Copywriting is not a regulated profession and “copywriter” is not a protected title. That means that anyone can call themselves a copywriter.
ProCopywriters is an alliance of commercial writers in the UK. Here’s what you can know about the copywriters in our directory.
Membership tells you…
Members pay to belong to a professional body for copywriters. That means they’re working in the field seriously enough to invest in it, and that they’re connected to a community of peers who talk about craft, standards and practice.
Being a member of ProCopywriters is a meaningful signal, but it’s not a qualification.
Membership doesn’t tell you…
We don’t test our members’ work, check portfolios, ask for references or evaluate skills. Membership is open to all copywriters.
If you hire someone through our directory, you’re still doing your own judging, and the questions to ask page is where we’d start.
The Copywriter Code
The Copywriter Code is our professional standard for copywriting. It covers competence, honesty, confidentiality, transparency about AI, and accountability for the work.
Anyone working as a copywriter can sign it, whether or not they’re a member of ProCopywriters. Signatories appear on our public register, and they commit to a minimum of 20 hours of continuing professional development each year and to re-affirm their commitment annually.
Some of the copywriters in our directory have signed the Code. At the moment only a minority of members have the signed the Code, because it has only been available for a few weeks. Members who sign the Code have a badge on their profile, and may display the Code badge on their own website.
What signing establishes: that this person has publicly committed to a defined standard of professional behaviour, and can be held to it.
What it doesn’t establish: anything about the quality of their work. We don’t verify a signatory’s experience or assess their writing. A copywriter who hasn’t signed may well be excellent.
Checking someone
If a copywriter tells you they’ve signed the Copywriter Code, you can check the register. Search their name or business name. Entries show when they signed, when they last re-affirmed, and whether their commitment is current.
The register also shows people whose signature has lapsed, and people we’ve removed. That’s deliberate. A register that only ever displayed people in good standing wouldn’t be worth checking.
If something goes wrong
If you commission a Copywriter Code signatory and they fall short of the Code, you can raise a concern with us through their register entry. We’ll look into it, and where a complaint is upheld the sanction is removal from the register, published.
We should be clear about the limits of that. We’re not a regulator. We can’t compel anyone to refund you, redo work or answer their email, and we can’t intervene in a contractual dispute. What we can do is hold people to a public commitment and make the outcome visible.
For anyone who hasn’t signed the Code, our only relationship with them is that they pay us a membership fee, and we’d be misleading you if we suggested that amounts to accountability.
What we don’t do
ProCopywriters is not an agency and not a marketplace. Our directory provides a clear link to our members so that you can engage them directly. We don’t take commission, charge fees, manage payments, or have any financial interest in which copywriter you choose (nor can we recommend copywriters).
Pro members appear first in directory search results, and their listings are marked.