Mapstr, save & share places

This was my go to app from the beginning. I was even given an elite status. I had loved using the app and shared it with many family and friends. I’m in the travel industry and am in contact with many people. Now to find that i am not able to add any more pins (i have 300) without paying a rather steep price to access, use and add more pinned spots seems sad. There was no soft launch that I am aware of nor was there warning given to the users who had been using this app from the beginning (was there no grandfather option) is really a slap in the face. This was great but it is by no means a necessity like a music streaming app. It’s an app you use while traveling. For this reason i cannot do a subscription pricing. This developer definitely is doing a money grab. Why couldn’t we just pay a flat rate and be grandfathered in? This is not even a monthly use app. Just for travel. I recommend AVOID USING until a more reasonable pricing option materializes. $12 per month which is that the developer was asking was clearly not going to happen so it appears he has brought it down lower…still not realizing that an app that is not needed for daily use is a hard sell at an recurring price. I’ve heard Pin Drop is great and will be switching over.

Recommended this app to many friends, now switching over all my saved places to another app. Far too many similar options out there to justify paying (year after year) for this. I would happily see adds to avoid paying a subscription. Just not worth it IMO— this app was good, but not groundbreaking. Seems like many others feel similarly about the sudden subscription/premium structure. MY RESPONSE FOLLOWING COMPANY REPLY: ~$60 per year with your current “discount” x 15 years of use = nearly $1000 over the years. … and if you ever stop paying and being chained to the Mapstr subscription… boom! All those payments for nothing ✨ In the bigger pictures, it’s way more than the “few dollars” you keep pushing on customers to repeatedly shell over. ….all to just mark down where you’ve been over the years… please!! I’d like to think I spend my money as little wiser than that. The cost structure, inability to “buy out” a premium account with a one time fee (I’d consider staying if so), and unprofessional replies are very telling about the management style at your company. A rug pull of a sudden paywall is offensive to your long-time customers. That’s business 101. I fear you’ll lose many others soon if major operational and managerial changes are not corrected. Hope you can fix them soon. I didn’t want to leave the app but am afraid I’ll have no choice.

I use the plus version and it’s ok for my personal needs as a flight attendant. However, there are just not enough organizational and personalization features on this app for me to justify continuing to pay over $60 a year for it. Sorry. I do have some ideas/requests that, in my opinion, would make Mapstr GREAT and worth it for me to keep purchasing: 1. Put tags into folders on sidebar. I have around 80 tags and over 500 places saved. The tagging feature on Mapstr is probably my favorite feature. I like how, with it, you can create multiple maps in a way. I love my main map and how I can view all of my saved places at once, however, having to scroll endlessly down the long sidebar list in order to select the tag I want to view in isolation is extremely tedious. The way that it’s set up now is just not intuitive if you have more than 10 tags. Adding a feature that would allow for the grouping of tags in the sidebar would GREATLY enhance accessibility and organization. I also wish that the folders would extend to adding a new place. As in, when adding a new plan to my map, I would like my tags to be organized into folders so that I can find them easily instead of having to scroll through my long list of tags. This feature is my NUMBER ONE request. As my map gets larger and larger by the year, I will absolutely need a better way to organize my many tags in the sidebar in order to continue using Mapstr and renewing my plus membership in 2026. 2. Upload your own icons. Mapstr offers a very limited icon selection at the moment, and there are times when I want to get really specific with the icon, or there is just not an icon that properly encapsulates the place I’m saving. Sometimes I just want a photo of the place as the icon. I personally am not a fan of how the icons on the map go multicolored once you start adding colored tags. It looks messy and prevents brain pattern recognition. The ability to upload personalized icons (like from flaticon or icons8) would allow for more personalization and organization. If not, there should definitely be an option to choose solid colors for map icons without sacrificing the use of color coded tags. 3. Add icons to tags. This ties in to number 2 and is pretty self explanatory. I currently use an emoji at the beginning of my tags, but similar to Mapstr’s icon library, the emoji library is very limited. 4. A functional iPad app. I do the majority of my travel planning on my iPad, and having to look at Mapstr on the tiny iphone screen in the iPad version is less than ideal. I think that when charging a subscription fee, the software should be accessible and tailored to work properly across different types of devices. Side note: the one star rating is for visibility as I notice that, on the AppStore, most app developers tend to only read and respond to negative reviews, unfortunately. My realistic rating for Mapstr would be ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5 If and when I do receive a reply, I will definitely go back in a change my star rating. I hope very much that Mapstr sees this. I am a big fan and loyal user since the beginning! :) DEVELOPER RESPONSE You know you can reorder your tags right? I completely understand, but reordering tags is not the same as organizing them into folders, which is what I’m asking for. While reordering tags is useful, it doesn’t negate the fact that I still have to scroll through 80 tags to find what I need, rather than having them neatly arranged in folders or a dropdown menu. What do you mean by emoji are limited? Limited as in there are a limited number of emojis and you cannot create your own or personalize them. We're working on icons by the way and we're looking into the iPad but that requires tons of redesign. iPad software should have been released or at least in the final stages of design before charging a subscription fee, just my opinion.

I’m a long time user of this app and have really enjoyed it over the time I’ve been using it. It’s met my needs and I’ve enjoyed the features. Along with many other users who have recently reviewed this app, I am frustrating that this once free app is now a subscription app. While I can understand the need to monetize the app, in my opinion the subscription fee far outweighs the value of the app. It’s comical to read the developer responses trying to justify the fee. I look forward to getting a good laugh out of the response I get. I hate to walk away from the app, but I will no longer be using the app. I wish the people behind the app the best of luck, but I fear this business decision will doom the future of the app.

Long time user and thought it was great. I appreciate the long run, but I can’t imagine how with thousands of customers the company couldn’t prosper with a reasonable yearly fee—or even better a one time purchase price (like software programs used to be and most purchases still are). I expect customers will vote with their feet and this will be the end for Mapstr unless a drastic change is made to their subscription model.

Was great until they started charging to add basic information . App deleted. What a turn off

The app was great a few years ago. The entrepreneur needs a new hobby/ business. Mapstr fundamentally was a great idea and scalable. Then it tried to become a social media (costly).

I’ve been using this wonderful app for multiple years now as a hub for all those screenshotted locations from reels or TikTok’s that I wanted to eventually visit. It’s an immense bummer that the app is now requiring monthly payment to continue growing my location collection, especially when the platform was advertised originally as being unlimited for free. I’ve recommended this app to soooo many people, but now will have to rescind those recommendations due to this new payment structure.

i loved this app and used it to log recommendations but the paywall ruined the functionality of the app, and is insanely expensive?! i prefer to support small businesses or in this case a less well known app, but i’ve moved to apple maps. insanely disappointing.

I loved this app and have found it super helpful for keeping track of restaurants and all the places I want to try! However, the new paywall caps places at 300 which is absolutely ridiculous. You have to pay $80 in order to have unlimited saves, which you used to have automatically! Would change review to 5 stars if this paywall feature was removed