MarineTraffic - Ship Tracking 4+

Indespensible

I just sailed from Chesapeake Bay to NYC. I don't have AIS on my boat, and was concerned about boat traffic in the C&D canal, the Delware river, and Ambrose channel into the Hudson. I DO HAVE cellular service on my Ipad. We remained within 10 miles of the coastline at all times, and this app identified all the freighters, both near us, and I could also look ahead and behind us. I was then able to hail them and discuss course and direction with them. There were a few times we needed to adjust our course a tiny bit, and avoid issues well in advance.

This app was a life saver for our voyage. Even when I upgrade to onboard AIS, I will still use this app to see the freighters that are outside of the VHF line of site range to predict CPA.

Thanks Marine Traffic!!!!

Free unlocks expire when app closed

I was looking for an app to track my vehicle shipment. This app does a great job of that and more. There’s a catch for free accounts, however.

You get three “past route” and three “vessel info” unlocks before having to register and pay. No problem, I thought. Just want to track one ship over a period of 3-5 days. So day one I unlock the past route and vessel info for my ship. Very cool info! Day two I go to check on the vessel and… I have to use another unlock for both the past route and vessel info. Now day two again, but I closed the app and it wants to use my final unlock for both the route and vessel info. It’s the same ship on the same route.

If you’re going to subscribe, this won’t matter to you. If you’re like me and only have a single, one-off use of the app, go for it but don’t close the app! You’ll have to use your limited unlocks again and quickly run out. I hope the app dev will consider allowing each unlock to last for the current sailing of the selected ship instead of what seems to expire as soon as I close the app.

Developer Response ,

Thank you so much for your lovely review. It means a lot to us! Should you have any suggestions on what could be improved, please let us know in our Community Help:https://bit.ly/3qEQGUa Have a great day!

Warning! 16$ app fee is just the start!

I was excited to pay for and download this app just to find that the 16$ I paid for it doesn’t do much. For example I bought a plane tracker app from a different company and the cost for life was 4.99$ which gave me an unlimited number of favorite planes and allows me to track planes wherever they are anywhere I’m the world. Not with marine tracker. Once a ship leaves a coastal area and moves into satellite range (which I think is about 20 miles off the coast) you have to pay 1$ per ship, per day). So say you want to track 3 ships for a month - 90$. You can pay for a monthly rate but only for each action the app does and those but add up pretty fast. For example to add more than 5 ships to you favorites would cost approximately 100$ a year at their best price of 8$ a month billed annually. What about larger packages. Those will cost you in the hundreds of dollars a year. The “pro” plan costs $1,200 a year. I would strongly suggest looking into what you want out of this app before dropping the initial 16$. Very disappointed in this app. It feels like the devs are just trying to milk every dollar out of me they can.

Developer Response ,

Hello, thank you for your honest review. We understand that you would like to track multiple vessels through our services, but you have faced an issue with our pricing.
First and foremost, please allow us to clarify that our app costs 4.99$. It is a paid as it does not contain ads, and it has been designed to offer certain of our features on the go. We do offer subscriptions on iOS devices that are billed through the App Store, so the 16$ you are referring it could be related to that.
Moreover, our Access Plus 24 is designed for users needing access for a limited period of time, which is the reason it costs 1$ for 24 hours. If you wish to track one, three, or more vessels with satellite AIS, then one of our subscription the SAT Flex would be better suited to this: https://bit.ly/2WV8PNR Note further that all our services are available on monthly billing, and on annual billing with 10% discount.
Lastly, we do have single services, each offering access to different features, but we also offer our New Plans, bundling our new single services together at lower prices, which have replaced our Legacy Plans, such as the the Pro plan.
Lastly, the coverage of our terrestrial stations and the reception of vessel signals depends on multiple factors, including the class of the vessels' AIS transponder.
We hope this helps clarify a few things, but if you still have questions or concerns, please reach out to our Support here https://bit.ly/1QXz92V and one of us will be most glad to assist.