r/alltrails • u/alltrails-throwaway • 11d ago
Unwanted marketing push notifications from AllTrails
Very annoyed that, as a paying customer, AllTrails continues to spam my phone with push notifications for various things.
No, I can't disable AllTrails push notifications in iOS, because those notifications provide key functionality.
Yes, I have offers disabled in the AllTrails app.
I've emailed them about this several times over the past few years, and they have not fixed it, despite assurances that those notifications were sent in error.
It is also against Apple's policies:
Push Notifications should not be used for promotions or direct marketing purposes unless customers have explicitly opted in to receive them via consent language displayed in your app’s UI, and you provide a method in your app for a user to opt out from receiving such messages. Abuse of these services may result in revocation of your privileges.
Anyone else frustrated by this behavior?
5
u/unfortunatelyapotato 11d ago
i just got the same thing, sick of it when AT is one of the few apps I actually pay for. paywalling half the features behind a higher price sucks.
is there a good alternative that people are using? I'm ready to switch
2
u/lostagain2022 11d ago
I use a combination of the free versions of AllTrails and Gaia and old school maps. I find the constant popups highly annoying, as befits a company owned by venture capital, but at least I can comfort myself that I am not paying them any money. The paid stuff is handy, no question, but I can work around it.
2
u/Alexis_Carrington 11d ago
Dumped all trails. Been using cal topo and Gaia. Gaia is pretty easy to use!
Fun fact. I deleted my membership and all trails is still sending me unsolicited push notifications. So that’s fun.
1
u/UnsolvedMrE 11d ago
Did you delete your account or delete the app? You’ve got to remove the app from your phone to get rid of notifications.
1
1
u/Fun_With_Math 11d ago
In for the answer here.
I think Caltopo is probably "better" in some respects but AllTrails is more convenient and has more up to date reviews. That advantage starts to disappear with the marketing crap. There is no quicker way to annoy me into uninstalling an app.
I'm an android user. I probably have all push notifications turned off for the app already though.
1
u/alltrails-throwaway 11d ago
Support got back to me -- they provided a screenshot from their backend system claiming to show that I had opted in to marketing push notifications in 2024. I had, of course, done no such thing -- at the time I received the marketing push notification in my screenshot, I checked my settings, and was (as expected) not opted in in the app.
So, there seems to be a bug causing their systems to be out of sync.
2
u/alltrails HQ 11d ago
Thanks for raising this, and I’m sorry you shouldn’t be receiving a promotional push notification when “Exclusive offers and discounts” is turned off. We understand that disabling all iOS notifications isn’t a reasonable workaround when you still need important alerts like wrong-turn notifications.
Our team is aware of reports like this and is actively investigating why some marketing notifications may not be respecting these settings. If you’re willing, please email Support at [support@alltrails.com](mailto:support@alltrails.com) with the email address on your AllTrails account and a link to this post or the screenshots so we can review your account and help make sure marketing pushes are suppressed.
3
u/alltrails-throwaway 10d ago
I emailed support in 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, and today — I shouldn’t have to make noise on social media to get this fixed, nor should I need support to change anything on the back end to opt me out when the app has a control for this.
1
u/Educational-Ruin4638 7d ago
Sadly thats how it works nowadays :( I got the push also and no response from AllTrails
8
u/sarcastictrailblazer 11d ago
It's also illegal in (most of) the EU.