Portal - Immersive Escapes 4+

Absolutely the best app for helping with sleep, anxiety and focus for long study sessions! I've been super satisfied with the app so far. The wallpaper function is a big plus as well. Not to mention that the team behind the app are very helpful and friendly! I'd reccomend it to anyone.

👋 Hi Nikolaj__L, thanks so much for your incredibly kind words. We're honestly so very humbled by the high regard that you hold Portal in - and we're just so thrilled that it's making such a positive difference in so many aspects of your life.

And the crazy/exciting thing is we genuinely feel as though we've just got started and that the best is yet to come - so, please do keep your eyes peeled for our latest releases and future plans. We can't wait to share them with you and the impact they can make in people's day to day lives.

Many thanks again for your support and enthusiasm for what we do - it means a lot,

Andy, Nick, Tim & Stu - Team Portal.

A way too expensive price on the lifetime premium version and the fact that there is no app for Apple TV makes what could have been a five-star review a three-star.

👋 Hi Mads8639,

Thanks so much for taking the time and effort to share your feedback with us.

We do totally understand that Portal's a little more on the premium side of things at the minute (albeit not as expensive as other apps in the space). The main reason for this is we are a small indie team made up of 4 friends (including 2 brothers) building and self funding the app ourselves and in many respects punching above our weight in not only developing the app ourselves, doing all the filming and content production work ourselves, but also conducting our own R&D to integrate new immersive technologies into the experience. And the exciting news is there's lots more to come...including a future Apple TV app!

For us, Portal's all about making a positive difference in people's lives by bringing nature into our indoor lives, whenever we can't physically be out there ourselves. It's about recreating the essence of being in some of the world's most peaceful and beautiful corners of the world, so our focus is very much on the realism, immersion and overall quality of the experience. Indeed, we're hoping to pioneer a new approach to digital wellbeing by focusing on how our physical surroundings affect our health & wellbeing and in turn harnessing immersive technologies (smart lighting, cinematic motion visuals (shot in upto 12K), dynamic spatial audio & more to come) to virtually transform people's surroundings and provide instant escapes to real-world locations that induce calm, reduce stress and anxiety, improve mental fatigue & concentration, enhance cognitive performance and unlock creativity. Our big dream is by creating a relationship with the natural world through digital tools Portal can have a ripple effect that positively influences our mindset and relationship with nature. In the words of David Attenborough, “no one will protect what they don't care about; and no one will care about what they have never experienced” and we’re passionate about Portal playing a part in ensuring we don’t lose touch with the magic nature can bring to our lives.

We do genuinely believe in the positive benefits immersive, virtual experiences of nature can bring in our lives, and whilst it might sound a little far-fetched, but this belief is backed up by a growing mountain of scientific evidence.

Unfortunately, the costs involved in creating these experiences are incredibly expensive (especially without external VC funding), as we do all the filming, content production, app development and R&D ourselves. What's more, we're staunchly independent and refuse to include ads in the app or sell on our customers' data to third party marketing companies, which further reduces our options for funding the app's development. So our current Premium Membership pricing is a way to allow us to keep pushing the app's development and continually invest in content production through the support of the Portal Community in a more predictable and sustainable way than we've been able to do so far. We hope it will allow us to continue to create a better app for our customers now and for the rest of our lifetimes, and hopefully beyond.

We do however understand that our current pricing is not for everyone and as a result may be a bit of a niche product at the moment but we hope that for those that are happy to support us as an indie team and use Portal regularly, they have the utmost confidence that we'll continually strive to improve and innovate to create an app that integrates the latest advances in technology, draws on inspiration from science and the most incredible locations in the world, and in turn delivers experiences that genuinely make a positive difference to their lives.

We totally appreciate that not everyone will see the same value in Portal and so we are keeping an eye on other options that we may be able to offer to make Portal as accessible as possible, while still allowing us to continue sustainably developing the app. Currently, we have made a Community Fund available for people that love Portal and would benefit from a Premium Membership but cannot afford it, including students. And we've also continued to maintain a free offering, what we call our Open Access program which makes a selection of our portals, which changes each month, available for free to anyone that downloads Portal, with no ads and no time or usage restrictions. Plus we do not require you to sign up for an account or anything silly like that, so you have peace of mind that there's no catches or commitment required when using our free Open Access portals. However, we do currently limit it to 3 portals as the server costs for providing up to 8K motion visuals and multi-channel spatial audio to hundreds of thousands of people can get pretty expensive.

We really appreciate your feedback, so we hope the above helps explain the path we've taken so far. If you'd like to help us beta test our Apple TV app, please drop us an email at hello@portal.app and we'll add you to our list of beta tester and let you know as soon as we have something to test drive. If you have any other questions or there's anything else we can help with, please don't hesitate to email us :)

Many thanks,

Stu, Andy, Nick & Tim - Team Portal.

I thought I FINALLY had an escape from reality, but as Eminem said “Snap back to reality, oops there goes gravity.” It’s a SCAM! You have to pay for more than 6 portals which is stupid. At least add a feature to unlock more than 6 portals for free yet get a couple of ads. I even found a portal that wasn’t marked with premium, BUT when I tried to open it, guess what it said pay for premium. This an all-out SCAM. Never try it. Reply stupidly or auto reply and I will write more about how absurd this is.

👋 Hi vsw2012,

We're really sorry for your disappointment and frustration - honestly, it's not the experience we'd wish you or anyone else to have.

Whilst in an ideal world, we'd love to share Portal and the benefits it can bring to people's lives for free unfortunately the costs involved in are incredibly expensive, especially as we are not a VC funded business. We are a small indie team of 4 best mates (including 2 brothers) building and funding the app ourselves and in many respects punching above our weight in not only developing the app ourselves, doing all the filming and content production work ourselves (using cinema-quality equipment) but also conducting our own R&D to integrate new immersive technologies into the experience such as Dynamic (head-tracked) Spatial Audio and smart lighting (we were the first major wellbeing app int he world to support head-tracked Spatial Audio). And the exciting news is there's lots more to come...we've got an amazing new collection (shot in up to 12K resolution) coming out very soon, and we've also recently released a compatible version of Portal to the Apple Vision Pro last month.

The costs involved in creating this experience are incredibly expensive and we refuse to include ads in the app or sell on our customers' data to third party marketing companies like other apps, which further reduces our options for funding Portal. As a wellbeing business, we take privacy especially seriously which is why we don't use any in-app analytics or user tracking. The experience we are hoping to deliver is one where people genuinely feel as though they've brought nature home, into their indoor spaces, to help improve sleep, focus, as well as manage stress and anxiety. We wholeheartedly believe that including ads or selling on our customers' personal information to subside their usage is entirely opposed to the experience we want to deliver and our approach as a team.

At present our current Premium Membership pricing is a way to allow us to keep pushing the app's development and continually invest in content production in a more sustainable way than we've been able to do so far using our own savings. We hope it will allow us to continue to create a better app for our customers and is aimed at those who use Portal regularly (every day or every week).

We understand that our Premium offering is not for everyone but we hope that for those that are happy to support us as an indie team and use Portal regularly, they have the utmost confidence that we'll continually strive to improve and innovate to create an app that combines the latest research in the field of environmental psychology, biophilic design and cutting edge immersive technology to deliver experiences that genuinely make a positive difference to their lives.

We 100% appreciate that not everyone will see the same value in Portal or be able to afford a Premium Membership, especially with the cost of living going up in the world, and so we are keeping an eye on other options that we may be able to offer to ensure the broadest access possible while still allowing us to continue developing the app. Currently, we have made a Community Fund available for people that love Portal and would benefit from a Premium Membership but cannot afford it (it operates on a discretionary basis, please email us at hello@portal.app if you'd like to find out more). And we've also continued to maintain a free offering of 6 portals which are available for free to anyone that downloads Portal, with no ads, and no time or usage restrictions - and with many of our features unlocked (focus timer, breathing exercises, ambient sunrise wakeup alarm, mix audio functionality etc).

It may be that Portal is just not for you, as there are lots of other apps and YouTube videos out there that are free that might better suit what you are looking for. But we hope the above helps explain our thoughts behind the path that we have taken. We certainly don't wish to mislead or scam anyone - it's just not why we started Portal in the first place. For us, the positive impact Portal makes in people's lives is something we're incredibly proud of and what Portal's all about. We've had numerous people feedback that they find Portal an essential part of their toolkit in managing tinnitus, insomnia, stress, anxiety, trauma, PTSD, panic attacks and ADHD. What's more, we have a loyal following of doctors, nurses and air ambulance paramedics that use Portal to help them manage stress at work as well as a number of Ukrainian customers that use Portal to help escape the sound of shelling to help their children get to sleep. We appreciate you only have our word, but we genuinely are all about trying to make a positive difference in people's lives. We're really saddened that this is not how things have come across for you.

If you'd like to discuss things further please don't hesitate to get in touch by emailing us at hello@portal.app - happy to tee up a video call if you'd prefer - we'd love to chat.

Many thanks,

Stu, Andy, Nick & Tim - Team Portal