Pageonce vs Trip It - Free Versions Head to Head

Since I use both TripIt and PageOnce, I thought it would be cool to do a review and comparison to help anyone looking for more info.  Travel organizers and applications are all the rage these days.  Both PageOnce and TripIt are phone apps, and work on the computer as well.  I'm on a bit of a phone app kick lately (VyprVPN for your iPhone/Android!)

PageOnce Personal Assistant for Phone & Computer

I'll try to stick to talking the free versions, as an apples-to-apples comparison.  But, I will throw in some discussion on the extras that are offered in the paid versions.  They may swing a person one way or the other, whatever.

Let's get the first thing out of the way:

• PageOnce Personal Assistant tries to organize all your accounts (financial, travel, rewards, etc)
• Trip It focuses on just your travel accounts (hotel, air, car rental, etc)

PageOnce has an additional application, exclusively for travel.  It's also called PageOnce.  Yeah, it's actually two apps.  No, trust me on this.  Look in your fancy iTunes App Store.  See how that one has a little plane logo displayed prominently?  Yeah that's the travel one, "Trip Tracker".  PageOnce "Personal Assistant" is their main software product, it has shopping bags and credit cards on it's logo.  PageOnce "Trip Tracker" has only that plane on the app logo, and it focuses only on travel.                                 

PageOnce Personal Assistant

PageOnce Trip Tracker

So, again, apples-to-apples...we're talking PageOnce (for travel) vs. Trip It (for travel).  The free versions, with some minor banter about extras that cost money.

Alright so lets get started, here is a quick rundown of the feature sets:

PageOnce TripTracker vs TripIt - Feature Comparison Guide

Right off the bat you see both apps handle most major airlines, hotels, and rental cars.  There is one exception, Southwest Airlines.  Southwest has recently decided to prevent applications such as TripTracker from accessing travel account information.  Yeah, I did that table myself.  Woo Woo

TripTracker displaying itinerary

Which leads us to our second major point in this reivew - building of trips and itineraries, either by auto-creation or manual methods.  TripTracker is auto-creation.  You provide the app with your account(s) and password(s).  The app fetches your travel reservations and assembles the trips.  TripIt does not go this route, and instead has the user email travel plans, receipts, and bookings to "plans@tripit.com".  So, on the one hand we have an automatic building of trips, and on the other an email forward.  Your choice.  Automatic is certainly easier, but as you can see from the SWA ban, it has it drawbacks.  Of course, so does email.  You register your email address(es) with TripIt and send the reservations.  Occassionally you need to help TripIt understand what you just sent - although 7 or 8 times out of 10 it will do just fine.  It can understand a Southwest E-Ticket for example, or a Marriott hotel reservation.

TripIt displaying upcoming trips

TripTracker does really well with offering a lot of features for free.  One of the major wins for TripTracker is the live flight details, flight status, and mobile alerts.  In order to match this in TripIt you will need to pay.  Also, TripTracker offers the details as an auto-build from your travel plan details - like maps, etc.  TripIt will support this detailed information, but you will need to manually add it using the website.

PageOnce TripTracker Screenshots on Android

But don't count TripIt comletely out of the picture.  TripIt will track your mileage, flights, and travel days in a nifty little report.  Available via the website.  TripIt will also give you a Calendar feed, so you can have your gCal automatically update with your travel plans.  TripIt also has sharing, and groups - which can be really good for an organization look for travel management (for free).

TripIt & TripIt Pro (Paid) - Only the paid version provides flight monitoring and notifications!

Either way, they both have phone apps and are fairly easy to manage online.  I recommend TripTracker over TripIt only because of the live flight tracking, status, mobile notifications, and auto-building of trips.  However, since both are free Apps, it doesn't cost you anything to install both!

TripTracker gets the nod for more free features

**Updated 23 Sept 2010:  I had an opportunity to test the auto-gmail pull that Tripit just released.  Thanks to the Anonymous poster who referred me to this link!  This does indeed work like a charm and gets close to leveling the playing field between the two apps.  TripIt is now able to "auto-create" trips, if your confirmations go to Gmail, and if TripIt can read the reservation!  However, TripIt is still missing flight status and notification in their free app, so PageOnce TripTracker is still getting the nod from me for this awesome feature!**