Marco Polo - Video Messenger App Reviews

VERSION
0.1462.0
SCORE
4.7
TOTAL RATINGS
2,059,697
PRICE
Free

Marco Polo - Video Messenger App Description & Overview

What is marco polo - video messenger app? Marco Polo is the video chat app that brings you closer to the people who matter most without asking you to compromise on trust.

ONE VIDEO IS WORTH A THOUSAND TEXTS
Communicate face-to-face in a private, ad-free space with no interruptions or intrusions. This award-winning video chat app isn’t social media. There are no “likes” or comparisons, and there are no tricks to keep you on the app for longer than you wish.

SIMPLE, CONVENIENT, ANYTIME CONNECTION
Send a video. Get one back. Talk one-on-one or in groups. Continue the conversation on your own schedule.

YOU DON’T HAVE TO COMPROMISE ON TRUST
Our purpose? To help people feel close. To fulfill it, Marco Polo does things differently.

We monetize responsibly. The Marco Polo Plus subscription plan allows us to make money in a way that’s true to our purpose – no ads, no selling your data – while maintaining a free service for the majority of our community.

We hold ourselves accountable. Earning your trust is vital to our team, from the technology we create to the business decisions we make.

We measure our impact. Does our product deliver on our promise and our purpose? Does it make people happier? Research indicates yes, and we commit to conducting this research regularly to ensure we stay on track.

CHOOSE THE VERSION THAT FITS YOUR LIFE
Marco Polo is FREE, with:
Unlimited chats and groups
Emoji reactions and fun special effects
Sharecast, our newest feature. Send one video to everyone in your circle, and only you see reactions and replies. It’s the convenience of groups with no cross-conversations.

Marco Polo Plus offers premium features including:
1.5-3x speed control
Background listening
Custom and animated emojis
6 Plus Passes so you can share 2 months free with friends and family

PLUS SUBSCRIPTION PRICING PLANS
Marco Polo Plus Individual
Annual: $5/month billed annually at $59.99
Monthly: $9.99/month billed monthly

Marco Polo Plus Family
Save with up to six memberships with one plan. Plus Family is not limited to members within one household.
Annual: Less than $2/month per membership billed annually at $119.99
Monthly: $19.99/month billed monthly

- Payments are charged to the user's Apple ID account at confirmation of purchase.
- Subscriptions automatically renew unless the user cancels at least 24 hours before the end of the current period.
- The account is charged for renewal within 24-hours before the end of the current period.
- Users can manage and cancel subscriptions in their account settings on the App Store.

Terms of Service: https://www.marcopolo.me/terms/

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App Name Marco Polo - Video Messenger
Category Social Networking
Published
Updated 29 January 2024, Monday
File Size 146.68 MB

Marco Polo - Video Messenger Comments & Reviews 2024

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I hate the new changes! Can you fix them?. This app was absolutely phenomenal with the version you had 3 months ago, but I just now stupidly updated the app and I don’t like the changes. Now I have to pay for the ‘Plus’ version of the app to have the extremely basic feature of being able to skip ahead to any part of a message I am watching, and also now when I am looking at myself on my phone when I’m recording a message, there’s something weird about the frame rate of the video where it’s weird to look at now. I would absolutely love it if you could fix that problem. As far as needing to pay for the app, I love using it so I’m happy to pay for it, but having to pay $60/year just to have the feature of being able to skip to any part of a message seems way too much money. Update: the problem I’m having when looking at my screen when I’m recording myself is that there is a delay on the screen. This was not a problem on your version of the app I downloaded 3 months ago. I really, really, regret updating this app tonight to the current version.

I love this app just don’t like the update. Hi thank you for this app it is so much fun , as a home schooler it is great for talking to my friends ! It’s also perf cus I have a hard time getting in contact with some of my friends and this allows me to do that !!! It is my fav app for getting in touch with friends and stuff ! Now this was the best app EVER until the update. It’s not that I don’t like Marco Polo anymore (not at all ) it’s just that it’s to expensive to pay for all the stuff and no one has the money to pay a bunch of money on a app . There was way more to do before the update ☹️.So if it was a slight possibility that maybe the update could get taken away that would be great ! But over all I love this app there is so much to do on it .#1 I love the little voice changers and filters a doodles you can do #2 love that I can see my friends beautiful faces but don’t have to answer the phone (like a face time call ) right there and then I can get back to it when ever . And it’s easy to explain and talk threw .#3 easy to talk threw and fun ! (It would be nice to get a reply ☺️)

Almost Perfect. I absolutely love this app! I use it quite often and it comes in handy when I can’t text or want to pair visuals with the message. I feel like this app could be the next platform to blow up, but there is one major problem: On my device, about half the times I try to use Marco Polo, a huge glitch comes up. When I click on a video to watch, it will work for about 1-2 seconds then the screen goes black. The audio still plays but the screen stays black. If I tap the screen nothing changes, but if I press the home button, the video will work for a couple seconds before going black again. Even pressing the power button doesn’t work. The only way I can shut down the app is either waiting for it to crash, or pressing the home button multiple times until the home screen finally appears. I have tried to reinstall the app in case there was a patch or the glitch was a one-off thing on my phone but the issue continued. This is a huge issue that would deter people from using the app. It seems like the customer service here is great so I hope the glitch is taken care of soon if it’s affecting others as well. I have an iPhone by the way, in case that makes a difference. Many thanks for reading my complaint, and good luck with your business. 🙂

NO to Marco Polo Plus. Very, very disappointed in the pay version PLUS of Marco Polo sold as additional features when really you are reducing the features of the free version. My family has used MC for the past 6 months during this Pandemic to stay in touch with each other from Africa to Asia to US. In one group we have 26 members. We do not all have same OS. At $5 per person this would cost us $130/month. We have used it for grandchildren, children and parents. It has been the most amazing app. It is so unfortunate that we will have to find another solution as the coat for a year of communication would top $1500. Unreasonable. Half of my family are missionaries and make a very low income. While $5 doesn’t seem like a lot for an individual it is a lot to enjoy the features we were already enjoying. Because we were across the world in different time zones there were lots of times we were not camera ready and so the text feature was ideal. Or sharing grandkids video clips of ball games etc was easy and fun. You have certainly taken the wind from our sails as we have sold you to many people over the past 6 months. Now, I am sure you are preparing a response saying we can cut our costs by getting the free membership passes with paid ones but we do not believe this will be enough or easy enough to manage. Thanks for a great 6 months. I am sad about this decision.

Using it for 2 years and now wanting us to pay. I’ve been using Marco Polo with family and friends spread throughout the country for over two years now. I use it primarily with four of my best friends, and despite our distance, we can share our daily lives through moves, babies, and the like with each other without missing a beat. However, one of those best friends can no longer fast forward unless she pays for the “pro” account. I’m disappointed that they are taking away features that were always free and making them only available for the paid account, which is not cheap ($60/yr). I can’t help but wonder if they are trying to capitalize on the pandemic, where millions of people are using the app to stay connected during this quarantine. Unfortunately, for us, that means we are looking for another app to use. It’s just a matter of time before we will all be prompted to pay for the “pro” account. Update: I got a response from the app developers, which echoes the same response they’ve given to everyone who has complained about this switch. However, the friend who was automatically updated didn’t have the option in her settings to switch back to the old account. Instead, she was given 2 months of the old features. But what about after 2 months? I think it’s time to look for a replacement.

Money hungry. Very annoyed with Marco Polo. I have been using Marco Polo for a very long time. Recently, they decided they were going to force everyone to upgrade their app and then charge a ridiculous amount of money for people to be able to fast forward or scroll through a message. If you accidentally click off the message you are watching, you can no longer just go back to where you left off. You can’t scroll through and pick back up. Instead, you have to start from the beginning of the message and can only jump forward in 10 second increments. What’s worse, is they “upgraded” my app once. I complained and they said “no problem, you can select to go back to the old app by clicking here.” But then a month or so passes and I get notified that I will be upgraded regardless if I want to on September 1, 2020. So they essentially lied. Marco Polo was a way for me to connect with family and friends since I’m active duty military so many times I’ll have messages that are 20-30 minutes long from friends. Since covid, Marco Polo decides to now charge outrageous money for the convenience features to take advantage of people and the fact that people can’t meet up as easily because of COVID. It is absolutely disgusting to me that they would use this in that way. I’ll be leaving Marco Polo and finding another video messaging system.

Everyone is jumping ship due to ridiculous price point. Honestly I could overlook a lot of the problems with this app because it was a simple and fun way to communicate with family and it was free. As a free app, it gets 5 stars. But 60 dollars is ridiculously expensive!!! It’s frustrating to me that they act like they have this noble goal of connecting people, yet this app is NOT accessible to the overwhelming majority of people. 60 dollars is a LOT of money for most families. So now that it is not free, here are the problems with this app. The video quality is terrible and videos are super blurry. Videos often buffer forever and ever if the person filming didn’t have a good connection. The filters are extremely boring compared to the offerings at competitors like snap chat. Why even bother with filters when they’re so bad? The ability to react to polos was a good idea but it is cumbersome to try and find the reaction and play it. I could never figure it out. Without the ability to text, send photos, and play videos at 2x, my whole family has been jumping ship and deleting the app, which makes me so sad. Please bring back the basic features and improve some of the other problems with the app or innovate new options for a paid version. Either that or charge much, much , much, much less for what is a simple video app. Ugh!

They took away all basic features to force people into premium. I’ve been using this app for years to stay in touch with friends and family. I understand they need income at this point, however, they’ve gone about it in the worst way. They should aim to be innovative and add NEW features to elevate the user experience and get users to upgrade. Instead, they take away features that have been free for years and now require an expensive subscription. I will delete this app before I pay $5 a month for basic functionality that was previously free. Premium should ADD to the experience, not take away from the free. What an exorbitantly expensive fee, especially in the midst of this crisis. They’re really cruel in taking advantage of people’s need for human contact right now. I can no longer watch at 2x speed - making it impossible to keep up with large group messages where sometimes I am behind by 30 messages! The whole point of this app is to be able to communicate on my time, but now god forbid I fall behind because I’ll never be able to catch up. Photo polos were taken away. I can no longer react to polos live or give any emoji reaction other than a basic smiley face. There is now NO benefit to this app for me, as I might as well be sending video clips in a basic group message.

Stay at Home Mom Approved!. This app has helped this stay at home Mom keep her sanity! It allows me to talk to friends off and on all day so I don’t just feel stuck at home alone. I LOVE being a SAHM but it can get lonely. So it is so nice to be able to talk to someone basically face to face throughout my day. My sister and I live only a few miles a part and yet we’d go weeks without talking to each other bc we were both too busy with our kids. This app has helped us communicate more than we have in years! And it’s so much better than just getting texts or Snapchat. I hate texting now! I’d much rather send someone a Marco Polo bc it’s so much easier and faster, and I can tell them exactly what I want on my own time. I love that we can have a conversation with each other whenever each of us has a chance. Our free time for a conversation doesn’t have to be at the exact time anymore! This app is amazing. My whole family uses it now, and we share a lot through a group chat. It has helped bring our entire family closer. And it’s so much more personal than Snapchat. On Snapchat I’d only send quick little funny messages to friends or a cute video. But this is more for real conversations. And I love that it’s hands free so I can talk to friends while folding laundry!

Love Marco Polo. My niece asked me to join Marco Polo and I was hesitant at first even though it was free. But what I have come to really love besides the fact that it puts us in contact with each other, is the convenience of Marco Polo. I can talk to anyone in the middle the night when I can’t sleep; I can talk in the early hours of the morning before my day gets started; likewise, I can listen to what they sent to me at My convenience regardless of the time of day or night. You can choose to save your conversations or you can erase them when you’re done with them. For years are used to write letters that took a long amount of time not to mention pains of the all hands; then I sent tape cassettes back-and-forth to people over the states to stay closer; and texting also takes a lot of time! But with Marco Polo, you can talk as much or as little as you want to but the most important part is you can talk whenever it is convenient for you to talk. It doesn’t matter at all whether the person you’re talking to is awake or not because they’re not getting this Marco Polo when you’re making it. They listen to it whenever they have time and that might not be for a day or two or even a week. That’s the beauty of Marco Polo. Marco Polo has put me in touch with people that I otherwise was rarely ever in touch with. I absolutely love it and you will too!

What The Change?!. Ok so I have a few friends that have this app and we all use it ALL DAY EVERY DAY!! I hate/despise Snapchat! This app is easy to use and understand!! The ONLY reason I gave it 4 stars is because things like this... and I wish I could add pictures to this review to help illustrate the point I’m trying to make. Used the app this morning and it was the same setup as every other day, midway through the day it updated, or so I thought. The ‘emoji icons’ that where at the bottom of the screen where now on the right side of the screen making it easier to not press one by mistake. There where a couple of other small changes but I don’t remember what they where at the moment because it switches back to how it used to be, hence the ‘reverse updating’ I’m mildly confused/complaining about. I even went through and did a proper update to see if I could get to the ‘new’ changes, nothing. Power cycled my fone, still nothing. Checked for any ‘missing’ updates, none to be found... I really liked the new look and was very pleased with how you ‘cleaned up’ the screen area. Either plz fix it to how it was around 2pm cst or just fix the screen clutter!! Nothing like going to press START and being a 1/10sec to slow and ‘loving’ a message of ‘oh, my moms cat died today...’ OTHERWISE... This is actually a really good app overall. Again my friends, all in other states, use it DAILY!!

Make this app free again!. I love Marco Polo! It’s been a critical part of reconnecting with long-lost friends. I was however, very disappointed when you changed your app’s accessibility. I’m no longer able to continue benefitting from most of the features that make this app amazing without paying the annual fee! While I appreciate the ad free experience that you pride yourself in, you essentially made yourselves no longer a free app in doing so. Which, in my opinion, was also something you initially prided yourselves in. It’s disappointing! Especially to so many users who have been on this app since the beginning! We all went from loving the app to being demoted! You held the best features of the app hostage to those of us who were already using those features- requiring us to pay to keep using them. I think you should have kept all current members with the capabilities they were already used to it in the app and only required new users to incur the annual fee to use the features. I know this has been an extraordinary season! Which makes it that much more amazing to have the use of apps like Marco Polo! I hope you continue to find way to make this app better and most of all, cheaper! 😁

Deeper friendships. I heard about this app and decided to download it and invite the women from my weekly church small group to join. We began a group chat that just has not stopped or slowed down one bit! I didn’t think it would be such a hit or so well used, but everyone loves it. We check in with each other nearly every day. Sometimes for small, funny moments. Sometimes for deeper, longer or more serious reasons. But the overall effect has been a much greater connection than we’ve ever had- and our group has been together for about seven years! There is just something so much more intimate and connective about seeing each other (seeing people in their environment, hearing their inflections and watching them process through thoughts vs. a well composed or edited text message). Compared to texting, which was our most used form of communication before, this goes way beyond. With busy days and conflicting schedules (and boisterous children), it’s almost impossible to have any kind of regular phone conversation. This app makes it feel as though you’re entering the other person’a day and they are a part of yours in a much more fun and dynamic way. I wish we would’ve discovered this sooner!

Used to be my favorite app!. Went from a 4.8 star app (a few small glitches) to garbage overnight. I‘ve loved this app for YEARS but don’t even want to open it anymore— I actually dread when someone sends me a video now! Not only did they take away 2x speed.... I can no longer scroll through the videos AT ALL, nor jump forward or back 5 seconds. So I have to pay full, undivided attention without missing a word while listening which is impossible for a busy mother. I’d rather FT, or even record videos on my phone to send back and forth because I can at least scroll through those! “Starting at” $5/mo.... ridiculous. UPDATE: For customers who joined before April 29, 2020 the older version of the app can still be used til Aug 1, 2020 by going to Settings> Help & About Us. I understand that Marco Polo needs to make money and I am willing to pay for this app because it’s that good. However, I maintain that $5/mo is absurd to charge for the same features which have always been included. My recommendation is to instead charge a one-time fee for the app, and to make it a reasonable additional $.99/mo for truly *extra* features. Come on, Marco Polo. You’re gauging your loyal customers and it’s not fair.

Marco Polo Review. Marco Polo is great to connect with friends and family without them having to answer the second you call but it allows you to leave your video message and they can respond back when they are able. It’s nice if you’re at work and can get the message when you’re done working or take the time to respond back. It’s a nice way to hear someone’s full message without interruption and then when you respond you too are able to respond with a full message. Marco Polo does have many glitches though. It often cuts off in the middle of the other persons message saying that the “message was interrupted and they’ll let you know when they are back.” The problem is that it often does not let you know they are back or populate the rest of the message. I’ve also noticed that it will populate the interrupted message once the other person has sent a message back. It also does not always have the videos go through immediately. Many instances I receive 5 videos at once from the previous day. Overall 8 still like the app but if they made these necessary changes it would make it even better.

Needs more privacy and easier delete function. First of all, thanks for a free app with a fun concept. That said, I really wish there were a feature to select and delete multiple chats at a time. I didn’t know when I gave the app access to my contacts that it would automatically spam my page with everyone in my phone on the app (including a few I don’t even recognize). I use the app for family and a few close friends only, so I don’t like being spammed with people I didn’t choose. And I don’t want all those people to be able to send me messages. Not everyone in your phone is someone you want to see that much! Please, developers, at least make it optional to automatically upload all your phone contacts who use the app OR part of them (manually). All this, and the fact that it took a while to delete each person from my main page or feed, or group of tiles (whatever it’s called) made me consider deleting the app. I still may if it continues to be a problem. Like I said, it’s a fun concept, but I don’t like the clutter and lack of privacy options. Any plans to work on that? Maybe take a page from the Instagram interface where you choose whom you want to follow/see?

Loved this app, hate the update. So, since I’ve gotten Marco Polo, it’s been the best!!! Sure it’s crashed a few times, but hey? Don’t we all? So, on iPhone 10 r’s, you can’t update apps on your own. The phone does it for you. So when all of my friends said they updated the app, I had the old version. So, two days ago, I was trying to go onto it, and it updated! I was like ‘finally!’ So I was excited to see the changes. And when I went on there, all of my data had been deleted! And it made me sign in again! So I went through the whole process, which doesn’t take that long, and I finally got to the end. Later that day, I had taught my dog a new trick, and I wanted to put it as one of my seconds. So I looked at the menu area and it was gone. I texted my friend who had Marco Polo way before me and actually introduced me to Marco Polo, said that when she updated it, everything was the same but better. And so, I deleted the app and tried again. We both agreed that it could have also just been my phone. But when I downloaded it again, it was the same! No seconds, no history of my past polos, nothing. And it even deleted my contacts! So I had to add all of my contacts back on, then for some reason, it made me invite someone or else it wouldn’t let me continue the sign in process. So I did. And now I’m back where I started. Secondless. The app was better BEFORE the update. :/

Removed features, added paywall. I am a long-time user of Marco Polo, having used it daily for almost two years. Today I received an update that stripped away all of the features I've known and got used to over this time, at the same time the Pro version launched. The features removed from the free version were: 2x speed, sharing photos, text message, emoji and video reactions, and scrolling to a specific point in a polo. I find this to be a very distasteful marketing move, especially at a time when video networking usage has increased due to COVID-19. I don't know the company's historic data on app users or their financial health at a time like this, but it comes off as if the company is looking to capitalize on the demand for people to connect via video; at the same time we see other companys taking the opposite approach of relaxing restrictions and allowing users more features or potential free use of services. To me, the latter are honorable decisions. I have given this app a 2-star review because I think the app with all of the features is a robust, quality app. But I'm very disappointed and conflicted by the company ethics to make a drastic move like this with all appearances of capitalizing on potential new business during a time of international crisis. I think a paid version is absolutely reasonable to have, if handled in a better way - creating new features, rather than removing ones that have been around for years - at a more appropriate time.

They removed free features and force you to pay for them. Been a long time user of a Marco Polo. All the ratings for 5 stars are for what this app USED to be. Then a couple months ago, they were going to force everyone to switch over to a monthly subscription or lose free features. Long time users complained, and the creators said “hey, you can restore to the old Marco Polo if you have been a long time user.” Was so happy that they were allowing long time users to be grandfathered in to having some of those long terms features (like listening at 2x, replying during video play with a short video comment, etc.) while still having the option to upgrade to a subscription for more features (listening at 1.5x or 3x, etc.). But I guess they were not making as much money as they wanted because as of September 1, 2020, when communication via apps like Marco Polo are helping people stay connected and the mental health of others, they decided to force everyone to subscribe for extra features or lose them. Yes, it’s still free, but features we have used for over a year are taken away. The creators should be ashamed of putting profits over long term users. Many long terms users said they would be happy to watch videos to keep the features that they have grown accustomed to using. We understand the creators need to make money. But this was not the way to do it. So disappointed.

Poor Judgment in Reducing Their Offerings. I’m glad I haven’t downloaded the new update yet, after seeing what MP cut in order to offer their new “premium” service. There are many things wrong with their roll-out of this “new” service, but I’ll highlight the biggest. 1) the “cuts” and the new payment plan AREN’T listed on their “updates” status. That means you would be unknowingly losing these items by updating the app. It’s a big change...why not give people advance warning before they decide to hit the update button. 2) it is a TERRIBLE look for a business to strip away things already offered for free and then CHARGE people $10/month just to get it back. That’s not “premium”. That’s greed. “Premium” is adding to what’s already there...give people MORE reactions than the basic five...add MORE filters...those are additions that some people would willingly pay. And I’ve seen their “stories” link that the developers have posted in response to people’s complaints. Look, no one is faulting a company for wanting to be sustainable. But the timing, method, and application are all backhanded and paint the company in a fashion I’m sure they didn’t intend. They have a good app that works well, but treating your users in this fashion only means they’ll be out looking for other options...and it’s only a matter of time until the next messaging app answers that.

Not the company I thought it was. I want to start by saying that I have used Marco Polo for years as a way to get in contact with my long distance friends, and outside the occasional technical bug or two, the app has been great. So why am I giving this a one-star rating? Very recently, Marco Polo has decided to run some testing on their updated product, Marco Polo Plus. I was selected as a participant in this marketing research of theirs. And I wouldn’t have an issue with this, except that nearly all features I had previous to Marco Polo Plus have been eliminated. I cannot use the 2x speed button, I cannot drag ahead or behind in a video, the video reaction feature disappeared, and all but two reaction emojis have vanished. If I want any of my old features back, I must pay for the Plus version and get several extras that I never asked for. With this said, I feel highly devalued as a customer. I would have been more than happy to pay $5/month for additional features, such as the ability to take notes and refer back to them when responding, along with more emoji reactions. I use the app every day. And now it is certainly not the “comforting” social app that I remember. It has become a royal pain. There are also more technical issues than before since they decided to make me a participant. Had they gone about this differently, they would have had my business in a heartbeat. Very disappointing to say the least.

Upgrade ? More like downgrade.. As many others have said Marco Polo’s “upgrade” comes across as a poor marketing decision. Every feature aside from the recording of videos themselves has become an up-charge ( 2x’s fast forward, rewinding, recording the bubble when you’re responding to a video, sending a note, sending a picture, etc.) it’s all now ONLY available via plus. Now I was understanding of a need to assist their team / company keep up with demands of increased use due to COVID. However that did not require EVERY capability of the app to be only available with a paid membership. Furthermore a one time fee would be more understandable, but $5 a month fee is excessive and an inconsiderate move towards both long time users pre-COVID-19 and newer users who have relied on Marco Polo as a means to stay connected /maintain their mental health during a time of immense financial instability. Ideally they would have followed suit of many other apps maintaining to users the free version of their app as in and offering a plus version of their app with new features and capabilities However Marco Polo went about it a different route. I am going to go about it a different route as well and I will no longer be using this app I will use Kinzoo instead.

Update Makes Me Want to Stop Using. I’ll start by saying, I’m a pretty huge fan of Marco Polo. It’s the best of FaceTime and text combined. Want to see someone’s face? Send them a polo. Can’t watch it live? It’s saved for later. It’s a godsend for keeping up with my family who live in different parts of the state. That being said, I am SUPER disappointed in the new push for Marco Polo Plus. To create a version to be a paid version, I get, but pulling features that were a part of the free version and now making them paid? Not cool. It’s so obnoxious, that I’m about to stop using the app altogether and most of my friends feel the same. It’s not worth it, and frankly it’s pretty disingenuous of the company to do this as well. If they would have kept MP as is, and then added different features for plus, that might’ve been an incentive, but to go in and pull back on features we’ve already been using free and make us pay for them—NOPE. Plus, they haven’t even removed the features we had from the screen. You’re an app developer. The LEAST you can do if you’re now going to charge for features that were once free is remove them because my natural habit is to go use them and when I do, I get the annoying add to upgrade. Sorry, MP, I understand wanting to make money with your product, but sell banner ads or something. Very disappointed. 👎🏻

Why Aren’t There Any Visible Current Reviews. Perhaps it is because the current reviews are too poor and/or too poignant or pointless, I don’t know... but if anyone cares or is listening, I refuse to believe and cannot possibly believe that I would be the first to complain about the new subscription required to access the features that we had before and are no longer present. There’s little to match the need for or the greed for the ol’ mighty dollar; but for whatever the reason for taking away the features... I think it was of the worst and unethical thing to decide to do, than to just sit down and think up additional features that would warrant a subscription to this magnitudes! Your subscription charge is as much as it would be for providing some kind of private phone number or something! It is infuriating.. It’s not that the APP isn’t worth any monetary value to have; but it’s wrong for how you’ve taken away what was given as free features, to now dangle to have them through subscription only. My five star views have now changed to one as a result, and hopefully, if you allow this review to be publicly visible, other users or former users will ask you the same question as in my title... or will at least ask you to undo this and make a Marco Pollo2, for subscription with ADDED features worth the subscription being charged.

Limited options now. Marco Polo was a great tool to keep in touch with distant friends a family. To share memorable moments with them live, for them to either watch along or later at their own time. HOWEVER, since this new paid version, it took away a lot of important FREE features, one of which I appreciated the most which was to be able to fast forward through the Marco. NOW, it’s forcing me to watch the entire Marco or else it’ll just keep the “1” next to it until I watch. I have a Marco that my mom did, and she didn’t realize she was still recording, so I have this hour long Marco of her phone in her pocket and moving around that I can’t just forward through. That’s really annoying. Also, the quick response while watching the Marco was awesome as well. I get it, everyone has to make a $1, but it’s a bit unfair to A. Not even warn us about the changes, or at least I don’t remember getting anything about it. B. Giving us GREAT features for FREE and then saying...”like that huh?? Now give me money for it!!” That’s like inviting guest over for dinner, then after they enjoyed your food, charging them for their plate. I think if you ADDED more features and charged for the NEWEST features but keeping what was initially free FREE then I could give Marco a 5 star rating. But having to pay $60 for this app or $5 a month for features that were freely given initially is a bit unfair.

Selling Our Information and Stealing Our Money. Where do I even begin. I wrote a review a couple of months ago, which got a response from Marco Polo developers; I appreciated this, but it doesn’t change a thing. My friends and I used to religiously use this app, since many of us live in different time zone. Now it’s just a pain. You’ve stripped away many of the most basic, sensible features, and asked us to pay for them. $60 a year?? In the middle of a pandemic... when everyone is separated from one another. Laughable. You CANNOT convince me that wasn’t on purpose. Oh, and I got this fun pop up today prompting me to buy the full version: “Marco Polo Plus is our way of delivering on a promise to never sell your personal data and to value your privacy.” What does that mean?! If we don’t pay for your subscription, you WILL be selling our data? Fantastic! I cannot believe how incredibly tone deaf this app has become. Are you people even aware of the world right now? Change your app; it is absolutely disgusting to me that these choices have been made, and now you’re practically threatening us to swap to your paid version. But go ahead and respond to this again and try to justify why all of these changes are necessary. “Sustainability,” my god— just give us the free version, will all of its perks it originally had, and if you really need the money, put in ads. Pitiful.

Business Strategy No Good. While I understand and appreciate that Marco Polo isn’t following in the same business model as other social media companies (advertising) this model is not the one I would have liked to see. I am a HUGE fan of “Agenda” and how they work. You pay a one time fee for all the features that currently exist, and any ones that they release within the next year. You then get those features forever. After your year is up they continue to release new features. If I want them I have to pay another set amount that will give me those new features and any new ones they release over the next year. I think their “one year” cycle is pretty long. I’d be fine with a “six month” cycle for Marco Polo. My biggest problem with this strategy is that they took a bunch of features that we’ve all been using forever, and then put it behind a pay wall. What you should be doing is continue to innovate and provide new features that would entice customers into paying (which is what would be required to follow the Agenda strategy). I feel like this was a “we don’t have any other ideas for new features....oh let’s just have them pay for all the ones we’ve already made....that way we don’t have to come up with anything new....”

Greatly disappointing (shift in business model). My wife and I have used this app for quite some time with our family. As pretty much everybody here knows, during the COVID peak time this spring, they shifted from a free model to a paid model. They locked features down that were previously free and are charging an exorbitant amount for their plus subscription. They grandfathered prior users in for a bit, but that went away now as well. While I understand the need to monetize, there’s no way I will be paying $20 a month for my wife and me get this app back to the features we had before. Oh, I know we can pay $120 for the year to bring it down to $10 a month (family plan) but that is still a very steep price for something we won’t get that value back from. (I prefer being able to manage my subscriptions on a month to month basis without doubling the price) If a $5 monthly plan worked for two people we would consider it. The second star is for the great concept, but we are highly disappointed with their monetization strategy.

Love Marco!!!. I absolutely love this app! It is amazing. We have used it for several years and it enables us to keep in touch as we travel around the world. I have some updates I would love to see in the future. My AirPods don’t continuously stay connected when I’m watching Marco’s. My AirPods work perfectly when listening to anything else on my phone. Can we have an option to lock in the listening to AirPods? I would love to be able to watch Marco’s while doing other tasks on my phone. Can you make it optional for Marco to be screen in screen? Lastly, can we mark polos as unwatched and have that red dot remain? I accidentally touch my screen all the time and my friends are 80 messages ahead of me and then I lose my place when all the red dots disappear. Lol it certainly takes some of the fun out when I stop a Marco to chat back and then I don’t know where I was in the chat. Thanks Marco for your amazing app. I am into my 2nd year as a plus member because I believe in supporting businesses. I love that you are ad free and don’t sell out information. Providing an app is not free and when I break down the price, it’s totally affordable. Thanks for the plus passes so I can show my friends that they need to upgrade as well!

Disappointed. I loved Marco Polo and have been using it to keep in touch with friends all over the country. When the plus package got added months ago I was super disappointed because all the free features we have been using for a long time suddenly disappeared. For some strange reason I was able to use the features anyway up until today. My Marco Polo keeps saying reconnecting even though I’m at home on my wifi with no connection issues and it’s giving error messages to my friends who are trying to watch the videos I sent so I finally updated the app.. and low and behold all the features I’ve grown to love have vanished. I read a review earlier than said I would be able to go back to the old version. It doesn’t seem possible anymore. I wish that Marco Polo would’ve done some more research into the income for their company between people paying the monthly fee and people willing to have ads to have the same features. Would be nice if there were more than one option to have the features. I refuse to pay money for any apps on my phone. No one I know is willing to spend the money on the plus features. I have noticed a decline in many of my friends activity participating on Marco Polo since the change. Do some research Marco Polo, you’ll likely see the attitude about your product changing.

Used to be 100%... not anymore. So I have been using Marco Polo for years and have always loved this app however now there’s this new update which is prompting us to pay $60 for the year. I wouldn’t mind if it was all new features but one of the features that I have always used most in the free version was the 2X speed. I’m a little annoyed that instead of adding new options that can be paid for they are taking away some of the options that have been free for years. Honestly, I will probably still bite the bullet and get the paid version because I do love this app and I’m excited about some of the new features but I’m seriously annoyed that they are taking away some of our old free features just to make a buck. I used to suggest this app to my friends all the time and everyone would always download it instantly and used it often because for communicating with people around the world it was so convenient. The likelihood that I will suggest it as often now, is slim to none, because it now that it is a very expensive app if you want to use all the features.

Plus version took features away from Free version. I am a long time user of Marco Polo and as a military spouse it has been my most used app for staying in touch with family and friends across the world for years. Yesterday, as I was opening Marco Polo it popped up that there was a new plus version that I would have to pay for to use. First, I am not opposed to paying for a good app, however, I think a monthly subscription is ridiculous. I would absolutely pay a one time $5 fee but I will stop using the app before paying a monthly subscription. Secondly, I found it very distasteful that during a time of crisis and mandatory separation the makers of Marco Polo would try to capitalize on the pandemic when other companies are offering discounts and temporary free service to help struggling Americans. Lastly, the upgraded free version doesn’t just add features it takes away features from the free version! Who does that??! The free version now has the fast forward locked! Why? It feels like Marco Polo is trying to bully you into paying for the plus version by taking away basic features from the free version. I have read how for a limited time I can go back to the old Marco Polo, which I have, however, if this new version becomes permanent I will delete the app and just use free services like FaceTime, Facebook, or Skype.

Functionality Became a Commodity & it’s a “Too bad! So sad!” Situation. Marco Polo lost more than a star when functionality became a commodity. I’m sad to report I just don’t use the app as much as I used to, since everyday functions such as texts, forwarding, emoji choices, playing video at 2X speed & more are now paid/premium services, only accessible w/the $60 a year Marco Polo plus version. This is everything ever threatened by other types of social media that never occurred; for Marco Polo however, it came to fruition, and it’s rotten. I plan to search for other apps that are as functional as Marco Polo used to be. Have Nots who used to be Haves are worse off than Have Nots who never knew any better. I was excited for a minute, when I read a developer reply to a similar comment (I KNEW there would be a ton of similar comments/reviews!) that one could switch back to the old version, as long as the app was on the phone before April 2020. That is NO LONGER TRUE! Now I’m stuck as a “have not” who used to be a “have”. That’s the worst! I know what I’m missing out on—including the opportunity to go back to the old version. I WILL try kinzoo next, as I know there are enough stupid rich in the US to keep MP developers laughing so loudly, all the way to the bank, that cries of dissatisfaction from former customers will not be heard. SMH.

Good, when it works. WTH is up with “this message was interrupted” crap? My mother and 4 sisters have been using this for several months and it’s been a great way to see each other’s faces whereas because of distance we’d not have that opportunity. Other than the fact that too many chicks will ramble on about nothing for too long without the cue of a bored face, its been very enjoyable. What irks me are the times the message just stops because of “so and so was interrupted. We’ll let you know when they’re back”. Well that’s horse crap. That person isn’t leaving the message, it’s the app that’s failing to continue. This has happened a couple of times between the family group and already twice since I got my bf to join. It’s literally been over 24 hrs since she left me a Marco that won’t play all the way through, AND she’s responding to me about her attendance to a function I’m hosting. So I’d like to know if she’s coming or not without having to now TEXT her and ask the question when I know she’s answered me. 🙄 So what’s the deal? One little fluctuation in cell service causes the whole transmission to crumble? Do we all need to do this on a hard wired connection or something?? Yah, great when it works, a super frustrating cliffhanger when it doesn’t.

Marco Polo even for the old, but young at heart!!. I recently turned 50 and have been using Marco Polo to connect with some other old friends from high school and college. I have never left a review for an app before, but I decided to today because I just left a video for my friends and I realized how long it would have taken me to write it in a text or a phone call to all in the group. You get it all done at one time. You don’t feel like you are getting them at a bad time and they are being polite talking to you. I do not really like FaceTiming not sure I guess it’s that I feel like your still could be interrupting them but now you can see it in their face. With Marco Polo you just send and answer on your time. You still get the facial reaction to what you had to tell them and again it is so much faster than texting and you can get across what you want to say by your facial expression. Oh did I mention it’s easy!!! Anyone should be able to use it young and old, personal or work related. Just try it out. There are fun things you can add and funny voices and if you want you can also respond back by text!! Enjoy have a fantastic day!!

Over 2 years in, here’s my take.... I’ve been using Marco Polo to keep in touch with a couple of family members for about two years. In general, it’s a really easy and convenient way to stay in touch and keep track of conversations in a linear way. I’m a little frustrated that they took away some of the features that we used to have in order to add them into the plus/paid version, but I understand that. My biggest gripe is that I have to hold my phone in an upright position the entire time to be able to listen to what my friends are saying. I can’t put it in my pocket and move about my day and listen to them, I can’t let my phone shift position/angle, or I will lose their conversation and have to hit play again. So, in essence, this really is a face-to-face messaging app. That’s fine, as long as your messages are pretty short, but some of our messages back-and-forth are pretty long. It’s really inconvenient to have to hold the phone in a certain way to listen to a message. I have to stop what I’m doing (dishes, walking, etc.) to keep the message playing.I don’t understand the purpose of this, and find it pretty darn frustrating. I am a multiple-Marco-daily kind of person, so this is pretty aggravating. Otherwise, it’s a great app.

New Update/Plus. I understand that paid subscribers allow for the free to remain. But, taking away features we’ve been using and putting them into a paid version is just like if snapchat started a paid tier that allowed for written chat and it was taken from the free tier who had been using and loving the feature. It wouldn’t seem like the biggest deal but it would drastically change the experience. Or if Facebook opened a tiered level and only allowed paid users to access messenger and groups. It would ruin Facebook but it would take some vital aspects away. Companies are working hard to give more free features, and “covid times” aren’t ending any time soon, you’ll have business, you’d get investors, someone will ultimately as to buy you out. Why not add different speeds for the paid tier and keep 2x for free? Allow filters and additional length for in Marco Polo responses for the top tier and keep the normal response for free? It seems you’re asking people to pay for what they had and pay for the promise of more to come? Make the more start now and have people pay for expansion of options, taking options from people is like taking the forks from everyone sitting in an Italian restaurant and telling them that the spaghetti in front of them is awesome, but now forks are an extra $5... poor business practices, the spaghetti isn’t good enough to eat with my hands when other restaurants give me a fork for free.

Used to be great, but not worth it anymore.. This was great. We used to use this app to talk to family in another country and to send videos of our baby to parents in different states of the U.S. Absolutely loved it. But once they rolled out this premium membership thing it quickly became not worth using. I can’t predict when my kid will do something cute, I take videos and sometimes it happens; but now that I can’t send videos from my camera roll, my relatives just don’t get to see what he does anymore. My dad likes to go on really long explanations about his hobbies, which are great! But they are way easier to watch on 2x speed. Except I can’t do that anymore, so I end up just not watching his Polo’s. The list goes on. Yes the app still has this functionality - if you’re willing to fork over your life savings to them, that is. I get it that developers need income, but a monthly subscription to something that isn’t adding content or regularly updating in major ways is absolutely ridiculous. I would happily watch adds. I would happily pay a one time fee to download. But seeing the developers fall into the growing trend of a monthly subscription just to access 3 or 4 features that used to be standard is sickening, and only goes to show where their priorities really lie. I will continue to use the app because my family doesn’t want to switch to something new; but I will never pay a dime to a company that takes advantage of their consumers.

L❤️VE THIS APP. I like the app because it allows users to send and receive videos when it’s convenient. It’s hard to FaceTime when people have different schedules and live in different time zones. Besides, I love getting video messages over text messages because I can tune into the persons mood, I love to see their face, it just makes me feel like I’m closer and it’s made all the difference! I have friends who have use this and loved it with their grandchildren! I personally started using it when I was homebound for an extended period of time due to illness and getting video messages from friends was always a highlight! My only suggestion (and reason I gave it four stars instead of five) would be to not make people wait for some of the “bells and whistle’s”. Sometimes it’s the little things make the app much more interactive and fun. Why not give those to everyone so they have a full experience from the beginning? At the time I’m writing this you have to have been a user for 30 days AND have sent at least 50 video messages. I don’t think people view getting to use emojis while watching live as an incentive to keep using it as much as they might see it as a reason to quit using it. The more interactive the two parties can be the better. Otherwise great app.

Greedy. This must be the most expensive messaging app out there. It’s great if you have a ton of money but I am a school teacher with two children and don’t have the option to spend this much per month on a messaging app. When you send in a low rating complaining about the exorbitant rates ($10 per month) they will reply by saying, “we care very much about you so we have free version and it is totally your choice to upgrade to the plus version.” This is absolutely true. However, the free version is crippled to the extent that you can’t even scroll through a message to get to the middle of it. They have taken away every single convenience feature in an attempt to make it such a difficult version to use that you will pay for the upgrade. There is no “happy medium” where you could happily use the free version and they know that. They have built up their user base by offering an exceptional app and then charged a very high monthly rate in order to get as many yearly sign-ups as possible. Doing that during the pandemic none-the-less. My wife and I haven’t purchased a subscription because we feel like what they have done is morally wrong and though we really like the app and would pay a monthly fee we feel morally obliged not to because of what we believe to be unethical and manipulative practices.

Marco Polo Revoked Free Features. During a public health crisis, an economic downturn, and civil unrest, Marco Polo has decided this is the right time to revoke free features and create a paid version of the app. A wholly unethical response! I understand that times are hard for many of us, including app developers, but charging for basic functionality like rewinding and fast forwarding videos is unjustifiable. It now costs $60 a year to use any feature that was formally free on the app—including rewinding and fast forwarding, which is a free feature on all video and audio platforms. All that remains free is recording/watching videos and emojis. My hope is that the creators and developers will honestly assess this latest move and ask themselves who this supports and who it excludes. Update: I’ve read the other recent reviews and the comments on their IG page and the overwhelming majority of users commenting are dissatisfied with this bait and switch tactic Marco Polo used in this latest update. The responses I’ve read, including the one I received in response to my own review, feel scripted and insincere. This latest update points to the company’s inability to read the market. Even now, as many of us point out how poorly timed this decision was they have refused to change course. It’s disheartening that we who shared the app with our family and friends, increasing the app’s customer base, are having our concerns so blatantly dismissed.

Can’t afford basic features. This is a wonderful app. It’s has helped me connect with friends who do not live close and we have been using it almost daily for the two years. Then the paywall went up. I appreciate that the developers do not want to sell ads or user information, but to strip away basic functionality in order to force the user to buy into a subscription service is disappointing. Specifically they 2x feature and the ability to skip 5 seconds back on a Polo. In group messages, the 2x feature helped you catch up on the conversation, now you’re forced to fall behind or just skip over your friends’ Polos. The 5 second rewind feature is important when you miss something that was said, but with the pay wall up I have to listen to an entire Polo again in order catch what was said. These aren’t bonus features, they are basic functionalities that influenced the way I used the app for two years that were stripped from the service and hidden behind a paywall. I would gladly, joyfully, pay a one time fee for the app or even a annual fee that was significantly lower. But $60 a year ($120 a year considering my wife uses the app) is a big jump even for how valuable this app has been to me. There are other ways to connect with my friends, I’m just bummed it probably won’t be with Marco Polo anymore.

The app is less useful now. I started using Marco Polo this year. I was using it back in April (under a different email) to connect with my sister and a group of our friends and it was great! However, the group came to the decision to stop using MP and go to zoom. So, I deleted my MP account then. Now, The group is back on MP and I’ve downloaded the app & started using it again. I have seen other reviews as well so I know about the update now. But When I first started using it again, I was surprised to find I could not scroll forward & backward in a Polo. Some of these Polos are pretty long! So, if I accidentally click out, which happened to me today, I have to start all over! Or if I just want to stop watching and come back later, that isn’t going to work for me anymore. It’s very frustrating. Unfortunately, because I am now signed up under a different email the “switch back to previous version” option isn’t working for me. Although, it sounds like that would be temporary anyway. This was a wonderful app before the change. ***Update Thank you for your response. It was very helpful. When I clicked back into MP and opened a video, scrolling is there again. So, It is working for me now. I’m so glad to have this function back! Please keep it in the free version. Thank you!

Free version is suddenly VERY limited. I am a long-time user of Marco Polo, having used it daily for almost two years. Today I received an update that stripped away all of the features I've known and got used to over this time, at the same time the Pro version launched. The features removed from the free version were: 2x speed, sharing photos, text message, emoji and video reactions, and scrolling to a specific point in a polo. I find this to be a very distasteful marketing move, especially at a time when video networking usage has increased due to COVID-19. I don't know the company's historic data on app users or their financial health at a time like this, but it comes off as if the company is looking to capitalize on the demand for people to connect via video; at the same time we see other companys taking the opposite approach of relaxing restrictions and allowing users more features or potential free use of services. To me, the latter are honorable decisions. I have given this app a 2-star review because I think the app with all of the features is a robust, quality app. But I'm very disappointed and conflicted by the company ethics to make a drastic move like this with all appearances of capitalizing on potential new business during a time of international crisis. I think a paid version is absolutely reasonable to have, if handled in a better way - creating new features, rather than removing ones that have been around for years - at a more appropriate time.

Great Communication - App and the People. UPDATE: Really appreciate that I received a quick response! Times are complicated and many spaces need support, so I understand the need for the subscription service. Since MP is a primary form of communication for me, the upgrade was a bit of jarring shift - I could have missed an email or something that went out that detailed the changes beforehand. I appreciate all your work and I appreciate this app! First Review: I’ve been using Marco Polo for quite a while, as it has been lovely in keeping my college group of friends connected and in my long distance relationship. The simple features of the photo and the 2x fast forwarding are part of what made this free app so wonderful to use. I don’t quite understand why the upgrade would make me pay for features that were once free. I know everyone’s trying to navigate finances, but please don’t make us pay extra for things we already had. Subscription based services usually are for things you didn’t have that you would like to start using m. Would love an option to use an older version for those of us who don’t want to utilize plus. Other than this frustrating upgrade, Marco Polo is pretty good.

Amazing app.... Okay listen, I’ve never written a review on ANYTHING but I just had to write one about Marco Polo. So my friend was like “Get Marco Polo so we can talk more and have fun!” So I got it and was skeptical. I played around sending her(my friend) videos and it was so fun. I love Marco Polo and am now trying to get my cousins to get it. PLEASE NOTE: The reason Marco Polo is getting a four star review from me is because, well, they have some membership think that’s like five bucks a month! And if you don’t have a membership then you can only send videos and you can’t do any of the other cool things like notes, voice messages, live chat, or anything on between. Marco Polo is you are reading this, I am eleven years old and I don’t got membership money! And like heck my parents are going to pay five bucks a month for an app they don’t use! If you maybe had a like a school program where if you entered a valid school email and you got it at a discount or you got it cheaper that would be greatly appreciated! Thanks Marco Polo for being awesome. I even made a funny short film with the filters and voice effects and make and my friend can’t stop laughing! And to you, yes you who read this all the way through, GET MARCO POLO!!! And also have a good day.😁 -A happy Marco Polo user

Best messaging app ever!!. My three siblings are all over the country so we don't see each other often. And we're all busy so even talking on the phone regularly is a challenge. But with Marco Polo we talk several times a day and now feel so much more connected and closer than ever! It's as if we were living near one another and having coffee daily. We all treasure this app more than you can imagine. We created a channel for talking to my nephew who is in the Air Force across the country and he really appreciates the opportunity to hear our words of support and encouragement. We have another channel with all the nieces and nephews, allowing us to become so much closer. And we have a channel with our cousins in Italy whom we have never met in person, and that has been really awesome!! This app is do much better than Snapchat or Instagram or FB. My only complaint is that as of the last update it is behaving oddly. If I hit the x to exit from a Polo I'm watching so I can jump ahead and record one, it just freezes the screen on the Polo I was watching while the audio keeps playing and I have to force close the app and maybe I can stop the Polo that's playing so I can jump ahead. This happens every time I try to jump ahead to record when I'm listening to a Polo. It didn't used to do that. iPhone XS Max with the latest iOS. Otherwise we all love it.

Would have been 5 star.... ☹️. 👍🏻This is an amazing app and I suggest getting it, but there is one big problem. People who are new to Marco Polo probably won’t mind this, but it bugs me really bad 😩. A while back Marco Polo had all these amazing features like being able to text on Marco Polo when you couldn’t video, sending videos through Marco Polo, sending pictures through Marco Polo, being able to watch the video at two times the speed, being able to send a lot of emojis while watching live, and being able to send a live emoji while watching live (It’s where you video yourself saying something and it will pop up on the screen and the person recording can watch it while still recording). There are probably more features I forgot to name. Well now you have to pay for all those features! I understand adding new features and having to pay for them, but making people pay for features that people have already been using is ridiculous!!! I know the makers of Marco Polo probably ignore reviews like these and don’t even care about if we are upset with this or not, but they should AT LEAST make it cheaper or leave some of the features available😡!!! Other than that I think the app is great 👍🏻. I just hope the makers of Marco Polo will consider changing it.

Charging me for features that were once free. I loved Marco Polo app until one day almost all the features besides basic chatting were taken away from me - and in order to regain them I would have to pay $60 a year! It’s not like I had not tried a free trial of it and now my trial was up and it was time to start paying. They suddenly removed almost all of the emoji reactions, the camera to record myself for a reaction in the middle of a friend’s video, the 2x playing speed option, the ability to scrub forward to a different point in a long message, and the ability to attach a photo or write out a text message. All I can do now is record a normal message and play my friends’ messages unless I “upgrade” (which hardly seems to have any added features besides the ones that were taken away from me). But the very annoying thing is that I have been singled out as the only one in our Marco Polo group to have these features removed unless I pay $60. It feels like MP app is trying to profit off people’s isolation during covid-19. If the app had started out charging $5/mo that would be one thing, or charging for an upgraded version that contains added features would be fine too! But charging for the features that were once free really rubs me the wrong way and makes me want to discontinue supporting this app altogether.

Struggle bus. When I first heard about Marco Polo (MP) I was stoked because it seemed like the perfect app to stay in touch with several longtime friends that I’ve known since middle school that live far away. It took time to get used to the idea, but we caught on quickly and have used MP every day. We couldn’t have been happier with MP until the developers removed all the basic features, at the time, to the paid platform. Even basic features that helped users move through a MP post quicker were removed to the pay platform. For the users that were here before the format change it has been a difficult transition. To be candid we have been looking for a new platform to communicate with one another. I wish the developers would have been more creative and just kept features like fast forward in the free app and moved some of the less important features to the paid version and then developed some unique features to entice users to the free app. Unfortunately, they just gutted the app and left longtime users with a bad taste in their mouth. Also, I realize there are features like emojis and audio/visual modifications, but again those should be the features offered in the paid platform and the basic utility functions like speeding up should be available on the free platform. That’s why I give the developers 3 stars.

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Paid subscription has ruined the app. This app used to be my absolute favourite. During such a dark time in the world I was able to keep in touch with friends in a convenient and fun way. It felt like a conversation! And then the update came and took away everything except the most basic features unless you are able to pay for the app. I understand needing to earn some money through the app, and 100% support that! But every other app I’ve ever used that’s developed a paid feature has ADDED features and used that as the base for their subscription. As someone else said, this just feels like being betrayed by a friend.

Works a treat. Really nice little app that works a treat for communicating with family and friends. Easy to use.

Love this app. This is my favorite way to connect with family and friends. It’s personal and I’m my own time!

Distant Family chats. Marco Polo has helped me chat with my daughter and grandson when I need to see as well as speak to them. ;)

Saving. All the updates say that you can now save your Polos - you can’t at least no way I can find. Love this app otherwise

Obsessed with Marco Polo!. This app is brilliant! As an expat living in Australia, I use it daily to keep in touch with friends and family in the US. It really helps me stay connected and removes the time difference issue. Five stars!

Great way to connect. I was sceptical at first as my friendship group was using WhatsApp and you could do this anyway. However, it is a lot more seem less in Marco Polo.

Lacking fast forward capability. Would be better if you could drag the video to the section you want to watch, rather than having to skip ahead 10 sec at a time.

Closer to friends with Marco Polo. Since my friend introduced me to Marco Polo I have been closer to my friends who are scattered around the world. It’s so much better to see and talk to them instead of just reading their massages. Best solution for asynchronous conversations in different time zones!

Best continuous conversation app. Best way to stay connected face to face with friends all over the world in a running conversation that never has to end, I reply in my Timezone at a convenient time, they do the same! Awesome

The glitchiest app EVER. Without fail, at least once a day when I open a conversation, my phone freezes and the screen goes black and I have to restart my phone at least twice. Infuriating! The only app I’ve ever encountered this with and it’s a consistent problem.

Marco Polo. The Marco Polo app allows you to talk to people and while you are doing it you can change the background and it let’s you change your voice

So good!. I love how convenient this is to use and how easily I can send videos to my geographically distant family. It's also great that all the videos I make don't use up storage space on phone.

Best so far!. You know how when you talk or text without being able to filter? This. You speak, you can laugh, cry, swear, call someone out, have a catharsis... And delete. You have great convos with time to think. You see and are seen. It's wonderful.

It could be better. I love how I am able to keep in touch with my friends in a different country, but the video quality is awful and it would be great if there were some different emoji options as well. Just some new updates to make it more aesthetically pleasing LOL.

Loved this app till they made most free features payable :(. This is not at all worth $60 per year. We’ve been using this app for 2 years while my sister lived abroad and loved it! I recommended it to everyone. About a month or two ago they updated it meaning that instead of upgrading to the paid version and getting lots of cool new features, they took away lots of the normal functionality and want to charge for that. Super super disappointed! We would pay for the upgrade to keep using it if it was reasonable or felt worth it, but having had access to the features of speeding up the polo or sending a pic instead, I guarantee you will be wasting your money. Plus who is to say they won’t do that again and lock access to your historical polos next.

Spontaneous shares with my child. We have now been using Polos as fun spontaneous “gifts” to each other for several years. We live on different continents with wide time differences but Polo is always available, day or night! Very easy and clear.

Enjoy this app. Fantastic app for chatting with friends when it’s convenient for me. Busy household here so I can send a message in my time to friends interstate. It’s like having a cuppa together through the net! Very fun and easy to use.

Great to stay in touch. I really like Marco Polo! It has made it easy for me to stay in touch with my cousin without having to coordinate times that we are both free. We just record messages and can look at them when we have a break. It’s nice to share photos with voice recorded explanations as well. Great app!

Great for keeping up with loved ones. I love this app! I can send mini recorded messages which are all stored in app to my family and boyfriend who I've moved away from . It's such a great tool for sending funny messages too, I highly recommend this app :)

Freaking awesome app. Love how you can leave a video when you’re free and how others can watch and leave a video back when they’re free. It’s so convenient to have a real life communication experience compared to text!

Great app!!. I use this constantly to keep up with friends in different hemispheres! Love it! I wish it paired seamlessly with Bluetooth headphones. You can usually listen to your friend’s messages with headphones, but when you’re recording, it picks up audio from your phone, not your headphones, which makes it harder to multitask!

Best video messaging for families. So I’ve moved interstate and this app has helped me stay in touch with my family. I know there are other apps like FaceTime and such but this app allows me to still record and keep precious moments with my family. The features and filters are easy and fun to use especially when I talk to my nieces, I use the voice altering feature for a laugh. I feel so connected and enjoy using this on a daily basis. Go use it now!

Paid subscription has ruined the Apo. The upgrade to paid subscription is so disappointing, my friends and I are looking for a new way to communicate. $85 a month in Australia... ridiculous! Instead of adding new things and charging, you took away features we’ve been using for years and tried to charge us. Such bad business. I’d rather have advertisements! You took away the ability to post photos and videos and the 2x feature. I read your quotes about us eventually getting over it... which only bugged me more. You ruined a good thing Marco Polo!

Brilliant app. I have shared this app with so many people. I am having fun with an international book group and another local group along with my family and I have set up a group with myself being the only member, to create a journal. It’s is a brilliant way to communicate. Better than WhatsApp. Fab support and a clean ad free app.

Love it. So easy to keep in touch with family overseas and I love being able to go back and replay previous messages. A great video journal. 🌟

Perfect!. Easy to install, easy to use and so so handy to leave messages, especially as a lot of my contacts are overseas and on different times of the day and night. And I can watch their reply messages at my leisure...

Marco Polo is good. Pro version is great.. I really like the simplicity of Marco Polo as an app and all I can say is that the 5 star rating is really due to the pro version. Subscriptions aren’t my favourite and tbh I’d prefer a one-off payment, but it’s a really good app that’s genuinely helped me stay connected with important people in my life.

Communication Excellence. Great for keeping in touch with my kids who all live away. And, getting family news.

Review. I really like it and have one comment, maybe a voice recording option if someone doesn't want to send a video of themselves...?

Most expensive app ever!. This app is super handy for staying in contact with overseas friends & fam. however, the cost is incredibly overpriced!! $170 Aus dollars like WT?!?! I could just record a few vids on my camera & send. Calm down MP! The app is far better with a full membership but considering I could pay for a flight or nights accom with it, I won’t be paying.

Convenient and high quality. I catch up with a friend in America everyday on Marco. I’m in Australia, and it’s the next best thing to being there. You can chat by video and you never miss a message. It’s like having an ongoing conversation, easy to operate and Marco stores all of your videos so you can look back at them. I recommend Marco Polo and appreciate that a app developer really understands what the public wants. 5 Stars.

Pay to use. Was good until now you have to pay a crazy amount to use features that were previously free for a very long time. All of my friends share the same concern and we had decided to delete and move to another platform. Shame really.

New fun way to video message. I really enjoy Marco Polo. I like the fact you can send a message to someone and who hey watch it now or later and reply. I live in a different country than what I was born and raised in so it's a fun way to stay in touch with people in the now

Wish you could download. Love this app! It has been fantastic for keeping in touch with family overseas :) my only wish is that you could save the videos you take or receive. I send lots of videos of my baby to family and I’m bummed that I can’t keep the moments I capture.

Used to be amazing.. Would give a 5 as it used to be amazing but since Premium features have been introduced, a lot of the app is disabled if you’re only using the free version. Have been using the app for 2 years now and have to at least say that it is an easy platform to use and communicate with those long-distance. It’s nice being able to go back and listen to messages, it’s a little more personal than a text and though it’s not video calling, it is that sweet in-between especially when there are time differences. It’s just annoying (having premium features disabled) especially since I know what having full features is like before they introduced it but if that doesn’t bother you, go ham. Hope this gives a balanced view of the app.

Originally free features GONE. Outraged!. I’ve been using Marco Polo since 2014!! When I updated in August 2020 suddenly the app was restricted and every element that I’d been using was only avail with a $60 subscription. It’s super poor form. ADD things to be paid for don’t strip back and outrage your loyal users. Why even bother using the app. It’s been the worst user experience over the past month and I’d like to find a new app to keep in touch with o/s friends and family. I attempted to reload the old version and contacted the MP team and they tried to justify the cost and cutting of originally free features. So that was super helpful....not. It’s just a shame MP team.

So disappointing!. I have used this app daily for many years now. Not just me, but my kids & my Husband. It enabled us to keep in contact with family & friends around the country. Sadly it’s become almost unusable, buggy, WAY too expensive ($195 for my family to use, who would pay that!?). The features you took away from long term users & the price you’re asking is ludicrous. I used to tell everyone about this app... not anymore.

Love it. Just a disclaimer I am not a bot. Me and my friend are in different schools and are very hard to talk this free version helped so much!!!

Paid Subscription ruined the App. I’ve been using the app for 2 years and have recommended it to so many of my friends and family. I can’t express my upset about the new paid subscription taking away features that were once free. If you’re going to make money off the app (which I understand you need to do) but add new features, don’t take them away from existing users. It’s such a great app but knowing what I’m missing out on doesn’t make me want to pay for the full subscription. I too feel betrayed and unseen.

Brilliant, way better than I expected. This app is way better than I expected I wondered what the point of it was initially, given that we can just text videos to each other, however it’s much easier to use than that and feels more like a conversation and a text message mixed together! You can pick up where you left off at any time of day, and get back to people when it’s convenient and that’s a huge plus. ***I would love a “but in” button, so that if someone leaves a longer message, and I want to reply at different parts of the conversation before I forget what they said, I could record a reply holding that down, release it and continue watching their video. They would then see maybe 3-4 short videos from me in reply, in sequence.

Didn’t work yesterday. It didn’t work yesterday at all

Great app but low quality video and sound. With faster internet more widely available the quality of videos needs to be increased, the video and sound quality reminds me of internet videos of the 1990s. Sound is lost and videos are extremely pixelated. Perhaps this could be rectified by a variable bitrate option in future updates of the app?

Greta fun. We are using this while we travel to keep in touch with family and friends. It’s great for when there is time differences!

Give us cool filters!. Love the app- been using it daily for years! But I would’ve given it five stars if you guys could really lift your fun game and give us some way better filter action! Snap chat, Instagram, Facebook all have super cool filters in their videos- come on Marco Polo! Join them!

Learning !!. I am a newbie to Marco Polo, and a starting to feel more comfortable with the ease of using it. I live in Australia, and my Daughter is in New York, so we can now video message eachother 24-7.

Mongrel. Best app I got for communication with my mates world wide have a ball on it and the team help is great sorted my phone problem out straight up great team work love the app heaps better than face book job well done cheers

Great app. I'm loving it for communicating with my mates over seas. Would prefer that i could find friends through Facebook instead of my contacts as I don't have all their numbers

Fun. So much fun to send videos that only end when you say so and to see the people you love and hear there voices in stead of reading their words.

The best app for long distance!. Marco Polo has enabled me to reconnect with my father who lives in the United States and I have been in Australia 10 years. The quality is superb and we now talk multiple times a day regardless of the time difference. We share moments of our life’s that cannot be translated into words. We share tears and smiles, joy and sadness this app has given me something special back in my life. Thank you to the creators.

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Used to be good. 🚨GOUGE ALERT 🚨. I used to love Marco Polo. Then they went and made a bunch of functions (that are free in virtually every other messaging app) premium aka paid only. Right in the middle of COVID 19 😒 Why didn’t they just make premium options, like HD, downloads, and long videos premium? They said “it’s only the price of a coffee with a friend” ... you know what else is the price of a coffee with a friend? A COFFEE WITH A FRIEND! Goodbye Marco Polo. I’m not sacrificing a coffee with a friend for messaging app that can’t do basic functions like text, photos, without a monthly subscription. Yikes guys. What a huge disappointment.

Feature limited. Great app and a fantastic way to stay in touch with people. Unfortunately the free version is heavily crippled now and you can’t fast forward or skip to spots in individual messages. Cost to enable those features is really high. Find myself using it less because the experience is not what it used to be.

Paying premium but??. I used to love polo. Defended the low video quality... but as soon as I get another option. I am out. I get we need to reward creators and I WANT to.. so I paid- I speak from a paid subscription viewpoint but the way they went about it and then for us that actually pay.. there is no difference. Low video quality- Can’t rewind/fast forward or play polos- or not able to play at all- it seems it is getting worse. And I am paying for it? Only get emails to pay more.. for what? What not ask us- that pay for what works and what does not instead of the sale emails?

Tech issues. I used to love this app (and I still love the concept) but it has been “updating” for months. I have tried many different ways of troubleshooting but it still doesn’t work.

Unfair Update. Literally the worst update ever. Everything has been discounted/free to help people stay in touch during quarantine and then Marco updates to lose all features unless you pay to subscribe??? Honestly just unfair and really frustrating. I don’t love the app as much anymore

Update sucks. Marco Polo plus is not worth the money and they removed basic features and hid them behind paywalls.

Terrible after the updates. I have been using this app with the free features for so long and now they’re trying to force people into paying for the premium version but taking away basic functions that have always been free. What a slimy tactic. Marco Polo has lots all of my respect.

So bad I had to write an app review. I’ve never written an app review before but this made me so mad I had to. This newest update takes everything away that makes Marco Polo different from other apps and gives nothing new in return. Bring back the 2X button 😡

Marco Polo Plus is a rip off. Very disappointed in the most recent upgrade of this app. All the functions that I have been freely using for months are now only available if I pay for Marco Polo Plus. Great app to stay connected with people but sleazy business to take away the basic functions and make me suddenly pay for them.

Stupid money Hogs. After the update it’s basically a paid app for 60$/year. Save yourself the trouble and get Snapchat so you can send text

Opening Screens are Misleading. Beware: the screens when you open the app mislead you into paying for a subscription by suggesting that the app needs to read your fingerprint to verify purchase when what it is really doing is making a new purchase. The App Store should ban the practice. The fact that this app maker would do it should be enough to warrant avoiding Marco Polo.

Marco Polo wants to charging for free service. What Marco Polo is doing with their once free platform is what Naomi Klein would call ‘disaster capitalism’. In a time of disaster make money from people because their need is greater. Marco Polo became important to people during the forced isolation from the novel Coronavirus pandemic. People are out of work, isolated and frightened. While other companies are offering free communication services. Marco Polo does the opposite. Starts taking away what was once free and trying to charge for it by offering a ‘free’ trial for their supposed upgrade. That is just mean and money grubbing.

Feel cheated. I’ve been using this App for almost a year, I absolutely loved it, but now they want $60/year for the same experience with nothing desirable added. They took away all the features that made this app special, so if you don’t have extra money during a pandemic for yet another subscription service, you’re SOL. Thanks.

FURIOUS LONG TIME CLIENT. I am absolutely furious and will be canceling any use of Marco Polo moving forward. I have been an advocate and a long-time user of Marco Polo. If anyone has created a buzz about using Marco Polo, advertised about Marco Polo so that their business could grow and more people would use it, it is definitely me. Me and my friends love using Marco Polo because we live far from each other. The other day when I got a new iPhone, it asked me to re-login when I opened the app which happens normally with a lot of apps when you get a new phone. I logged in and the only option Marco Polo gave me was to subscribe toA seven day free trial with a charge of$59.99 there after. There was no option to just keep using the Marco Polo free version. There was no option to not have the Marco Polo plus version. I subscribe to get my seven day free trial so that I could tell all of my friends that we will no longer be using Marco Polo. While I understand that they want to start making money off their app. I would have happily paid even $10 for the app it’s self to continue using the free version. But they did not offer this to us. All they offered was either a subscription that you payFor either yearly or monthly or other various terms but there is no option anymore to have the free version. It is not that great of an app that it is worth paying $60 a year for. There are lots of other options to do FaceTime and video calling with friends abroad. What makes me most furious about this aspect is that I’m not a new client signing up for the first time. Anyone that was already using the free version should obviously get to just keep that and be grandfathered in. And any new clients should be prompted to either get a seven day free trial and a subscription so as far as business practices go, whoever is running Marco Polo is trying to make a fast buck and they are scamming clients that they have already had who have been loyal. I will no longer be one of those clients. I will be taking my mini friends with me and so on and so forth. I’m sure they will also be telling many friends as well what is going on. I am very mad that I was removed from being able to keep the free version just because I switched phones. I had this app already so I find this not only ridiculous but also very underhanded. Is Marco Polo offered the option to re-purchase the app itself for $10 and you could keep the free version, I would buy that. Marco Polo hasn’t even perfected how are you can delete old messages you have to delete each one individually you can’t even press delete all which tells me that there’s not a lot of technology or work going into the app on a daily basis which is another reason why $10 a month or $60 is ludicrous. I will miss Marco Polo to some degree but because there are so many options out there for similar apps and video calling I don’t think I will be stressing about it too much. Goodbye Marco!

Disappointed. Love this app for keeping in touch with international friends and family. Disappointed they took free features away and now charge for them monthly! I’d rather go back to sending iMessage videos just out of spite.

Connection Rules!. I’m on Marco Polo as a way to stay emotionally connected to my support network. I’m an introvert and don’t often feel like talking on the phone. But those moments when I do feel chatty I capture on Marco Polo for the people in my world to see. Love, love, love the face to face connection! I’ve laughed. I’ve cried at the videos people send me on Marco Polo. This is my favorite app. It makes communicating by text seem tasteless cardboard as compared to the previous face to face. ❤️

Is This Legal?. What happened to just the regular Marco? I was billed 119.99 dollars for a app that I thought was free. PLUS I haven’t got a refund for a app I now how cancelled. Plus it forces me to give it one star when it doesn’t deserve even that!

Boo Paid Subscription. Was loving this app especially considering our social distant world but I’m so disappointed that every feature is now locked and can’t be opened until you start paying monthly. Would LOVE for it to go back to being wonderfully free and uniting us with loved ones!

Outrageous monthly fee. I use to LOVE this app and used it to speak with my friends in the US (I’m in 🇨🇦). They took away all the previous free features (2x speed, sharing pictures or text, jumping forward) and suddenly charging $60/year USD for those same features??? That’s insane. I will NOT pay that and I hope no one does. I still enjoy communicating with friends and will still use the app but I will not pay $80 CDN just to fast forward. What a rip off.

Disappointing downgrade. I love what this app does, in regards to the mode of communication. But I really hate the fact that they switched it so that you have to pay for every feature from the previous free version. We are left with the least useful “extras” with filters and voices and have to now pay for basic things like sending a picture. My friends and I are exploring other apps that have more options. Really disheartening that this communication app has made themselves so elite, in a time when connection with people is more important Han ever, and the economy is in the toilet. I hope they bring back some of the other features for free.

Great until last update. I live in different countries/states from the rest of my family and we have been using this app for a couple of years now to keep in touch with each other. We have a chat with all 7 of our family members and it’s been the best way for us to all keep in contact. I have recommended this app to everyone I know. That being said, they just took an opportunity to mooch money off of people during a global pandemic and I for one am appalled. I cannot believe they would do this NOW of all times. When people are running low on income. They removed the option of fast forwarding through Marco polos. It makes it impossible for us to use as our main form of communication now because no one has the time. I think they could have charged a one-time fee of like $5-$10 to upgrade to plus without many people getting upset about it, but to have to pay a monthly membership fee for features you once ALREADY HAD is ridiculous. Bring back the fast forward button before we tank this apps ratings.

Used to love. This app WAS great to use. A convenient way to stay connect with family and friends. And during a pandemic they decided to take away any basic features from the free app and set an obscenely high subscription fee. This is shady business. I would have been ok paying a one time fee to download the app (like $5). But I am not paying $5/month for a very basic app that doesn’t provide anything new. Took away basic features and slapped an $80 fee on it. I’ll go back to texting for free. Thanks...... I won’t be using the app let alone “upgrading” it.

“Still Free, Fewer Options”, Marco Polo. Was great until they took away features and made a free app expensive. Not worth the money. Will be deleting once the new changes take effect.

Great until they started trying to force you to upgrade. We were loving the app as a way for the kids in our family to keep in touch with far away relatives (since some couldn’t write yet) but once they moved to a model where there was a premium vs a free version, it all started going downhill. While I can understand and even appreciate an upgraded version that would be paid for, it seems instead they just continue to remove features that were once free and make them “premium features”. It makes more sense to add value than to remove it from the free version. Just frustrating for those Who have been using the app for a while and are all of a sudden unable to use it the way we used to.

I’m deleting this app and telling everybody else i know to do the same!. What a dick move to pull! Instead of adding features you are simply locking everything behind a paywall. THAT’S JUST EVIL, ESPECIALLY AT A TIME LIKE THIS! What’s next micro transactions??

Now we pay to use the features that were free!?!. I’ve used this app for years. The recent “upgrade” to their premium version is bogus. All the features that I’ve used and loved for years I now have to pay for! What’s up with that???

Pandemic money grab?. I had been using Marco Polo for a long time and I loved it — I recruited so many of my friends to the service. But they’ve recently decided to make even the most basic features only available if you pay — they limited the emoji reactions, you can’t leave a text message, or a photo. It’s just so disappointing for people, like me, who have been long time users. And also it feels like the company is capitalizing on the pandemic — isolation has increased its users, so now people have to pay if they want to stay in touch. It makes me kind of sad to think that’s the reason, and I hope I’m wrong, but I just can’t find another reason. If this was a Marco Polo, I would describe how I feel as 😔 (but of course, you have to pay to use that emoji now).

Money grab.. I used to love Marco Polo or at least I did. It has become a cashGrab, they saw opportunity This company’s popularity because of coronavirus they saw an opportunity to start charging for our favourite features.$5 a month is ridiculous that US dollars for Canadians that’s way too much money! I would be willing to pay a one time fee for the app $5 forevermore this is ridiculous! Something new will come out free and I will be using it! With old features gone this app had gone backwards! Bring back 2x free! You can’t claw back features!!!! Scummy.

Too much money. I actually really like MP but since they took all the features away on the free version and make you pay in my opinion too much for the pro version it’s not worth it. 😕

Update SUCKS. You’ve taken away some of the best features! Now I have to pay $50 for FAST FORWARD and FORWARDING?! Not cool.

Gouging. Moving 90% of the existing features to a paid version and clawing back nearly all the functionality, rather than adding new extras as an opt-in, is a complete rip-off. Will be looking for a new app.

Membership. Went to update my app to find out that now you need a membership in order to use a lot of the old features. (Sending pictures, sending text images, recording reactions) No thank you. Will be looking for a different app.

😡. 😱 omg.... i keep typing in my phone number and it won’t send me the verification code !!!!😤😠😡

Paywall. Was a great app until they made a premium feature that you had to pay for and blocked some of the previous features behind it. Disappointed they did this during a quarantine time when people are trying to connect

$5 a month.....is that a joke?. My friends and I all use this app but with the new update we will probably be finding a new platform. The paid version strips most of the features from the free version. I would have paid for this app outright but I’m for sure not subscribing to it, and literally everyone I’ve talked to about it has said the same. Sad.

Premium Ruined It. I loved this app until they introduced the paid option. Now you can’t send videos or photos you’ve taken previously. Which takes away a lot of the convenience of this app. Now if I want to send something, I have to do it “live,” which isn’t always possible.

Changes. Hi there. Not impressed with the fact that you are now changing it up and there is no way to just have the ordinary not the plus version without trying the plus version for 7 days . Then have to give info. You are hoping that people forget and you get to charge for at least a month. Shame on you. Especially now. I am also wondering why many people I know have not even gotten the message about switching and are able to use all the services that originally came with the app!! I was using this app for team building and now only able to send and receive Polos with all the other stuff taken away doesn’t seem right as we along With so many are partly responsible for making your app so appealing in the first Place!

Great until the latest update. Loved using this app with my friends to stay connected, but like a lot of other people find it’s ridiculous to claw back basic features 2X speed for their “pro” paid tier. I understand their looking for ways to monetize, but taking away a basic free feature to do so is NOT the way to do it. Friends and I are looking at alternatives now.

Tricking users to update and force to pay bad form. That was sneaky you convinced users to upgrade and force them to pay for the same features they used to get for free. Bye marco Ill find another app your not the only game in town

Plus???. You took away the features that came with Marco Polo and made them a plus feature?? Speeding up the video 2x, sending texts or photos. Those are now plus features?? WTH. If you were to make a plus app, come up with NEW features. Not take the features that were already available for FREE and make them a plus feature. Very shady of you guys to do that.

Rip off. I had this app for free and removed it for space on my phone. My wife and son sent me a video when I was at work. Downloaded the app off the cloud cause I had it before. Watched the video and thought nothing of it. Now found out it somehow signed me up for a year subscription to Marco Polo family plus at $136. I don’t even use this app. This is ridiculous and I can’t se a way to get my money back. Total money grab

Was good. Basically, unless you want to spend $5 a month (paid in full or $9 monthly) you are essentially getting what every other messaging app out there can already do. The “double speed” feature was the feature that set this app apart, but you can no longer get that unless you’re paying, and all the other paid features aren’t really worth it either. So, unless you have a good amount of disposable income, then this app is pretty much equivalent to whatsapp, iMessage, fb messenger, etc.

Annoying to have to Pay Monthly now. I love Marco Polo! I live far from family and friends so it is such a great thing to keep me feeling close to them all. I am confused and frustrated however that all of the features were were accustomed to now have to be paid for. And it is a decent price, yes, but a huge money grab. Most apps you only have to pay a one time fee for, not a monthly subscription. That’s dumb.

Better before. I liked and use the app way more when you could add photos and type. Sometimes I want to reply to a group message in MarcoPolo but I don’t want people to see me.

Great for extrovert stay at home moms. As a mom at home with three young kids who can't text or even FaceTime easy without my kids trying to cause the apocalypse in my house because I'm talking to any other humans besides them, Marco Polo is a great alternative for me. I can send or receive short messages with other adult humans that take little effort and I can watch and respond when I'm able to!

Not classy. Not classy Marco Polo. Not classy. To charge a subscription without adding any major new features stinks! To claw back features leaving nothing free for playback - stinks. Not impressed with the subscription - my videos keep stopping and I don’t get to finish them. Nothing new and exciting. And seriously - 5$ USD/month? Gimme a break. Not classy.

Used to be way better. Since adding the “pro” account, they took away a bunch of features that used to be available. If I could find an alternative for MP I would switch in the heartbeat as the upgrade is ridiculously expensive.

Premium is a joke. Can’t believe that a company would “launch” a premium service during a pandemic that only involves converting all of the free options to paid. No originality in premium - they are trying the “bait and switch” marketing method. You want people to pay? Maybe add new features and make something that is actually premium. Add group functions or something but charging for the exact same things that were free without notice to users? Terrible company.

No more features without having to pay for them. I loved Marco Polo until they decided to charge you for simple features. No more double time, no more photo messages. It’s really unfortunate that you have to pay monthly for these now. I’d love to give it 5 stars but I just can’t. I don’t really see the incentive to use it over any of the other messaging apps now.

So disappointed. I got my mom to sign up during the pandemic but she said she had to pay. And A LOT. $60 a year for what used to be free. So disappointed. Instead of getting 6 new user they lost a bunch (in my family).

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Love it! Can I make a suggestion!?. Loving the app and staying in touch with friends! I wanted to make a suggestion regarding time and timers. 1) the time display disappears while you are watching a video .. I love to watch when I can with a busy mom life.. that includes knowing what time it is .. I have to stop the video to check the time.. not a big deal but would be helpful! Which brings me to 2) Can we add a timer on the video.. like when you see the video, maybe include the time length of the video on the bottom right corner or something? Would be super helpful! Sometimes I don’t watch a video thinking I won’t have time to get thru it.. I play it and it’s over in 30 seconds haha or you listen to a video have to pause and go back to it often cause you don’t realize it’s 45 minutes long.. be helpful to know how long the videos are or even a timer for when you are recording a message so you can check yourself to! Obviously the app is amazing without these suggestions, but just wanted to throw that out there :)

Free features stripped. Can no longer switch back the free version....seriously!!? You guys that money hungry in a time like this? I use this with my family and I use the 2x button a lot due to having to pause it at times and then speed it up to catch up to real time. The record feature is also gone!! You guys are going to get a lot of negative reviews and a lot of cancellations. You never take features that you’ve made free away from a customer! That’s just poor customer satisfaction! And don’t give me this bull crap excuse about you guys have been working bon Marco Polo for the past year to make it better and bigger and make the paid version a better experience. Fine, do that! Come up with new features! But don’t take away free features from your loyal customers that have had it for free! We should be grandfathered with those features and maybe any other new customers don’t give them the old free features. Did you guys think that might be possibility??! Probably not. You’re stars will go down, cause I will be sending all my Marco Polo friends a message telling them to come on here and leave a review once they find out their free features are gone! Horrible customer service!

Life Changing App! (No, really…). If I could rate this app 10 stars, I would. Bear with a little bit of back story: I have two sisters. We grew up separately due to parental dysfunction, and as adults we’ve never really been close because we live in 3 different states and rarely see each other. I started chatting regularly with the youngest sister (I’m the oldest) on this app about 2 years ago. Our relationship blossomed! I tried to convince our other (middle) sister to jump on with us. It took a while, but finally she downloaded this app and we formed a group. Soon the three of us were talking every single day, sometimes multiple times a day, on this app sharing our lives with each other - the ups, downs, good, bad and ugly - and we’ve literally never been closer. Not even when we were kids! My sisters are now, unequivocally, my best friends. We would not have this relationship without this platform and I am so grateful to the developers for the wonderful gift this has brought into all our lives. So, from the three of us, THANK YOU!

Love it, but having minor issues. I have really been loving this app. I’ve been using it with my best friends that live all over the world for about a year and a half now, and we’ve actually grown way closer because of it. It helps to keep us updated on each other’s lives without having to worry about planning times to catch up. Since we’re in multiple different time zones, this has helped us out so much! That being said, the ONLY complaint I have is what happened after the most recent update. My cousin and I use this as our main source of communication because of our busy schedules, but recently, the videos just started getting cut off. Normally I get a notification when the connection is bad and then the full video sends later (when it reconnects). Now, the videos just completely stop and I miss out on a vast majority of the full video. We have almost completely stopped using the app because having to come back on and repeat everything has been a really big inconvenience. Before that happened, I had absolutely no complaints about the app! If this gets fixed, I’ll be back up to 5 stars 👍🏼

love this app. it's perfect for me to communicate voice messages to my friends and family. Whether we are on a different time schedule for work or school or for example in a different state/ time zone or country/ on vacation and when you have something to say on the go and they can't talk and it's just too long to type. plus I love that it does save the conversation as some friends have written this app off as (well it's like snapchat) but really no I use mine to document my day not talk to my friends. This is more of the old school Facebook that use to let you record videos on your friends walls (don't know why they ever took that away) if you were a college student when it first came out reading this then I'm sure you know what I mean! I did however give this only 3 stars because this would be great since it is used with your phone number integrated into my regular messages where I text instead of having another notification and another app to have to open. I think that's where the app could advance into something bigger and better. Other than that thank you and this app is a great tool I use it daily!

Update ruined it. I’ve been using Marco Polo for years and have sung its praises to all my friends and gotten so many of them to join. But I have to drop my 5-Star review to 1-Star. Out of nowhere a recent update put essential functions (x2 speed, slide control for watching vids, text, etc) behind a subscription paywall. I’m disabled and under long-term quarantine and what seems frivolous to others is essential functionality to me. I absolutely understand needing to move to a sustainable financial model, so if they charged $5, $10, even $20 for a premium version, I wouldn’t have balked. Lots of apps have to do that. But $60/yr subscription? I could never afford that. I reached out to them to ask for help or maybe restoring just the slide control to the free side. I received a simple msg that denied the request, made no acknowledgement of my disabilities, and said hope you enjoy the app. I was so disappointed by the response that I told a couple friends what happened and they immediately started researching options to switch to so they can dump Marco Polo. (Older version had consistently started glitching the audio out of sync with the video, so going back to it isn’t a solution.) Such a shame. This was my favorite and most helpful communication app. It had such an impact on my quality of life.

This App has changed my life. My family and friends are scattered all over the world and I’m pretty much alone in my city so being able to talk to them with this app has been an incredible lifesaver. I honestly don’t know how I would have made it the last few months without this because I can keep in touch with my family and friends in a way that makes it possible for us to go about our lives without needing to schedule specific times to call or FaceTime. The fact that one of us is in Florida, another in Texas, one in California and I’m in Oregon, but we all communicate constantly through the time differences is amazing. Before this app we were drifting apart due to the distance and lack of contact but now we “see” each other at least every other day and keep up with each other’s lives. Thank you so much for this!!! I can’t express how much I love having this tool to stay in touch. Now if only my best friend would actually watch the polos I’ve sent him....

My favorite app. I don’t know how I could manage without Marco Polo. For me it’s like when you didn’t have a cell phone and got along ok but once you got your cell phone you really can’t imagine how you’d get along without it. MP has become my main means of communication with family who are 3 time zones apart. Everyone can do it at their convenience. The small children enjoy drawing and writing on it and the older kids and adults can talk as long as they want to without having to worry about whether a file is too large to upload. Not only is it great for communicating with far away friends and family (it works internationally too as long as there’s cell phone service) but I also have found that I have kept in closer contact with good friends and the depth and detail of our conversations can be so much greater than it is via text. And so much faster. And of course you can do group conversations. I absolutely love this app!! HC Atlanta GA

Works great for busy schedules. I have used Marco Polo at least 6 years now. It helps me stay connected with friends. It has worked great for me because it does not have to be live. With busy lives, it's not always possible to talk to someone via video chat live. I can send videos or listen to them when I have time, (and they are stored in the server, not my phone). A lot of my connections do just that, but my best friend and I communicate daily, and sometimes when our schedules accidentally synch we chat live. Marco Polo has been an important tool in my life to stay connected with friends when I felt all alone like in quarantine. Marco Polo still gives me the much-needed balance of disconnecting from my phone as I wait for friends' responses. I upgraded to Pro mainly because often I need to speed up the videos I watch, but Pro has many fun features to use! Some people use Marco Polo for their jobs as well. The free version is just as great, with fun features, but better for short videos in my opinion.

Great Communication Tool. When I was invited by a friend to get this App and use it with her I groaned. I didn’t want to do this, and I didn’t want to make videos of myself. But I love my friend so I gave it a try. It was nice, nice to see my friend and communicate when the time was right without any worries about bothering her during her busy schedule. Then I invited my sisters to do this with me. We had struggled with texting: a lot is left to interpretation without tone, therefore a lot of misunderstanding occurred. MP has been life changing for us. We communicate more and we communicate better. Each of our schedules varies from the others. This allows one to chat to us when she’s up at 4am and another on her way to work. I also roped in a friend who like me, wanted nothing to do with it. And now, like me, she is enjoying it. It can get a bit busy, depending on how many people you interact with. A niece said it got overwhelming for her with all who were in that group. But it is a great communication tool to have.

Took away many features. I’ve loved using Marco Polo. It’s a great way to stay close to friends and that live far away and how to deal with social distancing. HOWEVER. They recently introduced the paid version of their app and took away many features from the free version. The one they took away that bothers me the most is the 2x speed. I get into lengthy conversations with my friends and taking this feature away will probably limit how much I speak with them, because now I will have to listen at regular speed which will take twice as long. I get that they need to make money somehow but this feature should be free. I will likely stop using the app to talk to some friend because of it. All the other features are fine to take away and have only on the paid version, but the 2x speed I feel should be free, otherwise they will lose users. I would even watch a 30 second ad if they really need to make money off of it. But I won’t pay for that feature. Also, it would mean that EVERYONE I send Polos to will need the paid version if I want to continue using it as much as I have been. Which I know they won’t so I’m probably not going to be using it as much.

Yes yes good indeed. This app is great for the kids and for the children to have a little fun and enjoy their activities with them while they’re in the car or in their room or on their bed and then when they’re asleep you have a good night and you have to get ready to leave the room so they don’t get bored or they get tired of sitting around in their bed all night and not sleeping and they have a good sleep so I think it would really be good to get a good sleep in a good night sleep in a little more comfortable sleep in the morning I hope that you’re doing better I hope you’re doing good I hope you’re doing well and that you’re having fun and I will see how you are and that you’re getting a little better and that you’re not getting any more stress on you are doing good and you have to work hard for your life and I love and you have to do that is a great day and you are you have to be happy to do it for the better for the best of your own happiness is the most amazing and you deserve the most important things to be able and I love to be there and you deserve it

Love this!. I love almost everything about this app! It's like having a FaceTime conversation, where everyone in the thread can respond when they have time instead of immediately. Way simpler than just sending video messages back and forth. I like that the videos can last as long as you want and that they don't disappear after watching, unlike Snapchat. One improvement would be the ability to share videos that you previously filmed on your phones camera to your group. I shared this idea with the app support team, and they quickly followed up with me for more information about my idea. I was really impressed by the team behind the app! I'm hoping that is a feature included in future updates. Another improvement is that sometimes after watching a video in fast forward, after I try to resume regular speed, the picture and audio don't match up. Not the end of the world, just annoying. Otherwise love the app and love using it every day!

Worth getting, but could be better.. This app is pretty good. You can do all kinds of things in this app. There are voice changers, the ability to delete messages you already sent, and basic color filters. Why four stars? I feel like they can do more and make the app better. Snapchat filters are way better than Marco Polo filters. I don’t know what it is, but I feel something is missing. In addition, different devices work differently. My friend has a phone that can cover the camera with a giant emoji. My phone couldn’t do that. Over video chat, he tried to teach me how to do it. First, he tried showing me a reflection of his phone doing it, but he couldn’t get it to the right angle. So he decided to show me him doing it on another phone. The other device could not do it. That’s when we realized that it doesn’t work on all devices. I don’t know why different devices do different things. However, for the most part, Marco Polo is a good app worth getting. Sorry for the ridiculously long review. Enjoy your day! (And Marco Polo!)

Marco Polo is the best way to connect digitally. This app has helped me stay in contact with my family(there are 9 of us and we are all very close but live in different cities), I can see them anytime I want and let them in on what’s going on with my life and also have incredibly deep and meaningful conversations with my FRIENDS!! This app is THE APP for all of my introverted/social anxiety ridden/recluse babies too- girl, you can STAY CONNECTED and participate in ALL of your friends lives with the click of a “start” button! You can stay involved and get back to their videos whenever is convenient! Seriously, if you have a hard time getting out or can’t always participate in stuff with your extroverts(cause let’s be honest extroverts always latch on to introverts and that’s how we socialize😂). But this app has been a HUGE game-changer for my introverted friends who never go out with me!! Now we have great conversations(some serious, some fun, some silly), and I get to see their faces everyday if I want to! It’s a great way to remain connected without having to over exert yourself by going out all the time💓

THIS APP IS THE MOST FRUSTRATING APP EVER!!!!!. My friends told me that the app is great but I don’t know what thing caused my app to not work but it is soooo frustrating. All of the polos I have sent have been really really slow audio, you can barely understand what I’m saying, and the screen is really blurry (there has also been a lot of mike feedback). I have red and searched all over the web. I have checked my WiFi done a polo at multiple different locations but NOTHING. I’ve reinstalled the app 3 TIMES refreshed my screen to many times to count. And yes I have checked to see if I have voice effects are on, they aren’t. I’m really confused and angry that this doesn’t work but works for my friends. So whatever is wrong make sure that it is fixed before anyone else downloads the app or just not at all. Oh by the way maybe make the help center easier to find and actually have useful information on it. But hey if the app actually works I’ve heard that it is a really fun (I wouldn’t know since it has never worked for me). But the app is a really great idea and fun way to communicate for all who it works for. As long as the app works I bet it can be really fun. Thanks by the way for letting it be free. Well that is my opinion.

The way I like Marco Polo. I like Marco Polo because you can respond to people but maybe there should be something like a texting thing but I don’t wanna buy the Marco Polo class because it cost money maybe you guys could just load the price or you could not have a price that would be amazing because I love to chat with my friend but I can’t do the extra stuff so if you get this review can you please try to do that I know that you’re trying to make money but please try to do that because I really want to do the extra stuff but I don’t want to pay for it so please do that and also I like Marco Polo because you can keep in contact with people but I don’t like how they don’t respond right away so maybe you could add like a notification thing so when I know they’re telling me to come chat with them I can always do that Marco polo is a great way to keep in contact with people I love the filters and other things I hope you do what I say in this for real sorry if I’m being sassy but that’s what I want and if you can’t that’s OK too 👋❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

Used to love it-now I want to find a new app.. I have been using Marco Polo with my mom and sisters for almost 2 years so and we are in different parts of the country so it makes it nice to be able to have video conversations and share what my daughter is doing with my mom from a distance. I would give it a 10 star, except recently it’s asking me to upgrade to full version with monthly subscription for $10/month or $60/ yr. just to use the same features that we had on the free app. I wouldn’t mind pay for it, come one really a subscription? I pay for my internet, phone service and now to use an app that I have been using for 2 years to keep in touch with my family. Not a smart move on the company’s part. I will find a new app to use and will not pay a subscription to use a simple app. I previous would have given this a 5 star, now I give it a 1 star bile cause that is just wrong.

Lies and disappointment. So just a few months ago they unveiled Marco Polo Plus. With no warning things changed drastically. Many people were unhappy with the new look and removed features. The only way to get them back was to pay like $8/mo (no thanks!). To their credit, Marco Polo responded to the unhappy users saying that if you already had an account before the update, you would be able to continue to use the old version (with the original features). I just received a notification in my app today informing me that the old version I was promised will be discontinued very soon. Needless to say I am very disappointed! I understand that they would like to make money and keep things add free. And you know what, I would be willing to pay $10 to keep the old version I already have. What I am not willing to do is to pay a monthly fee for something that I already had for free. If you want to please customers, taking away what they’ve grown to love and charging them $60 a year for it just isn’t the way. I hope leaders in this company change their mind about removing the old version (even if it means paying a one time fee) to help those customers who have made their platform what it is.

I think NOT. Ha! You guys really tried it! I have been using MarcoPolo coming up on 3 years in September. In these 3 years I have recruited family, friends & acquaintances. Never had any real complaints besides the videos interrupting periodically, until now. I understand the need to grow the company. Which means changes for both the company and customer. I get you guys have to make some type of capital for longevity. I’m not annoyed at you guys wanting us to pay, but wanting us to pay monthly is why people are mad. Some of us should’ve been grandfathered in or better off having a one time charge instead of monthly fee for existing members. And here the company is telling members that if you joined before April 29th 2020 then you can switch back to the old version.....until August 1st...... lol that defeats the purpose. The new update honestly makes me want to delete the app..... but I won’t 😂 because I’ve been using it for so long. I’ll just continue to use the free version and use regular text messages for my pictures, voice messages & etc. I’m sure others are willing to pay, but not I lol. No hard feelings though, it was fun while it lasted. Best of luck.

❤️❤️❤️. I absolutely love this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have 14 cousins; all different ages! This app is such a great app I definitely recommend it. You can be funny with fun filters and effects and you can make group chats, and even chats with just you and a different person! It can’t be more perfect! Me and my closet cousins made up this game called “the dancing game” and we dance to our favorite songs! This app is also great especially during these times, where we can’t see each other in person. Another good thing is that when someone does a polo, you can click on emoji effects if their in the middle of a polo, and they will see it which I think is really nice! And if anyone misses a polo, we can still watch it just not live; almost like a voice mail but better, and it also shows when someone is active which is super duper helpful and fun. I can’t thank you enough Marco Polo, you make communicating so much more fun and easier, and your app allows me to talk to my favorite people every single day which is more then I could ask for!

Terrible since changes. I’m not gonna beat around the bush, I’m pretty frustrated with the new changes to the Marco Polo app. Me, my family and many many friends have been using this app for several years. All the sudden we are being forced to pay for features that have always been included, and as far as I can tell there’s nothing new. That’s pretty disappointing! Loyal app users who have been a big part of making Marco Polo so successful are getting no thanks in return. Where is the appreciation? I completely support charging new users for some of the features, but suddenly making long time users pay for basic features at a ridiculous price might I add, is a pretty big risk and the most greedy move I’ve seen in a long time. I will not be paying for features on this app that i have been using all along and I am currently researching a new app to replace this one. So are my friends and family. The glitches since this overhaul are too numerous to count and most likely intentional trying to force users to pay. Not a very good way to treat your Fanbase, I’m sad because this was an excellent app that I would’ve given five stars review six months ago. Bad move MP!

So blessed to have Marco Polo. Thank you so much for creating this app. I adore it! I love being able to keep in contact this way, and especially that it’s unlimited and you can save them! When I moved halfway across the country it was a way to interact with family and friends left behind. When I started dating it was a way to share the details of our hearts, minds, and days on a personal level and now I can look back over our journey through Marco Polo and remember!!! Also, I have a couple of questions/suggestions: could you make it available to access your videos and create them online as well? Like from your website? I would also love to be able to download the videos from months ago to my device/computer so that I can save them to a disc as well, but the problem is that I can’t download many past Marco Polos because I have so many with my fiancé that I have to go to “see all” and when I tap on a video it will play and pause, but there are no other options. Could that be updated, please?! Thank you!!

Ok normally 5 stars. I put 3 stars because of the premium. I thought they would add new and cool features that would make the app better but i think it made it worse for these reasons. Number one, they just made what you used to be able to do into a in app purchase such as 2x. It was funny to send something to my friends and tell them to click the button, until they made it for premium. Now I will probably use the app less and it’s because I don’t spend money on games and applications and now my favorite messaging app is limited to me. This update has been asked for but not in that kind of way I’m sure. People don’t want to pay for maybe 3 to 4 new things and stuff you could have done for free. So everyone kids or adults now have a limited usage to the people who don’t want to spend money on it!!! Ok I wrote this because it is, its disappointing because nobody wants to pay and your ruining your app but now I go through the rest of the reviews about the update and the same response gets sent saying that you can go back to the old version like they copied and pasted that response like you don’t listen to the people that used it 24 seven like me!

PLUS. New review: It says that I have gotten a developer response to my rating, but I can’t see it. What I’m assuming they said was you can change it back to the old Marco Polo is you had it before April 29th? Just by looking at the other ones. I have changed my rating because of this, I love the fact that they are keeping the option to change the version of this app if you used it before the update. It really helps my family send photos and videos to each other, thank you. 😊 Old review: I don’t know if you need extra money, or it’s just some sort of new things apps are doing. I used to love this app, without having to pay a price to send photos to my family across the world. I haven’t seen or used any of the new features because I didn’t buy the plus, but most of them look like the things you used to be able to do for FREE. That’s all I have to say about this app, other than the plus it’s a great app. It’s just not for me anymore.

Love it...when it works. This app is everything it’s promised to be! I adore using it. It really does help sustain your relationships with long-distance friends, or even next-door neighbors when you’re too lazy to actually hang out. 😂 It’s got the best features of FaceTime and texting combined into one awesome app. Recently, however, it’s been pretty glitchy on my phone. Sometimes, I’ll open it and it’ll be frozen. I’ll have to exit out and then go back into it. And I could absolutely live with that (the same thing’s happened to other apps on my phone, so that could just be my phone), but there’s more. When I tried to look at my new polos this morning, the videos were interspersed with just total screen blackouts. The audio continued, but the screen switched unreliably from the actual video to black. None of the other apps on my phone have ever done that. I’ll restart my phone and see what happens...but I’m so attached to some of the old videos on here that I don’t want to try re-installing the app yet. :) Overall, Marco Polo is amazing! I don’t know anyone else with the blackout problem, so it could just be my phone...but if it’s a Marco Polo issue, I’d like to see that fixed.

Upgrades make me unsure. I have used this app for a long time and when quarantine started my family and I used this app to communicate. For most of my time using this all the settings were free, with the first change that came shortly after quarantine started, I appreciated the fact that we could still use the notes, 2x speed and other simple features for messaging even if the less useful, more ‘just for fun’ features were taken away. With this new update, however, the functional settings (notes, 2x speed, etc.) are being moved to the version where you have to pay, which I do not appreciate. That being said, I really do like this app but I am unwilling to pay 60 dollars a year for these features. It is a great way to communicate but the way they’re taking away the features that have always been free, especially in a time where online communication is so important for families, seems a bit rude. This has helped my family communicate but we will probably stop using Marco Polo with this next round of ‘upgrades’

Sad to see free features stripped away. I know this app needs to make money. But taking away features that were free has forced my family into a “haves”, and “have nots” situation. The app is unattractive without the text and the 2x feature. It is less fun without the voices and basic filters, but that didn’t bother me near as much as losing text and 2x. We no longer want to use it without those two options :While I might be able to afford the plus version - several of my brothers and sisters cannot afford it. The obly reason I am on is to connect with them. 10$ a month is alot Therefore, some of us can afford plus and some cannot. So if they can’t afford the subscription then there no point in me paying for it. We are probably going to give up on Marco Polo and go back to Facebook Messenger. Editing this to reflect the fact that some of the free features are suddenly appearing again sort of- although they aren’t as good. I can’t tell if this was an accidentally clunky update - or if they let it be clunky in order to encourage people to update to plus. Taking away 2x and the original texting option still makes it unpleasant to use.

Brilliant app!. I love the Marco polo app!!!! I mostly use it to talk to my mom throughout the day basically every day. It’s the coolest thing because you can basically FaceTime somebody without having to pick up the phone immediately… so think of it as FaceTime in in the form of a text in a way! You record-the receiver watches it either live time or when they have free time to do so. It’s the most convenient thing ever! I can show her things in stores and have her decide if she wants me to bring something home or not, she can show me things when she’s on a trip, and it’s the perfect way to be able to talk to each other when I’m at work and only have so much free time. I think it’s a really awesome thing that’s been made and I’ve used it for years now. It was introduced to me by a previous employer and we used it for that job-which it is very convenient for that as well as you can do group chats/casts. Keep it up guys, love the app!

The experience for blind users could be greatly improved. I am blind and use the built-in iOS screen reader VoiceOver to use my phone. While using Marco Polo is mostly doable with a screen reader, there is significant room for accessibility improvement. For example, when I find and activate the record button, once recording starts, VoiceOver focus seems to jump to somewhere else on the screen, meaning when I’m ready to stop my recording, there’s a long awkward pause while I again try to find the record button. There are a couple of obvious solutions that would make this much easier. Support the two-finger double-tap VoiceOver gesture which is recognized elsewhere in the OS and other apps as the start/stop gesture. Or you could do like they’ve done with the iOS camera app and make one of the volume buttons temporarily serve as a start/stop button. At a minimum, allowing VoiceOver focus to remain on the record button after it has been activated would at least mean the user wouldn’t have to go searching for it again just to end the recording. I hope you will take my feedback into consideration and make sure the app provides a great experience for people of varying ability levels. Thank you

Forced list view. At first, I LOVED this app. My family and friends all use it and it’s been our main form of communication for months now. However, about a week ago, every time I launch the app, I’m forced to use list view vs tile view. I hate list view. It’s ugly, outdated, and less efficient. I used to be able to choose between list view or tile view, I always chose tile view because I’d rather see a bunch of large thumbnails than have to read the stupid group titles or names. I am the ONLY one out of ALL of my contacts that no longer has this option! I contacted App Support to get them to switch mine back, they just sent me a few generalized and impersonal emails telling me they appreciated my feedback and stating this is a test run. I didn’t sign up for this. I am very upset. I deleted the app and redownloaded it to see if that would fix the issue, it did. For 24 short hours. ARE YOU KIDDING ME. I was literally IN the app, USING Marco Polo when all of a sudden it switched to list view! If this issue isn’t fixed, I’d strongly suggest you make sure you’re okay with having an outdated look that can only fit 6 chats on a screen (vs the 9 you can fit on a screen in tile view.)

Not sure what you’d want to pay for this service for?!. I’ve been paying for the family package on an Annual basis for roughly 3 years now. We used Marco Polo for about 5 years prior to buying the annual pass. I’m still unaware of what features are truthfully any different than the free version. Maybe someone that’s monitoring this through customer care can get back to me and let me know what is different. Unfortunately, I feel that for what they charge for the annual fee or the monthly, I don’t feel Marco Polo doesn’t work well enough to pay for this service. It’s a very fun way to keep track of family, and record short videos that family can watch when they get a moment to watch, but I really haven’t seen any improvement in the past three years that I’ve paid for the service… bummer. Really wish there were more filters, voices, maybe emojis, but voices would be a lot of fun! Give us more! I have the same amount of filters, emojis, and voices that I did using the free app. Hopefully this will change sometime soon!

Volley-call !!!!. I am a fast typist/avid texter and normally would rather text than do phone calls. But this app is a fabulous mixture of both. One reason I hate phone calls is that I have to think about what I need to say and I feel rushed or flustered in a phone conversation. Texting let’s me edit, or think about what I want to say but takes a while for me to text it all out. But now there’s Marco Polo!!!! At first I didn’t like it. When a person has recorded their little “talk” and you are listening, you respond while they are talking but they don’t hear it. Felt a little cut off. But then, as I volleyed a few times I began to feel the beauty of this. It gives the benefit of time to the messenger (like texting does) but you also get the benefit of voice, tone and facial expression. It’s the best parts of texting and phone conversations mixed. Now I love it more than texting and certainly WAY more than phone calls. Marco eliminates oodles of time I spend texting. Love this app. 😉

Its okay but it definitely needs improvement. Although it is frustrating that some of Marco Polo’s best features were changed to plus (and charge a bogus amount of $5 a month, $60 a year) around 2019, it has connected me to those I cannot be with and without it, I could not have been able to be as close to them as I am now. I have also been spectacle of the app because at times, their “glitches” are taken a little too far. If you save someone’s video your camera roll becomes glitchy and the video quality is terrible compared to it on Marco Polo, it is almost easier to screen record it. Another glitch is when you are watching someone else’s video and you cover your camera, the whole screen turns black and the microphone changes sound. Also when no one has watched a video of yours there will sometimes be reactions (which is not normal). I am disappointed of this “glitch” because it feels like I am being watched. I am aware that in this day and age there is no real privacy but I would rather feel safe if these glitches were fixed. It be much appreciated if this was changed but of course my comment probably will get deleted for my real opinion. Do better.

Great App!. This app is so cool! I use this app all the time to chat with friends and it’s so helpful for that! It’s so useful for talking with friends and family when they’re not nearby and when you can’t call them, and I definitely recommend it! And another think I really like about this is, if you’re a Samsung user and can’t text an Apple device, you can! Through iPod touches, iPhones, Samsung phones you can chat with friends on here and don’t have to worry about not being in touch with those you love. There’s one thing I don’t really like though. The new update they did this week is quite annoying. Before the update you could freely send photo polos, texting polos and video polos. But now you can only do video polos freely and have to pay 5 dollars a month to send photo polos and texting and the other fun stuff. So that’s why it think this update would be really awesome if you didn’t have to pay for plus. Overall I think this app is so awesome! It’s a great way to contact with others and keep in touch. Thank you Marco Polo team for the great work 😄

Crap business model and near-zero functionality. UPDATE Still a horrible product. You took away features and made them premium with the promise that we could “easily switch back to the old version” but NOW you completely take away the old version. I know you have to make money but removing all functionality is just a horrendous business practice. Oh “you can still send videos like before”...but you don’t get anything you used to get for free. How about innovating and coming up with NEW features like any decent tech company would? Shame! Shame on you, shame on your cow, and shame on the worst update I have ever seen on the App Store. PREVIOUS Really. You make a premium option with new features but take away old features and make them paid features. I literally can’t playback at 2x speed now unless I pay you. Or even fast forward a video. Screw that! That is one jacked up business model. This app was great and I could actually watch polos quickly at a fast break during my work week, and now I have to pay to have that quick view of my kids saying hello. Thanks for nothing horrible people. Deleting and finding something else. You get none of my money.

IF AT ALL POSSIBLE... DO NOT UPDATE. I loved this app. I’m sad I never rated it 5 stars. Someone sent it to me when it first started and after I realized it wasn’t a hoax... I sent it to everyone I knew. For some of us, it changed the game. No longer having to choose between texting, phone calling or video calling made staying in contact with some, so much easier. It was likened to a text message- in video form! As they added different aspects and changed and upgraded it, it became more and more useful! Fast forward, rewind, respond to someone’s message in the moment! I even on occasion made stories out of the multitudes of emojis you could use in the app. Imagine my surprise, when I very trustingly updated the app, and opened it to find that almost of the great things I loved that they had added over time were still available- TO PURCHASE. How do you give and give for free, have people adjust to the uses of an app- and then say “Sike! Pay us!” I’ve had the app almost since inception and loved it so. I know I was part of the “word of mouth” that helped boost it. And now? I’m seriously considering deleting it.

What happened? “Plus” happened. This app used to be amazing! Seamlessly staying up to date with family; it was great! But then “Marco Polo Plus” became a thing, which I understand that you need to have a profit for sustainability. However, not only did it remove features that had been around for a while, now the videos very consistently stop playing and have the ‘loading’ symbol, but it never actually loads! It just stays at one place, and won’t play unless you click on another polo, then back to the one you’re watching. (But it will only play for about 10 seconds until you have to repeat the process. Very annoying). I’ve checked with the rest of my family, and they’ve said they have the same problem! I don’t know if it’s just a glitch (if so, please fix this) or if it’s a “strategy” for people to buy the plus version (if so, it’s not an effective strategy)

Absolutely devistated. I have had this app for 4+ years. I have used it to keep in contact with my loved ones, talk to my dying mother and check on her when I wasn’t with her. Saved her videos after she passed and watch them frequently with my kids, keeping her memory alive and helping us work through the grieving process. Kept in contact with my kids grandma through all this isolation crap. (Many times she stated how the videos of the kids were the only thing getting her through it. She loved being able to watch them whenever she wanted.) Talked with my kids and kept in visual contact when I had to go somewhere! And so much more!!!! But today when I opened my app to use it and almost every feature that me and the kids loved is locked and you now have to pay an outrageous rate for it!!!!!!!!! “Absolutely devistated” doesn’t even begin to express how upset I am! I have told so many people about this app and as a result many have downloaded it. Then you turn around and take everything away unless we pay for it! After it’s always been free!! Even snap chat is free!! All I got to say is I’m so disappointed in this new change and after 4+ years of use and love for his app, I will be deleting it and finding a different app.

Disappointed in the company not the app. Let me say that I have used Marco Polo for several years. It has been amazing to keep in touch with family and friends all over the country. I feel like the upcoming changes are absurd. The app is free but they are introducing a premium version. Normally premium versions have things the free versions don’t, which is why some people choose to pay for it. This is not necessarily the case. The new “premium” version is actually taking away most features that were on the free version and this company has now decided to charge you for. You are supposed to create new features to charge for-not take away features that have always been around and decide to charge for them. Not only are they charging for it, but they are charging a fairly decent price to allow you to be able to do what you have always been able to do. I feel this is greedy and is taking advantage of the time we are living in. Once the changes take effect, it will basically be like sending someone a video message through text. I will find other ways to communicate with my family once this new change occurs.

Disappointed since the upgrade to MP+. Like many others here, I am a long time user of this app, and I love it. That being said, I need to add my voice to the many others who reviewed here to say it was a huge mistake on the company’s part to shift all the features that used to be free to the paid version of the app. It’s a great way to alienate your customer base when you could have shifted many of them to the paid version by ADDING features rather than taking them away. I would even be okay with a pared down version of the features (i.e. 2x speed, some version of scrubbing through the video) but they’re even taking that away starting in September. The 2x speed option is one of my most used features, I can’t really imagine using the app without it. The price point on the paid version is a bit steep for features that used to be free, I pay less than $60/year for apps that offer me a lot more. At the very least, I don’t feel like these other companies used the bait and switch on me. Ultimately, I’m disappointed that this was the direction Marco Polo chose to go. I’ve already read many other great suggestions in these reviews alone that they would be smart to try to roll out instead. I probably won’t continue to use the app after the September shift.

Thanks for changing my experience to “lite”. As other reviews have stated the reduction of functionality for the free version was a pretty lame move. I have read your responses about how full core functionality is still available but the fact is you took things that we had for free and you are now making us pay if we want them. Personally the 2x is the stinger. Why not at least make 1.5x free and have the HD, emojis, higher speeds, and different filters all be part of paid? Why not use ads? I can see in one response that you don’t believe in ads but people are used to them and would rather see an ad than pay for features that they used to have for free. There is really no other incentive to pay other than “I want this back” vs “I’m getting something new”. Also the price is high.. almost as much (or more) as some tv streaming services! I guess I’m just disappointed. We use this to keep in touch with elderly people in my family and far away family and sometimes have many Marcos to catch up on. I just think that during a pandemic like this when people are so isolated it’s a really lame thing to do especially when finances are tough for a lot of people right now.

Mature Snapchat. My daughter calls Marco Polo the “ old person’s” snapchat...🤣 that can’t be right of course because I’m 52 and NOT old. I was hesitant to add one more “social media” into my life other than literally getting out and socializing … but am so grateful I did. It has enabled me to regain REAL and close relationships with old friends and family who live far enough away that we have missed out on all those little ,everyday moments that you don’t remember on those “few times a year” phone calls. I can Marco Polo my best friend and /or sisters who live across the country and make it as long or as short as I want, and then enjoy their company (response) where and whenever is convenient for me . It’s almost like sitting across from them for lunch or coffee. I would definitely recommend Marco Polo for anyone “mature “ enough to enjoy real connections... and really anyone! Wish I had it when my kids were little for grandparents and their Dad when he traveled for business. LOVE IT!

Reconnecting with friends!. This is hands down the greatest app I have ever downloaded! My 5 best friends from elementary school who now live all over the country have had a chat going on Marco Polo for the past 3 months, and for the first time in our very busy adult lives we feel more connected than ever! We get to see more of our friends day to day lives and can connect at ease at our own time. The one feature we all wish this app could have is a little notepad within the app to jot down a few notes of things to address because we all have so many videos it’s hard to remember everything we need to discuss and reply to! Other than that this app is perfect and I recommend it to everyone I know. Edit: Changing my stars to 1 because they took away SIMPLE features we’ve been using for free since the beginning!! Listen, I get the app needs to make money, but changing what drew the customers in the first place is a terrible business model. I’d happily pay a one time fee for the app- but subscription based? No thank you! You can’t even do basic functions like find where you were in a video if you lost your place. Me and my friends will have to go onto the next app.

Terrible update.... I’ve known about the update last year for a long time because I have friends who had updated their versions and told me how bad it was. And I intentionally did not update because of the limitation/removal of what used to be free features. But my phone just updated the app anyway and now I’m stuck with this much less desirable version. I’ve read your comments to others and feel it’s all just a bit of a crock. Your team could have developed other creative ways to expand features to make money and keep this app around forever like you claim was your motivation. But you took the easy way out and will, I think, lose many more users than you will gain. To take away features that have been free and used by thousands of loyal users for years is dishonest and, frankly, bad business practice. The features I loved the most are not the ones you claim have remained free, but the ones you took away. And now I’m researching other apps...or may even have my son work on a new one...that will replace this. And when I find it, I’ll have to take all of my friends with me. You still have time to make this right for people who have been loyal and loved your app. I hope you make those decisions soon because I, for one, won’t look back once I leave.

Going downhill. I’ve been using this app for awhile. With the advent of Marco Polo Plus, their subscription model, they effectively neutered all the basic functionality you could want from a video messaging app (2x speed, scrubbing through videos, even HD), and put it behind a paywall. Don’t be fooled when you read about their “promise to make our business sustainable in a way that is true to our values” That directly translates into business needs > user needs and experience in the case of Marco Polo’s values. This app is now just another desperate money farm for a team that is overreaching on what constitutes paid features vs basic user experience, and you feel it as you’re forcefully funneled into one narrow path of functionality with severe limitations on practically everything else. I understand that video hosting and app building isn’t cheap, and these guys deserve to make money for their work, but it’s how they’re choosing to make that money and the foundational features they are paywalling that are cringe worthy. As someone who has been using this for 8 months without these “plus” limitations it is disappointing and frustrating, so I’ll be trying alternatives or just going back to live video chatting like the rest of the world. Good luck.

Ugh. So I’ve been using Marco Polo for a couple of years. I enjoy seeing my friend and should life (kids husband etc) come up they can stop the message and come back when they have more convenient time. Marco used to be flawless. I typically need to delete the app restart my phone and redownload now. Various reasons I do this is… notifications stop showing (I get the emails but not the notifications on my phone), I can’t see the person but I can hear them, I will stop listening for a second and come later and have to listen to the whole Marco over again to get back to where I was. The glitches are multiplying. Fix your app please. Update. I have been speaking with Marco Polo on their app and now they want me to go through a different process to report it. I’m already reported it that’s why I’m talking to someone still severely frustrated with this app and the fact that I have to consistently uninstall shaft, my phone, and reinstall for it to work I’ve honestly come to use it less and less frequently, because it never works as it should for me. Developer contacted me to email them which I already have and have a communication going… still No repair.

Upgrade does not work! Do Not upgrade! No customer Service on this either.. Loved the app. It really is a great app. However, recently functionality that was available in the free app is now only available in the paid version - such as speeding up the video. Ok, I understand that. So, I paid for upgrade, happy to support the developers of a good product, one I enjoy and use. However, after paying for the upgrade - and it is not cheap - the new functions worked for only a few days. I now have the functionality of the free version- as a paid customer. I’ve been in communication with support and there answer is simply. “We know this is frustrating but we are working on it.” I asked for a prorated refund (not even the full refund) since it is not working and I have gained absolutely nothing by purchasing the app. I’ve also asked that they extend my purchase period (I paid for a year upgrade) by the number of weeks (now into months) it is not working. I’m really surprised. This seemed like a good, above board company. This kind of customer service is poor at the very best. So disappointed in them. What have things come to when companies are willing to treat their own customers like this just to make a few measles bucks... and spoil their reputation for that same few dollars.

App Was Great. The idea of this app is still really great, it’s like Snapchat mixed with FaceTime. You can send what are basically live vlogs to your friends and also have full conversations, it’s ton of fun. It has never been the best designed app, but that is trumped by how much fun it can be to stay connected with friends. However, they now have a $5/month “plus” option which has removed some of the only worthwhile options of the app and makes it extremely frustrating to use. You now have to pay to use the 2X speed option or to be able to skip through a message without pausing it and clicking forward. These two functions alone make listening to messages from friends much easier, and charging what is almost the same price as a Netflix subscription is laughable. I started using the app daily 3 months after it was first available on the App Store, and have been a fan ever since. Now that it’s functionality is drained, while I still use it, it’s not an app I would suggest that others start using. You need 2 of 3 things for an app to be worthwhile. 1) novel concept 2) attractive design 3) ease of function. Marco Polo now is just a novel concept as they removed one of the few things it had going for it

Won't work. My friends and I have used this app daily and I have loved it up until now. Out of nowhere it started to tell me to enable the microphone in my settings so that friends could hear me. It won't let me open up my friends messages until I do so. It worked just fine a day or 2 before that, which is the confusing part. There were no updates on my phone to change anything. So I went into settings, but there is nothing there to allow or enable in the microphone settings. It just says "applications that have requested access to the microphone will appear here. Well, there is nothing there! It's really frustrating! I contacted Apple and they tried to help me with the situation, but in the end it seems to be on the app developer's end. I'm so frustrated. I want to hear what my friends have to say. This is how I keep in contact with a few girls that live far away and family members. I have contacted the app developer and have not heard back yet. Hopefully they will contact me soon to fix this problem.

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Marco Polo - Video Messenger 0.1462.0 Tips, Tricks, Cheats and Rules

What do you think of the Marco Polo - Video Messenger app? Can you share your complaints, experiences, or thoughts about the application with Joya Communications and other users?

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Marco Polo - Video Messenger 0.1462.0 Apps Screenshots & Images

Marco Polo - Video Messenger iphone, ipad, apple watch and apple tv screenshot images, pictures.

Language English
Price Free
Adult Rating 4+ years and older
Current Version 0.1462.0
Play Store co.happybits.marcopolo
Compatibility iOS 15.0 or later

Marco Polo - Video Messenger (Versiyon 0.1462.0) Install & Download

The application Marco Polo - Video Messenger was published in the category Social Networking on 07 October 2014, Tuesday and was developed by Joya Communications [Developer ID: 530046419]. This program file size is 146.68 MB. This app has been rated by 2,059,697 users and has a rating of 4.7 out of 5. Marco Polo - Video Messenger - Social Networking app posted on 29 January 2024, Monday current version is 0.1462.0 and works well on iOS 15.0 and higher versions. Google Play ID: co.happybits.marcopolo. Languages supported by the app:

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