Community Forums

DKRITTER · 06-13-2025, 08:24 AM

Some time back I was gifted a RV Life Pro subscription and kinda used it. Mostly checking reviews and writing some. Every once in a while using trip wizard.

We've never used the GPS app or the RV maintenance portion.

This morning I received a subscription renewal from them and I'm trying to figure out what I would get/not get with paying for the renewal?

i.e. Can we still read/write reviews if I chose not to renew? The rest of the stuff isn't that big of a deal to me.

StevefromPA · 06-13-2025, 09:10 AM

I dont think you can write reviews. We are subscribers and each time I want to look at a review I need to log in.

Donskiman · 06-13-2025, 02:38 PM

Unless something changed, we wrote reviews for several years before subscribing. If you're not using Trip Wizard, GPS or the Maintenance feature there's no point in subscribing.

High Road Travelers · 06-13-2025, 10:08 PM

Could just subscribe to support them.

Isaac-1 · 06-13-2025, 11:00 PM

I am in the same situation as the OP, I have contributed from time to time, and now about the same time as I am leaving on a 3,000+ mile trip I get this subscription renewal notification after using and contributing to reviews on this service for years.

DKRITTER · 06-14-2025, 07:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by High Road Travelers

Could just subscribe to support them.

Absolutely, we have done things like this in the past but as we get older we decided not to participate in stuff we don't use. We looked at it a couple of years ago and cut hundreds of dollars a year out of our expenses.
When you look at it and you're only staying one night a year at a winery that night ends up being a pretty expensive night.

UTTransplant · 06-14-2025, 09:53 AM

When it was Campground Reviews I submitted reviews on just about every campground we visited. I added to their data base a number of places they didn’t have, mostly USFS or BLM campgrounds. When it got bought, I stopped contributing. The new user interface made it just too hard. They ‘gifted” me a subscription because I had submitted so many reviews, but I just got the same email you did. My answer is “Hell no.” I won’t spend $69 a year for things I don’t use like their GPS or routing apps. Oh, and I contributed to this forum every year voluntarily. But unless the company can come up with a much less expensive plan that just supports the forums, I won’t pay. I was rather direct about my response to the email; hope somebody reads it.

Isaac-1 · 06-14-2025, 11:33 AM

UTTransplant pretty much sums up my position, I have played with their planning tools just to try to see what all the fuss was about, but that is about it, I primarily use the campground reviews, but cross reference them with reviews on other sites as many RV parks have potentially limited, or very outdated reviews.

p.s. just 4 days ago I received an email from them thanking me, and saying nearly 15,000 people had viewed my contributions, with reviews of 32 campgrounds over the last 9 years,. Following this up asking me to pay $70 per year for services I don't use like GPS and route planning is just a bit too much. I am about to leave on another trip in a few days, probably staying at a dozen or more campgrounds over the next 6 weeks, guess where I will likely not be posting any reviews.

Donskiman · 06-14-2025, 12:32 PM

As I said in my first post, if you're not using the features, it makes no sense to subscribe. We have found Trip Wizard to be a valuable tool for our trip planning. All our trips over the past several years were planned with Trip Wizard. We previously used RV Parky and Trip Wizard is far better. They have continuously worked to improve Trip Wizard and the GPS function now works very well. Are they perfect? No. However, we have found it well worth the money.

I think we have around 85 reviews and hundreds of photos to go with them in Campground Reviews.

Isaac-1 · 06-14-2025, 02:09 PM

My concern with this, as well as the other companies that are buying up these independent RV databases is the often all or nothing approach they take to have access to the data if you are interested in only one feature. If they allow free access it is often in a crippled manner across all of their products, ie allow to see the campground reviews, but not allow the details, etc. While this does not yet to seem to be the case with RVLife at least when it comes to the campground review portion, I have to wonder if it is coming.

**NLOVNIT** · 06-14-2025, 02:28 PM

Let me clarify some things:
There's 3 parts to the RV LIFE membership
1. Registering at their forums = FREE!
2. Registering at Campgrounds (formerly RV Park Reviews) = FREE!
3. Subscribing to RV LIFE Pro, which is Trip Wizard (allows one to plan trips/see Harvest Host sites), GPS, Maintenance Tracker & Offline Maps = YEARLY SUBSCRIPTION FEE

The ones I listed as FREE! do not cost to register or use. But you do have to login to participate on those sites. And with Campgrounds, you have to login to see reviews & other park data.

As posted earlier, if you don't need to use the trip planner/GPS or other features of Pro, then you don't need to pay a fee. Just enjoy using the forums & Campgrounds (submitting reviews, posting pictures, submitting tips) for free.

Information about RV LIFE features can be found here:
https://rvlife.com/

As for being "bought up" by another company, I don't see Andy letting go of any of his sites. They are a labor of love for him & he's poured a ton of money into all of them to make them better for users. If anything, he'll acquire more sites.