You are already using four apps for this.
A chat to argue in, a poll to pick the dates, an itinerary app or a shared doc for the plan, and Splitwise at the end. Every one of them is good at its bit. The trouble is the bits in between.
- Compared
- By purpose
- Scorecards
- None
- Verdict
- They are fine
Nobody here is bad at their job.
They are each doing one part of it. Lay them across the five things a group actually has to get through and the shape of the problem is hard to miss.
Truce’s claim is not that it has more features than any of these. Several of them have more. The claim is the span — and that no seam inside it needs a volunteer.
Dates
Find
Decide
Plan
Money
The group chat
Holds nothing
The group chat: covers agreeing the dates, finding the options, deciding between them, the itinerary and the money.
Every stage gets mentioned in it. None of them are held by it — a chat has opinions scrolling past each other and no way to tell a plan from a suggestion.
Doodle · When2Meet
Doodle · When2Meet: covers agreeing the dates.
One question, answered properly, and then it is over. The answer lives on in a link somebody has to find again.
Wanderlog · TripIt · a shared doc
Wanderlog · TripIt · a shared doc: covers finding the options, deciding between them and the itinerary.
Built around the itinerary, and good at it. What goes on the itinerary is decided somewhere else and typed in afterwards.
Splitwise · Tricount
Splitwise · Tricount: covers the money.
The money, settled properly — after every decision has already been made, and every cost already incurred, in another app.
Truce
All five
Truce: covers agreeing the dates, finding the options, deciding between them, the itinerary and the money.
One loop. A vote that closes is already the plan entry, and booking that entry is already the ledger row.
Bars show what a tool is built around, not an exhaustive feature audit. Several of these reach further at the edges than the bar does — an itinerary app with a light expenses tab, a chat with a poll sticker in it. Reaching is not the same as holding.
The gaps are the product.
Every join between two of those tools is a manual step. It is always the same person doing it, and there is always a chance nobody does.
The dates poll closes on the 14th.
Someone types the dates into the itinerary app.
The group settles on a tapas place in the chat.
Someone adds it to the itinerary.
Someone books it on their card.
Someone adds it to Splitwise.
A sixth person joins in July.
Someone redoes every split by hand.
“Why did we pick that one again?”
Nobody can find the message.
Five handoffs, one volunteer, and a standing risk that one of them never happens. In Truce there are no arrows: a vote that closes is the plan entry, and booking that entry is the ledger row. Nothing is re-typed, because nothing crosses an app boundary.
Where they beat us
Stated plainly, because you would find out in a week anyway.
Splitwise
It splits a flat, a dinner, a car, with people who are not on a trip with you. Truce’s ledger only exists inside a trip. Ours is modelled on theirs — if splitting is the whole of your problem, they are the answer, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise.
Anything, anyone
TripIt
Forward a confirmation email and the itinerary builds itself. Truce does not read your mail. Flights and stays are typed in by hand, and that is a real convenience we do not have.
Reads your inbox
Wanderlog
On iOS, Android and the web today, with guide and map depth Truce does not try to match. Truce is iOS first, and it is not on the App Store yet.
Shipping for years
Your group chat
Free, instant, and everybody is already in it. Truce is not trying to replace it and never will. It takes the decisions out of it and leaves the conversation exactly where it is.
Already open
A spreadsheet
It will do literally anything, provided one of you is willing to build it and keep it alive. That person is the same person from the section above.
Infinite
If one of those is the whole of your problem, go and use it. Truce is for the case where all five are your problem at once — and the person holding them together would quite like to enjoy the trip too.
Keep the chat. Move the decisions.
Truce is in build for iOS. Leave an email and we’ll send exactly one message on launch day — no newsletter, no drip, no sharing it with anyone.