Author: byron

Hi folks, Byron here with a big announcement: We launched subscriptions for Tripline on Saturday, January 10, 2026. You’ll now need a subscription to create new trips and access many of our key features. This is a major change to the platform so I’m going to walk you through the details.

A bit of background

I first launched Tripline in 2010, just over 15 years ago. Since then, more than 1.6 million people have signed up and created more than 1 million trips, criss-crossing the globe with their stories. Every day still, many thousands of people are using Tripline from all over the world and it’s inspiring to see. I’ve been committed to the vision wholeheartedly from the beginning and have continually made improvements over time, including a major release of new features in April 2025.

I’ve also paid for everything myself. Things like AWS hosting infrastructure, CDN services, mapping platforms and more. To-date I’ve invested a substantial amount of my own money along with countless hours of time, all because I believe in the product and I want to keep it growing. The ads I run on Tripline and your Patreon contributions have helped offset a portion of operating costs, but they’re not nearly enough to fund product development. So my goal with the launch of subscriptions is to generate enough revenue so I can re-invest it in enhancing the product for the future. There’s still a lot to be done.

I’m telling you this so you understand that Tripline isn’t a venture-backed company with a big team and money to burn. It’s just me, the creator, looking for a good way to fund the continued development of the product. That’s my only goal, and I believe a subscription model is the best way to do it. I hope you come along with me.

How subscriptions work

There are three tiers:

1. Tourist: A free tier with limited capabilities that will allow people to check out the product, create private trips etc.
2. Pro: A paid tier (not very expensive) that enables most Tripline features, including the ability to add fellow travelers. Notably, the people you add don’t need to be pro users. This means only one person in a group needs to have a Pro subscription to take advantage of Pro-level features for a trip.
3. Guide: A paid tier designed for travel businesses. It’s a bit more expensive, but it opens up SEO benefits, the ability to embed maps on external sites without ads, and removes Tripline branding on your embeds.

You’ll need to choose your tier before you create anything new, and if you choose the free option, many of the features you’re used to seeing will be unavailable. I’m not going to do anything dramatic like delete all your trips if you don’t subscribe, so you’ll have time to choose without too much pressure.

You can click below to activate your subscription:

Access for educators

Many educators around the world are using Tripline with their students for class projects. I strongly believe that this makes the world a better place and I’m committed to supporting that. So, I’ve developed a process to grant educators special access to Tripline at no cost. You can read more about that here.

Patreon supporters

If you were supporting Tripline on Patreon (thank you), I’ve canceled all future contributions, but I’ll keep your special user status in place until you’ve had a chance to make your subscription choice. That means everything will stay as it is now, and I’ll email you directly before I make any changes that would impact you. I’d still recommend subscribing as soon as possible to avoid any issues.

What comes next?

If you’re active on Tripline, you’ll see the changes right away on both the website and in the mobile apps. Along with the upcoming Subscriptions release, I’m also including a few feature updates from the backlog:

• Improvements to place search
• Sub-places (indented waypoints)
• Ability to edit waypoint info in the editor
• Enhancements to map styles
• Better photo experience in the mobile apps

And then the fun part. Assuming I see good subscription numbers, I’m going to start working on some more impactful updates, including an investment in rebuilding our mobile apps from the ground up. Right now my short-list looks like this:

• Completely rebuilt mobile apps with an exciting new set of features
• Better support for trips with 100+ places
• Better visualization for dates (calendar view etc.)
• Additional map customization options
• Improvements to map animation
• KML/GPX track imports
• Internationalization
• Conversion-focused enhancements for travel businesses

As part of this longer term plan, it’s likely that I’ll be making some fundamental changes to the underlying architecture (modernizing infrastructure etc.), and I’ll be bringing on additional engineers. That’s really where the costs come in, and why I need to make this change now. It’s all about the future of the product.

If you want to get in touch or have any questions, please send an email to support@tripline.net (I’m the one looking at that inbox) and let me know your thoughts.

Here’s to the future,

– Byron@Tripline

Hi folks. Byron here with an overview of our new release that we launched on Saturday, April 19. No doubt you’ve noticed quite a few changes to the layout of the site and mobile apps, but there’s a lot more that we updated behind the scenes. Here’s an overview, starting with the most visible changes:

New layout for trips with banner images too!

Based on a lot of user feedback, we changed the trip page to a side-by-side layout and added the ability for creators to upload banner images. The new layout means you can scroll through your list of places and the map will stay visible. You can also click on the point numbers to zoom to a particular place in the map.

To upload a banner image, click the gear icon to edit trip settings and choose a file to upload. We think 16:9 images work best, but any shape will cover the banner area. Ideally, the subject you want to be visible should be in the center of the image.

Also, banner images will automatically become your trip thumbnails.

Easy drag & drop photo reordering

It’s now super simple to reorder your photos (or move to a different waypoint). Head over to this post to see it in action.

True travel distances with duration estimates

We’ve added true distance calculations for all routes, and estimated durations for driving, transit, walking and bicycling routes. Distances will be added for all new trips, and you can edit your old trips to set distances for each path by clicking on the line in the map editor and choosing a travel mode. For more detail on how it works, check out this post.

The overall trip distance is a sum of the individual route distances, so it will reflect all of your changes instantly.

Improved custom path creation

We updated the custom path feature to be easier to use and allow more accurate path creation. Here’s the new interface:

Support for emojis in most places 👍

We now support emojis in most places where you can enter text. This includes the following:

• User bios
• Trip descriptions
• Place titles
• Place descriptions/stories
• Comments

For technical reasons, we don’t allow emojis in trip titles. We know you want them, but we had to draw the line somewhere. : |

New maps platform

We updated our core mapping system to Mapbox GL, which is a significant upgrade. Even though things look pretty much the same (for now), Mapbox GL has many more features and much better performance. This is a new foundation for us to offer more advanced customization options in the future.

New verifications system

We added a new system to handle email verifications, password resets and invitations. Part of this is requiring all users to verify their email addresses in order to create new maps. We know it’s a bit of a pain, but it’s important for us to maintain platform integrity and something we should have done a while ago.

This new system also makes it much easier for you to invite people to join your trips by email. Now, all they have to do is click on an invitation link.

To read more about how it works, check out this post.

Google Sign In

You can now connect your account to Google and use Google Sign In to log in to Tripline. If you already have a Tripline account, go to https://www.tripline.net/myaccount and choose Google [Sign In] to link your account. You’ll then be able to sign in with Google any time.

Infrastructure improvements & bug fixes

We made a bunch of updates to the Tripline infrastructure and fixed a lot of bugs. We’re going to be making quite a few updates to the product this year, so we spent some time getting some of the older parts of our infrastructure up to date

More in the backlog

We’re already hard at work on more enhancements, so stay tuned over the coming months. Some of the things that are high on our list are:

• Improvements to place search
• Sub-places (indented waypoints)
• Ability to edit waypoint info in the editor
• Enhancements to map styles
• Better photo experience in the mobile apps

Longer term

• KML/GPX track imports
• Better support for trips with 100+ places
• Automatic trips from photos
• Completely redesigned mobile apps

If there’s something you’d like to see on this list, or if you have any questions, please send an email to support@tripline.net and let us know.

Byron here with an exciting announcement. We’ve just launched brand new apps for both iOS and Android! Both are available for free on the app stores, links below:

The apps are full-featured, including route animation, photos, comments and the ability to add people as travelers and followers. Speaking of photos, we’ve also implemented a new photo upload process that’s faster than the old system and displays your photos in much higher quality.

My favorite thing about the apps is how each trip starts out as a useful itinerary and becomes a beautiful, Instagram-like feed full of memories that you and your fellow travelers can keep forever. And you retain the context of each individual trip, which I think is is so much better than cluttered, post-based feeds.

Sure, not everyone is a fan of structure, but Tripline was built for people who really care about the trips they take and want to preserve the journey as accurately as possible, both for reminiscing and for future reference. I really believe that an organized presentation is the best way to do that. The challenge is making it simple and fun…I think these apps are a big step towards that.

We have a lot of enhancements planned for the apps in the near future. There are a ton of features that you’ve been asking for forever and we’ll be implementing some of the big ones in the coming months. Notably, distance & duration to make road-trip planning much easier, and better conversational capabilities between travelers…also to help you plan better. And lots more.

As always, if you run into any problems or want to send in a feature request, just email support@tripline.net. We’ll try to get back to you as soon as we can.

Now, go install the app…and don’t forget to leave a review on the app store!

-Byron

Byron here with a big announcement. I’ve launched a new version of the Tripline site, and it’s a huge update. If you haven’t seen it already, head over to www.tripline.net and check it out.

Other than the new visual design, the biggest thing about this release is that I’ve made the site 100% responsive, meaning it will work on any mobile device (phones, tablets etc.) including photo uploads. That was my main goal for this release, and I’m going to follow it up soon with new native iOS and Android apps once I get some sleep. For now though, you can use the main website on your mobile. The current iOS app is also still available.

The other big thing in this release is the return of animation in the Tripline player. It’s a bit different from the original in that you animate from place to place by clicking on the arrows in the player control bar (or using your left/right keyboard arrows), and press enter when you see photos to open a slideshow. The animation works really well, even on maps with hundreds of points. I’m really happy with how it came out. Here’s an embedded player so you can see for yourself.

As with any new release, there are bound to be a few bugs here and there, and there are lots of changes (and some features that I removed), so send an email to support@tripline.net if something isn’t working right or if you can’t find a feature.

Enjoy! And stay tuned for new mobile apps…I’m hoping to get those done in a couple of months.

Byron@Tripline

Hi folks, Byron here with an exciting announcement. We’ve replaced our old Flash player with a new 100% Javascript version. Here it is:

I released it late Monday night, and it was just in time. Google shut off the Flash maps API right on schedule on Tuesday the 2nd. If you were using the IFRAME embed code for the old player, the new player will display automatically in its place. If you were using OBJECT embed code, you’ll see an error message in the old player…you’ll have to grab updated embed code from your map page.

Cool new stuff

Here’s a short summary of what’s new and some helpful hints.

1. 100% Javascript, will display on mobile devices
2. Styled maps with a nicer blue for water
3. New control bar, step next/previous, first/last, zoom, full screen
4. Keyboard controls!! Use the left/right arrows on your keyboard to navigate place to place, [enter] to open/close the photo gallery, left right arrows to navigate photos, [esc] to close the photo gallery and reset the map
5. New photo gallery with super simple navigation and larger photo display
6. Fully responsive (grab the responsive embed code on the map page to get the responsive/fluid map on your own site)

What’s not there (yet)

1. Line animation
2. Soundtrack/audio

Overall, I’m happy with it as a first release. I really thought I’d miss the animation dearly, but I’ve actually found the keyboard controls and manual skipping from place to place to be more engaging. I think the animation was fun for the first few waypoints, but it wasn’t the most engaging experience. I still do miss the coolness of the moving line, so I’m thinking about ways to build it in to the new player in a smarter way. I know lots of you loved the animation (and the soundtrack option), so let me know what you think in the comments. Bonus points if you find a bug.

Enjoy!

Byron@Tripline