ShorthandFast. Simple. Gorgeous. Engaging.

How do I get started?

Starting is easy! Sign up for free right now, and create as many stories as you like. Contact us during your trial period to switch onto a paid plan to enable publishing.

How do I publish stories?

That’s up to you.

You can:

• host stories on your own servers and domain (e.g., yourbrand.com) using our export options,
  or
• take advantage of simple 1-click publishing with Shorthand hosting and a custom subdomain (e.g., stories.yourbrand.com).

If you choose Shorthand hosting, we can advise on the best way to integrate content into your existing website or top-level domain for optimal traffic and SEO. For example, use our embed code to load a story into any existing web page by pasting a short code snippet.

Our export options include zip file, S3 and API downloads. Zip file downloads provide you with the bundled HTML, CSS, Javascript and media assets, which you can host on your own servers at a URL of your choosing. S3 publishing enables you to publish to your own AWS S3 bucket with a single click. With the API option, you can fully automate the story export workflow — integrating Shorthand with your existing CMS.

Our expert sales and onboarding team are happy to guide you through the best publishing option and plan to suit your unique business needs. You can also learn more about publishing options on our support site.

What are your payment terms?

We keep our billing simple so we can focus on delivering an exceptional storytelling platform.

For monthly billed customers we accept credit cards only.

For annually billed customers we accept credit cards and bank transfers (ACH credit for US customers).

Unfortunately we are unable to accept cheques/checks.

Our payment terms are strictly Net-0 day (i.e., due upon receipt), excepting Premium customers on tailored agreements. We cannot enable (or re-enable) publishing functionality until payment is received.

What support do you provide?

Our customer support is part of the Shorthand magic. Really. Here's what one customer recently told us:

"Please know that you have had a very large and positive influence on my life and how the next few weeks will proceed work-wise."

That's the kind of impact our support and success team delivers every single day.

Shorthand is beautifully simple to use, but we're here when you need us! You can contact us by email, and if you have our Premium support option, by phone.

We have extensive support documentation and training videos in our knowledge base. You may also like to become part of our Slack community for all things Shorthand and visual storytelling.

Customers on our Pro plan or who have our Premium support add-on also benefit from our story kick-off service, where we provide feedback on your first three stories if you'd like us to.

Basically, we've got you covered!

What do you mean by "site"?

A site is simply the location, usually identified by a domain (e.g., yourbrand.com) or subdomain (e.g., stories.yourbrand.com) where your audience reads your stories.

All plans include publishing to a single site. Publishing to multiple sites incurs an additional cost per site. Contact us to discuss multi-site discounts.

What happens if I don't want to use Shorthand any more?

If you have our Shorthand^X add-on, simply ensure you've published and/or exported all your stories, then ask us to deactivate or delete your account.

If you don't have the Shorthand^X add-on then we offer a basic export of your story data without the Javascript and CSS that makes Shorthand stories magical. If you'd like to keep your Shorthand stories live, then you'll need to continue with your subscription.