readcrumbs gives you evidence of progression, completion, and — when you require it — explicit acknowledgment. Completion means a reader reached the end and cleared any checkpoints you set; acknowledgment means they took the separate, deliberate step of affirming they’d read it.

Neither one proves comprehension. Section checkpoints can ask for a confirmation, a short response, or an answer to a multiple-choice question before the reader moves on. They record the response or whether the reader selected the correct answer, but they are still evidence of engagement rather than legal or comprehensive proof of understanding.

Yes. A required-reading campaign lists its outstanding recipients — anyone who hasn’t yet acknowledged the document, whether they haven’t opened it, are still in progress, or have completed it but not acknowledged.

You can send a reminder to outstanding recipients directly from the campaign; reminders are something you trigger, not something that goes out automatically on a schedule.

Sender evidence can include which recipients or reading sessions opened a document, their progress and completion, where reading stops, section-level engagement, reactions or feedback, and whether any per-section acknowledgment checkpoints were cleared.

Campaign evidence reports include recipient status, progress, timestamps, assigned and served language, and checkpoint results, and can be exported as CSV. Exactly what’s shown depends on whether the document is an ordinary shared link or a required-reading campaign.

Free costs nothing: up to 10 named recipients total, shared across every campaign your account owns — a one-time allowance to try required reading, not a recurring plan.

A one-time Campaign purchase ($29) gives one specific campaign its own allowance of up to 50 recipients, no subscription required. Pro ($39/mo) gives every campaign you send up to 75 recipients, for ongoing, recurring required reading.

Readers never pay and never need an account, on any plan.

Canceling or downgrading Pro never deletes anything. Your documents, campaigns, and every recipient’s individual link keep working exactly as before, and any completion or acknowledgment evidence you’ve already collected stays available to you.

Pro access itself stays on your account until the subscription actually ends — it doesn’t switch off the moment you click cancel. Once it ends, new campaigns fall back to Free’s shared 10-recipient limit across your account. Existing recipients on a campaign aren’t removed if that pushes you over the limit — you just can’t add new ones to an unpurchased campaign until you’re back on Pro.

A campaign you bought individually ($29) is unaffected either way — its own 50-recipient allowance doesn’t depend on your Pro status.