Why this exists.

One place for every trip.

I wanted one place for all my trips. Not five tabs, not a Notes file, not a Google Doc that mutated into a packing list. One place.

But I didn't want to pay for any of the planning apps out there. I didn't want to create yet another account, hand over my email, get the "Welcome aboard" mail on Monday and the "We miss you, come back" mail on Friday — and definitely didn't want my travel data turned into marketing material for someone else.

Local first. Then a tiny bit cloud.

So I started building it as a local-only app. Everything stayed in my browser, nothing went anywhere, life was good — until I picked up my phone, realised my plan was on my laptop, and had a small existential crisis at the kitchen table.

Then it hit me: I already pay for a domain, and that subscription comes with a database I was barely using. Why not point Plan To Travel at that? Free server, free database, and the only "infrastructure" decision I had to make was "yes, the thing I already pay for."

"I figured I couldn't be the only one who wanted one calm place to plan a trip — and didn't want to be a product while doing it."

Then I thought… why not share it?

If I needed this, surely a few other people did too. So I cleaned it up, named it Plan To Travel, and put it online. That's it. That's the entire origin story.

A small, honest disclaimer.

I'll be honest with you: I am not going to maintain this app intensely. It's a hobby project. I built it for myself, I'm sharing it because it might be useful to you too, but I'm not about to turn into a one-person support desk taking standups in my pyjamas.

Bug reports and ideas are very welcome — please send them. I'll read every one. I just can't promise to fix every one, and I definitely can't promise speed. Think of me as a friend who built a thing, not a SaaS roadmap on legs.

About the "free" thing.

It's genuinely free. The catch: my database has a size limit. If enough people start using Plan To Travel, that limit gets closer. Local mode will always keep working — your browser is happily storage-agnostic — but the cloud-sync side has a ceiling that's tied to whatever my hosting plan can fit.

If the day comes that the database is bursting and expanding it would actually cost me real money (the kind I'd notice), I'll figure something out. Probably one of these:

• · A small fee for cloud sync, just enough to keep the server breathing
• · Open-sourcing the code so someone with more energy than me can host it
• · Both, depending on which feels right at the time

Either way, I'll write to everyone with an account before anything changes, and Local mode will stay free no matter what. Thanks for reading this far, and I hope the app helps you plan something good.