I cracked and downloaded the app when I needed to find a place to sleep in a big city with no proper campgrounds available. If you have Google maps and just look up “National Forest” (or BLM, etc) then zoom in on forest roads - bam…loads of options. Or if you google campgrounds. But for the city, you rely on crowdsourcing information or past experience. My dislike comes from the fact that there were locations out on that map of businesses that said they allowed overnight parking…and that was most certainly not true. One was a Walmart parking lot with “No overnight parking” posted all over lol. Also the other options rely on you being totally self contained, safe, and probably not alone. I don’t usually worry about that specifically but options like the side of the road behind businesses on the outskirts of town, in poorly lit areas…sounds just like the start to a bad story where you get called an idiot for even risking it. So I found this less useful than Google maps and a quick search of “Where can I boondock.” Ah yes…my favorite part was how the app is set up in a way where to send in this information you had to type it in, then scroll down to the “Send” button, but could not see it/press it because it force opened the keyboard on my phone with no way of closing it to reach said button. Excellent work here.

The strength of the original was that anybody could contribute, so there was a rich database. Your circus, but I bring the monkeys and get to watch the show. IOv2 is now an (over priced) subscription or hobbled annoyware. Your circus, but you want me to bring the monkeys and buy a ticket? What devs are missing is that they need to draw users because our data is their product, and without it there’s nothing to sell. In its new format, devs will cut out many CONTRIBUTORS. At some times (traveling for a month mostly thru state parks in the summer) or in some places (northeast) no subscription makes sense because IO is only one tool for finding options, and there are other tools. If they were maintaining a database of verified sites that I could browse (like harvest hosts), sold. But IOv2 asks you to pay and populate. Why? How about dropping me $1 every time I add or update a site since it’s my data IOv2 is selling? The new format will cut out a group of contributors who can’t justify the price and/or won’t bother with the limited functionality and purposeful annoyware, but would still add useful data. $1.99/mo a la carte and I’ll still take a minute to update the database for the months and places I’ll be on the road, even if IO didn’t get me there. Behind annoyware or an inflated subscription, contributing to a product with limited functionality is not going to be something I’m interested in. Nice tent, but no fun without my monkeys.

I loved the original and would frequently use it to take my partner on adventures. I learned about the app from some van lifers a few years ago and have used it ever since. That being said I HATE the update. It costs money. Something many people using it don’t have. It’s isn’t straight forward to use. When you open it accustomed to the old features it took me fifteen minutes to figure out how to even toggle on the map to access places. And when you wanna look at an area to plan a trip etc you can’t because you have to delete the old map if you don’t want to pay to access both at once. And when you delete the map your favorites stop showing up too. Overall v annoying and much less accessible to the types of people it helped. IMO we didn’t want a bunch of new features. We wanted what we had. It worked fine. And as the saying goes: “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” 🤦