What is Ello?

Ello is a revolutionary social network that is transforming how people connect, free from advertising, manipulation, and exploitation. Ello’s clean and beautiful design supports a global creative community where people can be whoever they want to be. As a public benefit corporation, Ello will never sell ads or user data.

Ello was founded by a small group of artists and programmers who had become disillusioned by all the big social networks, which had become ugly, cluttered, and full of advertisements. They just weren’t any fun any more.

So we decided to build our own.

We posted the Ello Manifesto, promising to never, ever sell advertising or user data. Read more about the Ello no-ad policy here.

Then we got to work designing the clean and beautiful social network that we ourselves want to use.

Ello launched in late 2014 with just 90 people on the network, and there are millions of people here today. Ello remains creative, open, free, and extremely positive.

Welcome!
Ello doesn’t have ads.

We believe that advertisements on a social network are tacky and insult our intelligence.

On ad-based networks, many of our favorite posts are never seen by our friends at all, because ads take priority. Businesses have to pay for the people that follow them to see the things they post.

Every move we make is tracked and recorded. Every post is scanned and sold to the highest bidder. The advertiser is the customer, and we’re the ones being bought and sold.

Ello will never serve ads, and will never sell user data.
Ello is a PBC

On October 23, 2014 Ello became a USA Public Benefit Corporation, a special kind of for-profit company based in the USA that works for the public benefit, not just for profit.

It is legally impossible for Ello’s investors (or anyone else) to ever force Ello to sell user data or serve advertisements.

You can read more about Ello’s PBC charter here.
Support Ello

Ello is completely free to use. We occasionally offer special features and products to our users. If we create something you really like, you may choose to support Ello by buying it.

You never have to pay anything, and you can keep using Ello forever, for free.
Privacy

Unlike virtually every other social network, you can opt out of information sharing on Ello. Read how Ello uses information to learn more.