What "network blocked" means
Playboook itself runs on Vercel, but to sign you in and take payment we call Supabase (the account system), Lemon Squeezy (checkout), and Resend (email). When you click "Unlock" or "Sign in", your browser makes outbound requests to those services.
On many corporate, school, and government networks, that outbound traffic goes through a security gateway first. The gateway inspects each request, and if it doesn't recognise the destination, it may quietly drop the call — or strip the response so your browser sees "fetch failed". From the form's point of view it looks like the server is broken, but our server never even heard the attempt.
Common culprits
- Zscaler — a cloud-based corporate proxy that inspects every outbound HTTPS request. Common in finance, consulting, and large enterprises.
- Cisco Umbrella (formerly OpenDNS for Business) — a DNS-level filter. Common in universities, schools, hospitals, and small-to-medium enterprises.
- Microsoft Defender for Office — bundled with Office 365 enterprise plans; can rewrite or block URLs based on reputation.
- Symantec / Broadcom WSS — legacy on-premise web filter still in many enterprises.
- Strict browser extensions — uBlock with extended lists, Privacy Badger on aggressive mode, anti-phishing tools that decide an unknown signup form looks risky.
Three things to try
- Switch to mobile data. Open www.playboook.com/unlock on your phone over 4G/5G. This is the fastest fix — corporate Wi-Fi is the only thing that's blocking you. Your purchase email already arrived at the address you bought with; the unlock works the same on phone or laptop.
- Try a personal device tonight. Laptop, tablet, anything that isn't the work machine. Home Wi-Fi typically has no filter.
- Use a different browser. Chrome Incognito and Safari Private both load Playboook without your default browser's extensions. Some corporate-installed Edge profiles ship pre-configured with extensions that intercept signup forms; an incognito tab in a separate browser bypasses them.
If none of these work, email hello@playboook.com with your work email and we'll send you a personal one-time sign-in link.
Ask IT to allowlist us
If you really need to use the company computer, the cleanest fix is asking your IT team to allowlist the domains Playboook depends on. The list is short and entirely standard — these are public-API endpoints used by tens of thousands of legitimate websites.
Copy-paste the list above into your IT ticket. They should be familiar with this exact shape — "allowlist a small set of vendor domains" is a routine request.
Privacy of the canary check
When you first load Playboook, the page runs a brief one-shot check — three small unauthenticated GET requests to the public health endpoints of Supabase, Lemon Squeezy, and Resend — to see if any of them are filtered on your network. The check runs at most once every six hours. If any request fails, we save a tiny flag (pb_network_blocked) in your browser's localStorage so the next unlock or sign-in form can pre-warn you before you submit. The flag only contains the abstract names "supabase", "lemonsqueezy", or "resend" plus a timestamp — never personal info, IPs, your work email, or anything else.
We never collect or use any data from your work device beyond the unlock attempt itself. If you have data-saver mode on, the canary is skipped entirely.