Outdooractive Reviews 247

The negative reviews all seem to be about the demise of Viewranger. Isn’t the point to review OutdoorActive.
I too replaced Viewranger with OutdoorActive and I love it.
We have just spent three days hiking on the Cotswold Way and the app was faultless correcting us on numerous occasions each day.
With ViewRanger I had to go to my laptop to plot a route. With this app it is easy to plot on my phone which is a real bonus. I even edited a route standing in a field because we had a slightly different stating point.
I contacted the help line about changing the colour of a route and to my surprise they came back to me with a neat workaround within hours. Well done!
My wife doesn’t like me ‘playing with my phone’ while we are out hiking so the fact that the app feeds directions to my watch is brilliant. There are different view options on the watch which is a neat feature.
Finally I was delighted when approaching a change of direction to receive an announcement in my hearing devices with directions which meant that I didn’t have to look at my watch or my phone. My wife now thinks I have new powers instinctively knowing which way to go 🤗
A superb app thank you.
Bonus: I have OS maps for the entire UK and IGN for France.

Outdoor active couldn't compete with viewranger so bought it and murdered it.

upgrade to pro, nag nag nag....

Tried to use it, tried to like it but heck no, time to find something else losing my os maps i'd paid for.

The app and website for this product are utter rubbish. I have been a Viewranger user for years and thought I just needed to persevere with the new app that I was being forced to use. I have tried my best but have lost so many routes that I have done through the crap syncronisation process between the app and the website.

Wake up and realise that the app you have revoked was a million times better than the one that your users must be driving away from in their thousands. If you don't sort this out I'll export the remaining walks I do still have in your rubbish app and use them elsewhere!

As so many have said, this is utter utter garbage.

If I could give no stars I would.
I was a very simple Viewranger user. After purchasing full OS UK maps to use on Viewranger, I'd find hikes in places I visited, download them to use offline, follow the hikes on Viewranger, finish the hike - simple! I never went off route, I always knew where I was, I knew how far I'd walked, I knew how long I'd been walking - accurate and simple!
The odd occasion I would record a hike I had planned and done. I knew how far I'd walked, how long it had taken, height gain/loss, I knew all the details about the hike that I needed to know, then upload it for anyone to use - again accurate and it was simple!
So why is everything on Outdoor Active complicated. Nothing about it is intuitive. It's clunky, slow, takes an age to lock onto GPS then when it does it will just as quickly lose it again, only to regain GPS to find you are 20/30/40 metres of the trail which isn't great in mist/fog. Finding hikes, and there aren't as many as Viewranger, uploading them, and just viewing them is difficult.
I've tried to get to know this app, using it to try and follow routes, try to record hikes, thinking it's just because I was so use to using Viewranger. But that is not the reason why I'll not be using it any more. The reason is, it is rubbish/garbage and IMO could be dangerous.
If Outdoor Active have any commercial sense, they will dump their useless, complicated, clunky system and use the Viewranger app.

Another old ViewRanger user forced in to this bag of total crap. Sluggish, and buggy UI is the least problem. Web UI ALWAYS crashes when editing routes. Have been this way since the start and I honestly believe that they don't know how to fix it.

Even if they get the route planning bugs straightend out app/web seem to be build by small children

I give up

Having used the straightforward interface of viewranger for several years, and now having been forced to switch to outdoor active, I find it to be utter rubbish. I just wanted to plan a walking route using OS maps. I can't see way to stop it trying to help me, I can't seem to set it for walking, so it doesn't try to use roads, there's no finesse in placing points. Total waste of time. I spent a lot of money on OS map tiles in Viewranger, that's the only reason to use Outdoor active - to look at a map. The functionality is a waste of time.

Whilst attractive to look at and lots of options its so convoluted, using the software on PC is a must but even on my very high spec machine it thrashes the CPU and RAM and is slooow. Why so many options for clipboard? Syncing with a phone is great but the routes are all over the place, no order at all.
The app regularly dumps the rout and you have a panic trying to find your way, the voice guidance is so bad its beyond belief "on route/off route continuously.
Sorry Outdoor active people, as a pro member for two years I will not be renewing my subscription.

Avoid Outdooractive it is nothing like as good as ViewRanger was!
They took a very good app, Viewranger, and totally messed it up.
I do not see any way of including my points of interest on to my recorded tracks map view, to see them both together. To me, this one of the best features of VR. Maybe I am doing this simple task wrong but the Help info is very poor - no useful information and not written in clear and understandable English. When I go to my info and click "Points" I do see my points, but the button next to Tracks is highlighted, not the one next to Points. It's a very annoying bug.
Unlike VR, Outdooractive just look to be after your money, most things I used to do for free, I now have to pay for. The basiv version is also loaded with annoying advertising. The basic free map you get is very poor compared with the excellent one you got free with VR. The only good things about Outdooractive is that my previous VR tracks were carried over so I see them, and I did not have any issue recording my own track - except of course I can't see my POIs on it.

Garbage. Viewranger was a delight and they murdered it.

I used ViewRanger for years and never had a problem navigating in the Scottish mountain's. ViewRanger was taken over by Outdoor Active - difficult to use and got me and my wife lost in the mountains. Bring back ViewRanger.

Avoid this app at all costs. I was forced to migrate from Viewranger so as not to lose the comprehensive map collection that I had amassed & paid for over several years.
As a qualified mountain leader, I am convinced that this app could have tragic consequences when used in wild countryside & situations.

I've tried to give this app a fair go when I migrated from Viewranger, and created an account. Can get into my account on the laptop, but the app doesn't let me into anything other than the openstreetmap. It recognises there's an account under my email, asks for my password, then reverts straight back to the "subscribe for a Pro account" screen. Have tried to change the password in case that was the problem, but all they do is send you an email telling you to click on the "change password" link - there isn't a "change password" link in the email (and clicking on the only line that exists - which is the Outdooractive logo - goes straight through to a 404 broken link page). I was prepared to put up with a few glitches and learning how to use a new app, but this is buggy as hell and I'm not paying to be used as a beta tester for it. Avoid it.

Unusable app, nothing like View ranger.

Well what can I say, out of 5 recorded tracks one success, viewrange 157 tracks 100% success.
Offline maps don't work properly

Outdoor Active replaced Viewranger which was a good app with an app I dislike and have deleted.

ViewRanger worked. OutdoorActive doesn't. Simple as that.

They can't even be bothered to use correct English in the menus.

It might be OK for driving tours but as a hiking navigation app it's gone.

ViewRanger was trusted by hikers and mountain rescue, sadly OutdoorActive is not safe and I hope this doesn't lead to too many injuries or deaths.

You took over Viewranger. Please learn from them how they did it. Viewranger was far more better. Today I tried the Komoot app. This one just did what it had to do. Record the track. correctly. Still think Viewranger should be released again.

I have held off writing a review for Outdoor Active up until now, like another reviewer I have noticed that the Google review ratings have been grossly manipulated, two weeks ago the 1 star reviews for Outdoor Active vastly outnumbered the 5 star reviews, now just a couple of weeks later the 5 star reviews outnumber the 1 star reviews, it looks like Outdoor Active are deceiving their customers as well as ripping them off by making you pay for a pro or even a pro plus subscription. I can understand the pro subscription but then to try and squeeze more money out of the customer with a pro plus add on is just being greedy.

I have tried the app a few times and it just doesn't come close to the old Viewranger app, when plotting a route it seems to have a mind of its own, even with the snap to route turned off it just seems to snap to where it thinks you are going and when I did finally get the route saved to where I wanted it to go, upon reloading it just snapped to where it wanted to go. I did try to follow the route out in the great outdoors, it was a circular route and half way around the app told me to turn around because I was off track, on returning home the useless app was deleted from my phone.

I was previously a loyal Viewranger customer and contributed over 200 documented routes totally free of charge for the enjoyment of like minded hikers, now I can't even download my own routes unless I pay for a pro subscription.

Outdoor Active must be the most frustrating mapping app on the market and is a prime example of putting profit before customer satisfaction, I for one will be reverting back to using memory-map which I used before Viewranger came along. I would also like to know how Outdoor Active can get away with manipulating the review ratings, shame on you.

My advice is to steer clear of this app and try one that puts the customer first.

I actually quite like Outdooractive's interface, even though I am another ex-VR user. Good selection of shared routes to find as well. But! It is shockingly buggy and the worst bug is its (deliberate?) failure to reliably handle offline access to saved maps. Vital for any outdoor user obvs. Zero response from OA despite two tech requests. Bag o' sh*te

Forcibly migrated from ViewRanger, without giving any consent. I have now started getting spam from OutdoorActive and when I try to unsubscribe from it, I find I can't do so without first activating my OutdoorActive account! Surely that is not compliant with GDPR - it should be easy to unsubscribe from emails.