Free vs paid campsite alerts

Disclosure: OpenCampsite publishes this guide and runs a campsite alert service that is free during its beta and has announced paid plans. This page names no other service.

Free and paid alerts do the same job. The difference is in what the free plan withholds and whether the thing it withholds matters for your trip. This page covers the usual gaps, the three ways alerts are priced, and what to read before you pay.

What a free plan may hold back

Read the free column of a plan page for these five limits. A plan can have none of them or several.

• Channel. The free plan is email only, and text or push needs a paid plan.
• Number of alerts. One or a few at a time.
• Check interval. Free alerts are checked less often than paid ones.
• A cap on messages. A fixed number of notifications, after which the alert stops.
• Running time. The alert pauses after a set period and needs restarting.

The channel limit is the one that most often decides things. If you will not see an email within a few minutes, an email-only plan lets you try the product but is unlikely to get you a site at a busy campground.

The message cap is the easiest to miss. At a campground where sites open and close many times a day, a small allowance can be used up in an afternoon without one opening you could have booked.

Whether "free" is permanent

Ask what the free plan is. It can be the whole product, a permanent tier beside paid ones, a trial that ends, or a beta.

Each has a different risk. A trial may convert to a paid plan unless you cancel. A beta may end. A permanent free tier may be the slowest one.

OpenCampsite's is a beta, and you should weigh that. Its plans page says nothing is for sale yet, that nothing will start charging silently, and that alerts created during the beta keep running until their trip dates pass. It publishes no end date.

What paying buys

The last row carries more risk than the others. See services that book for you.

Three ways alerts are priced

Free. No charge, with or without the limits above.

One payment. A single alert, a bundle, or a pass that covers a set period and does not renew. You pay once and nothing happens if you forget about it.

Subscription. A monthly or yearly charge that renews until you cancel.

To compare them, cost the trip and not the month:

• One trip. Count the months between setting the alert and your arrival. A subscription costs its monthly price times that number. Compare that total with the one-payment price.
• A season. Add up every month you will have an alert running. If that is most of the year, an annual price is usually lower than monthly.
• Forgotten renewals. A subscription you meant to cancel in September and noticed in January has cost four extra months. One-payment pricing cannot do that.

OpenCampsite has announced all three shapes for after its beta: Standard at $10 a month or $90 a year, Plus at $20 a month or $180 a year, and a $12 one-time Trip Pass. None can be bought yet, so treat those as plans and not as prices you can act on.

The alert is not the only cost

The reservation carries its own fees, and they apply however you found the site. On Recreation.gov, for example, an online camping reservation adds a non-refundable $8 reservation fee, cancelling costs a $10 service fee, and a cancellation on the arrival day or the day before it gives up the first night as well.

That matters when an alert leads you to book quickly. Confirm the dates, the site and your equipment fit before you pay, because fixing a rushed booking is not free.

Before you enter a card

The Federal Trade Commission's consumer advice on subscriptions and free trials comes down to a short list, and it applies here without change:

1. Find the terms and read what you are agreeing to.
2. If there is a trial, know its length and what is charged when it ends.
3. Know how to cancel before you sign up. If the page does not explain it, do not sign up.
4. Look for boxes that are already ticked.
5. Put the renewal or trial-end date in your calendar.
6. Check your card statement after you cancel.

Add one question that is specific to alerts: is anything refunded if no site ever opens? Many openings depend on other campers cancelling, which no service controls, so expect the answer to be no and decide with that in mind.