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If you haven’t heard of popular GPT (Get Paid To) sites like InboxDollars and Swagbucks by now, then you’re missing out on some easy extra cash.
Legitimate GPT sites do exactly what they say they will. They pay you to do various small tasks on the web, like play games, check your email, and take surveys. Although they won’t pay you a fortune for your time, they’re definitely a fun way to make extra money in your spare time.
InboxPays is one of the lesser-known GPT sites on the web. It’s been around since 2009 but it’s not one you hear about often. I took it upon myself to sign up for an account to see what it’s all about and share everything with you here.
Want to check out InboxPays for yourself? Here’s the link:
Table of Contents
What is InboxPays?
If you’re new to the world of GPT sites, then you may not understand what InboxPays does. GPT sites let you make money in several ways. InboxPays places most of its branding on your ability to get paid to read emails, hence the “inbox” in the name.
You can earn money in other ways too. InboxPays has paid offers, jackpots, referrals and coupon clippings, too, all of which can give you some extra money.
InboxPays is a child company of A&A Marketing, which also owns another GPT site I mentioned: InboxDollars. InboxDollars is one of the most popular GPT sites with a huge following and one I’ve personally used to make money, so it’s interesting that InboxPays hasn’t quite gotten that level of credibility yet.
InboxPays works similarly to other GPT sites. You complete an offer, read an email, or complete some other paid task, and you’ll get paid for it. Rewards vary depending on the type of task, and it’s usually paid offers that pay the most.
Who Can Join InboxPays?
Anyone who is at least 18 years old and lives in the United States can become a member of InboxPays. At this time, the site doesn’t accept members in other countries.
You’ll also need to provide accurate information to InboxPays when you join. If the company finds that you’ve falsified your name, address, email address, or any other pertinent piece of information, it can terminate your account without warning.
I’ve seen a few reviews online from people claiming that you have to be at least 25 to use some parts of the site. InboxPays’ Terms of Service state that you have to be 18. I can’t say for sure if the reviewers are correct, but I feel like it’s important enough to note in case anyone else experiences this issue.
How Does InboxPays Work?
InboxPays is your typical rewards site. If you’ve used other A&A Marketing reward sites, like InboxDollars and SendEarnings, then you’ll be somewhat familiar with the process. InboxPays, however, focuses more on rewarding you for completing offers than it does for other tasks.
Unlike InboxDollars, which has a lot of 100% free offers you can sign up for, InboxPays has mostly paid offers. That means that you’ll need to spend money to make money. If you were planning to sign up for a service or purchase an advertised product anyway, then you can get some money back. If not, you might not find a lot of opportunities to make cash without spending it first.
When you complete paid tasks on the site, you’ll see your earnings accumulate in your account. Some tasks will take longer to approve your payment than others, so don’t be surprised if you wait a while.
What Ways Can I Earn with InboxPays?
InboxPays has a few ways to earn, including:
- Paid Offers: Complete various offers from partners. These usually require you to sign up for a service, or at least a free trial, or make a purchase from one of the advertisers.
- Read Emails: Check your emails from InboxPays and click their links to visit an advertiser’s website. You could get several of these every day, but they won’t pay much.
- Referrals: Earn 10% on your referrals’ earnings, but you can only start earning from them once they cash out their first payment.
- Clip Coupons: Clip coupons from the coupons database and earn cash back when you use them.
- Spinning the Wheel: You may get lucky and hit the jackpot with a wheel spin. There are also several low amounts on the wheel, like $0.50, but they add up over time.
- Surveys: Take surveys and receive small rewards for completing them.
The ways to earn aren’t as extensive as some other rewards sites. You can’t play games or complete bonus tasks to earn more. InboxPays is heavily focused on its paid offers, so you’ll likely earn the most through those and referrals.
Pros and Cons of InboxPays
I often find the good in almost any survey or GPT site I come across. Knowing that this company is also owned by the same people that gave me InboxDollars, one of my favorite GPT sites, I had high hopes for it. This is one of the few sites that made it difficult for me to find more positives than negatives.
Pros of InboxPays
- Several ways to earn cash
- $5 sign-up bonus
- PayPal payments
- Referral program available
Cons of InboxPays
- Has a history of not paying members for their time
- You’ll likely get a lot of emails from InboxPays and its partners
- You can only have one account per household
- Some cash offers will stay in “pending approval” status for up to 8 weeks
- High payout amount of $50, which includes at least $25 from offers or wheel spins and no more than $25 from Cash Mail rewards
- Must wait until referral gets his or her first payment to receive a referral bonus credit
- Can’t earn money from reading emails if you’re on your mobile device
How Does InboxPays Reward Members?
One good thing about InboxPays is that it pays through PayPal. You earn cash instead of points, so it’s not confusing to figure out how much you’ve made in cash that you can transfer to PayPal once you reach the payout amount. Since PayPal is the only method of payment, it’s important to note that you must live in a country that PayPal works with to get paid.
Once you receive $50 in your account, you can withdraw for a PayPal transfer. This gets a little confusing for a few reasons:
- You can only cash out in increments of $50. If you made $53.50, you can only withdraw $50 and you’ll need to wait until your next $50 to get the rest.
- At least $25 of your earnings have to come from the Spin Wheel and/or paid offers.
- You can’t have any more than $25 cashed out from paid emails.
If you had $50 in your account but $30 is from paid emails and $20 is from paid offers, then you’d have to wait until you got another $5 from paid offers or wheel spins to cash out. Referral bonuses and coupons don’t even help you meet your requirements for your $50.
How Much Money Can I Make with InboxPays?
You’re probably going to spend a lot of time working your way up to $50 with InboxPays, only to realize that you don’t have the required breakdown needed to cash out anyway. You could do great with referrals, but you’ll still need the required cash from offers or wheel spins to get your money.
Members who have used InboxPays seem to agree that completing offers is the way to earn here. If you’re constantly spending money on offers, though, you’re not actually making money. The only way this makes sense is if the offers were something you planned to sign up for anyway.
Don’t expect big bucks from InboxPays. You might want to occasionally check it to see if any offers are of interest to you because you can get $10 or more for some of them.
What Do Members Say About InboxPays?
The reviews for InboxPays are far from glowing. I have yet to see one from a real member that proves he or she has gotten paid and is happy with how they earn on InboxPays.
Check out some TrustPilot reviews from people who have used the site.
One of the biggest complaints is about payment. Many say that they’re still waiting for their paid offer rewards to show up in their accounts after weeks or months. Others say that InboxPays won’t allow them to cash out their earnings even though they’ve met the requirements. Several reviews also talk about an unresponsive customer service team when they have an issue, which is a huge red flag.
Is InboxPays Legit or a Scam?
I’d hate to call anything a scam without working my way through the system myself first. Since I’ve only signed up and used a few aspects of the site, I don’t know enough about it to do that. I can, however, say that there are several reasons that I don’t want to spend any more time on InboxPays trying to earn money in my spare time.
Here are a few reasons I’d personally steer clear of InboxPays:
You May Get Paid, You May Not
It always concerns me when a site doesn’t come right out and say that it will give you your payments. InboxPays is one of those sites that skirts around the issue of payment. I dug into its Terms of Service and found this important little tidbit about payments:
“InboxPays offers cash incentives/cash surveys to members in exchange for completing signup process for trial offers.”
Notice how it says “cash incentives” rather than an actual payment. InboxPays is basically saying that it will offer you a cash incentive to complete an offer, but that doesn’t mean you’ll ever see that money. The Terms of Service continues to say that there is “no payment guarantee” after completing an offer because the company can’t always track your completion of an offer.
My thoughts are that, if a company advertises that you’ll receive a specific amount for an offer, then it should do everything in its power to make sure you get credited for completing it. It’s obvious that’s not the case here.
It’s All About the Offers
One thing I look for in rewards sites is the ability to make money for free. I don’t like spending money to get money unless I was already going to buy something or shop online.
InboxPays makes it almost impossible for you to earn money without spending it first. The site relies heavily on its paid offers. You could almost call it an advertising portal because most of its cash-earning opportunities require you to sign up with an advertiser.
Before signing up, it appears that you’ll have a lot of opportunities to make some cash. It’s clear once you sign up, though, that you’ll need to complete offers to get anywhere. You also need at least $25 in paid offers or wheel spins to cash out your $50 minimum, which solidifies this theory.
BBB Complaints
I usually check the Better Business Bureau to learn more about survey and rewards sites before working with them. It wasn’t surprising to me that InboxPays doesn’t have good BBB reviews. Although it’s not an accredited BBB business, people can still leave contact the BBB with concerns.
Right at the top of the page is a message from the BBB stating that it had received multiple complaints about InboxPays. The complaints mentioned people not getting their payments for the tasks they completed on the site.
What’s more concerning is that, instead of attempting to rectify the situation, InboxPays has continued ignoring the disputes.
Very High Cash-Out Rate
I tend to stick with survey and rewards sites with low cash-out minimums around $10 or less. I’m not opposed to using a site with a higher cash-out amount if it has a proven track record of timely payments and doesn’t have a ton of restrictions on what your earnings need to consist of.
InboxPays doesn’t meet my criteria in this area. It requires at least $50 to cash out and you can only withdraw increments of $50. You also need to have a certain amount of earnings from wheel spins and cash offers and can’t have too much from paid emails. It’s all very restrictive and unnecessary.
Privacy Concerns
During my InboxPays research, I found some reviews by members who said that they’ve experienced a lot more spam-like emails since signing up for InboxPays.
Although they can’t say with 100% certainty that the uptick in emails is because of their sign-up, it seems like there could be a correlation. I checked out the Privacy Policy to see if I could find out how the company uses email addresses of members.
The policy clearly states that it won’t distribute any of your personal information to other parties. However, it also clearly states that this does not include third parties.
Your information, like your email address, may transfer to them and those third parties can do with it what they wish. That includes selling your information to other companies if their own policies allow them to.
With that kind of policy, I wouldn’t feel safe giving my information to InboxPays. It seems likely that you could end up with an inbox full of spam emails eventually if you decide to become a member.
Signing Up for InboxPays
If you still want to try InboxPays for yourself, then you can head to the website to sign up.
There’s a quick form on the front page to fill out. You’ll then need to visit your email inbox to confirm your email address and complete your signup. You should then see your $5 bonus credited to your account.
If you don’t want a spammed inbox, you might want to consider signing up with a different email address specifically for survey and rewards sites.
Other Reward Sites to Try
I’m not a fan of some of the InboxPays policies and neither are other members. Fortunately, there are some incredible rewards sites out there that I’d recommend wholeheartedly to people who want trustworthy places to make some extra cash.
Here are a few of my favorites:
- Swagbucks – It’s so easy to find ways to earn on Swagbucks and I consistently make enough to cash in my earnings for a reward at least once a month.
- InboxDollars – Although it’s owned by the same company as InboxPays, this site operates under totally different rules and has a proven record of making payments to members.
- AppLike – This mobile app is different than your typical reward site. Use it to download new games, play them, and earn points that you can redeem for PayPal cash and other prizes.
Final Thoughts
InboxPays is not a site I’d recommend to anyone looking for a legitimate reward site to make some extra money. There are plenty of other legit apps and websites to use, many of which we cover here on Frugal For Less. InboxPays just doesn’t have the positive track record I’d prefer
