You cannot add an inmate to your CorrLinks account on your own. The incarcerated person has to initiate the contact request from inside, and you accept it from your end. If you have been searching your CorrLinks dashboard for an “add contact” button, that is why you cannot find one. It does not exist for family members.
That single fact clears up most of the confusion people bring to this. The rest of this article walks through what the sequence actually looks like, where it usually breaks down, and how CorrLinks compares to other ways of staying in touch.
The choice you are actually weighing
Most families arrive at CorrLinks because the facility told them to, or because their person mentioned it during a call. They are not comparing messaging platforms in the abstract. They are trying to figure out whether this is the only option, whether it will work, and how long they will be waiting before they can send a normal message.
The honest framing is this: CorrLinks is one channel, typically tied to a specific facility or state system. It is not universal, and it does not replace phone calls or visits. What you are really deciding is whether to invest your time in CorrLinks, in a different service your facility allows, or in both.
How the contact request usually works
CorrLinks is an email-style system. The incarcerated person has limited access, usually through a kiosk or tablet, and can send short messages to approved addresses. Before any of that happens, the two of you have to be linked in their system.
In practice, the sequence looks like this. The incarcerated person adds your email address from their side, often from a kiosk inside the housing unit. That request goes into a queue. You then receive an email from CorrLinks inviting you to create or confirm your account. You accept, and from that point you can send and receive messages.
Two things trip people up here. First, the request has to come from them, so if they never add you, nothing happens no matter how many times you log in. Second, the email invitation can land in spam or promotions, especially if you use a common provider. Check those folders before assuming the request failed.
What stalls the process
Waiting is the norm. A request may sit for a day or it may sit for considerably longer, depending on how the facility processes these things and how often the person has access to a device. This is not something you can speed up by calling the facility, and it is not something CorrLinks support can override.
Common reasons the link never completes:
- The incarcerated person never added your address, or added a different one than you expect.
- The invitation email went to spam or was filtered out.
- Your account was created under a different email than the one they added.
- Facility-specific approval steps are still pending, and nobody has told you.
If weeks pass with nothing, the most useful move is usually to ask your person directly, during a call or visit, to confirm which address they added and whether they saw any confirmation on their end. That is more reliable than guessing from the outside.
What CorrLinks is good at, and what it is not
CorrLinks does one thing reasonably well: it gives you a written channel that does not require both of you to be available at the same time. For families spread across time zones or working odd hours, that matters. You write when you can, they read when they can.
What it does not do is give you much flexibility. The messages tend to be short. Attachments are limited or unavailable depending on the system. There is no photo sharing in the way you would expect from a normal messaging app, and no real-time back and forth. If your person is in a facility that does not use CorrLinks at all, none of this applies to you.
That is where families often start looking at alternatives, not because CorrLinks is bad, but because it is narrow. Some people end up running CorrLinks and a second service side by side, using each for what it does best.
Comparing your realistic options
If you are weighing CorrLinks against something else, the useful comparison is not features on a marketing page. It is what you can actually do, and how much friction sits between you and a normal conversation.
With CorrLinks, you get a facility-tied email channel. Setup depends entirely on the incarcerated person initiating contact. Once it works, it is simple but limited.
With a service like InmateDB, the setup runs the other direction. Families send messages, photos, and letters online, and the incarcerated person can text U.S. and Canada phone numbers. They also get access to AI chat, email, Wikipedia, a dictionary, news, sports, lessons, trivia, and a private journal. Pricing is $19.99 per month with a 5-day free trial. That is a different shape of product than CorrLinks, and it is worth being clear about that rather than pretending they are interchangeable.
The practical question is what your person actually has access to. If their facility only supports CorrLinks, then CorrLinks is your answer and the rest is background. If they have a tablet or kiosk that supports other services, you have a real choice.
What to do this week
Start with the channel your facility already supports. If that is CorrLinks, ask your person to add your email address and confirm they did it. Watch your spam folder for the invitation. Accept it, and send a short first message so they know the link is live.
If CorrLinks is not available to them, or if you need photo sharing and a wider set of tools, look at what else their device supports before you pay for anything. You can read more about one option at InmateDB, including what the monthly plan covers and how the free trial works.
Whichever route you take, the pattern is the same: the incarcerated person has to be part of the setup, and patience does most of the work. Get the link established first, then figure out the rest.