Planapple Company FAQ
Looking for background info on Planapple? You've found it.
Need some help using Planapple to plan a trip? You'd probably prefer
our product help.
What is Planapple?
Planapple is a travel planning tool that helps streamline the process of planning a trip.
It gives you a single place to collect and organize all of the info about your trip (research urls, confirmation emails, notes, maps, etc.). You can talk about ideas with your co-travelers (where to stay, what to do) via comments and messages, and then take everything with you on the road with the mobile app.
When you get back you can “publish” your favorites to a url to easily share recommendations with friends.
Where do I start?
Get an quick overview of the service and sign up on our home page: www.planapple.com.
We also have a pre-built demo trip, where you can see what it's like and try out Planapple's trip-planning features—even if you're not planning a trip of your own right now.
Why did you build this?
In 2008 one co-founder (Pete) and his wife (Brenda) took a big trip to Thailand and Indonesia. They put all their belongings in storage, packed a couple of backpacks, and hit the road (er… airport). They did a lot of web research about places to stay, things to do, and things to see. They ended up printing lots of stuff out. Brenda made a huge travel binder.
When they got back, Pete built a simple app to make organizing and carrying their research easier. It came in handy for many future trips (unfortunately most much smaller). Planapple grew out of that early prototype.
What's the big picture?
There's so much travel information available on the web and it's growing so quickly that it's hard to keep track of stuff. Search engines and review sites help a lot, but they don't provide tools to let you manage the things that you've picked out as interesting (let alone access those things quickly from an iPhone in a cafe in Thailand).
Planapple lets you capture and curate the parts of the web that you've identified as relevant to your trip, talk about it with your co-travelers, keep track of your decisions, and take it all with you on your phone.
How is this different from other services?
Some travel planning apps are really focused on streamlining your itinerary (flight details, rental cars, hotels). Others are tightly bound to their own branded guide content, or insist you broadcast all of your plans via social networks (fun sometimes but not always).
Planapple focuses on you, the planner: doing your research, talking about it with your co-travelers, organizing your plans, and taking them on the road. We've designed Planapple to work together with all those other travel info sources—from guides and reviews to ticket booking sites to obscure forum posts—so that you can pull your plans together without all the hassle.
Where can I read more about all the other cool features Planapple has?
Why not check out our Planapple product blog?
What's the business model?
Right now the service is free. We make money when you do searches or click on links to affiliate sites from within the app.
We don't plan on plastering the app with ads, because the whole point of it is to be a helpful tool for you, the planner. You're exposed to enough ads all over the travel sites you're trying to research.
But if we can find a tasteful way to offer you suggestions that will be helpful and relevant to your trip planning, while making money for the site, we'll be looking into that.
What's the funding status of the company?
We're a self funded, boot-strapped start up, paid for out of our co-founders' pockets. If enough people find this service useful, we may be looking at other funding options.
How many employees does Planapple have?
Two: Pete Rice and Mike Edmunds
Fortunately we've been able to build most of Planapple ourselves, though we have gotten a lot of help and great advice from friends, family and colleagues.
Prior to founding Planapple, Pete and Mike led technology and product at consumer photo-sharing company Simple Star, Inc (sold to Sonic Solutions in 2008 and continuing to thrive as Roxio Photoshow).
Can a blogger get a logo already?
No problem! Here ya go: Planapple logo.
How about some screen shots shots?
No problem! Here ya go: Landing Page, Welcome, Discussion, Notebook, Itinerary, Item Details, Search, Mobile
How do I contact Planapple?
See that little question-mark bubble at the bottom right? Just give it a click. The contact form in there gives you a direct line to Mike & Pete.