Site finding apps

[chenderson1965]

I’ve seen lots of posts in various places asking for advice on “where can I stay in…“. Understandably, they sometimes get a slightly tetchy response which is to go and look at one or more of the apps.

I’ve downloaded all of the apps and, whilst helpful, there seem to be so many of them and they each seem to have the same sites as one another. It can be quite time-consuming and frustrating to be checking several different apps for the same area and flicking between them to try to make comparisons between sites.

Do you have a rule of thumb for which apps work best for which countries/locations/types of site?

Thanks a lot.

Chris

 

[Stealaway]

Camper Contact. Park 4 Night. is all I use or need home and abroad.

 

[LesW]

Camper Contact. Park 4 Night. is all I use or need home and abroad.

As above, plus Searchforsites too.

 

[nicholsong]

Chris

Just editing to say welcome from another Arto owner (Arto 69GL(2003). I had to look up &(R, but see it is just another variant of 79E.

We have got several Apps for finding Aires/Stellplatz and wildcamping or just parking. We usually we do not look for campsites.

We have CamperContact, park4night, searchforsites, and did have campingcar-infos till they stopped the free access off-line.

We use all ours online as we have a generous data allowance, so we do not pay subs.

I suggest that at first you try them all and decide what suits you according to these factors -

Language, or alternatives in some cases, also what languages you can understand.

Coverage, as some make you pay extra for offline maps in different countries - they do not online.

Some have more entries for some countries than others.

Some have more photos of the places.

Ease of finding places on their website/map.

Format they present GPS co-ordinates in compared with your chosen SatNav/Navigation.

After using them all at some time we have more or less settled on park4night as having a huge range of places, but some swear on CamperContact(NL)

You could play around with the on-line versions at home where access will not cost much and then decide which to buy to download for offline use.

You will find that there is overlap, but that is not consistent and some spots are only on 1 App.
For example we recently found what was described 'As parking next to river, quiet etc.' It was not a CP just a bit of verge at the end of a track where 3-4 fishermen obviously parked. Suited us fine, with nice view. It was in p4n but I doubt a little spot like that would have been in other Apps. Same with some village CPs where in France nobody cares(camping-cars are well accepted) if they are empty at night.

I hope this all helps.

Geoff

 

[chaser]

P4n has them all from a gap in a hedge to full blown Aires. Even found this time they also have quite a few France passion sites.

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[StitchesnFluff]

P4n, Campercontact & searchforsites here too.

 

[Figaro]

I find camper contact good when abroad but useless in UK.

 

[AG 2602]

Hi we use Campmate and ACSI but only traveled in the UK so far and these work for us.

I always check and you can also search on Tripadvisor which works well for us. They tend to show a lot more sites than you can find just using apps. It's also useful as you can instantly see how far the site is from the nearest shops restaurants pubs etc. I take some of the reviews with a pinch of salt but its not let us down yet!

 

[DBK]

I use Campercontact mainly because I find it easier to use and the way the map works is very clear.

I also have Park4night and will use it if there is somewhere specific I want to stay and there is nothing on Campercontact. For example when we wanted to visit Bonifacio on Corsica this year P4N gave me the coords of a car park which took MHs. But for me P4N has too many places, many of which are without services which doesn't suit our incontinent PVC for more than one night.

I suggest just choose one app and stick with it. You will find more than enough places to choose from any of them. I also suggest to avoid information overload try using filters to remove the no-hopers. This is easy to do on Campercontact and I'm sure the others have it as well. As an example, you can get the app to show only those aires which have services and are free. This would be a good theme for a tour - using only free aires with perhaps €2 for water allowed as well.

 

[Blackadder]

We prefer sites to aires and usually travel out of season so it's ACSI for us.

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[quilkin]

I've used Park4Night quite a lot, and usually it's good (read the reviews of each spot though). I tried CamperContact on a 7-day trial recently and found it useless. I was in the New Forest, I filtered for 'open all year' and it suggested three places. One was a Tesco car park, another had three reviews and they all said you weren't allowed to park at night; the third was a campsite that had closed for the season.

 

[LesW]

I've used Park4Night quite a lot, and usually it's good (read the reviews of each spot though). I tried CamperContact on a 7-day trial recently and found it useless. I was in the New Forest, I filtered for 'open all year' and it suggested three places. One was a Tesco car park, another had three reviews and they all said you weren't allowed to park at night; the third was a campsite that had closed for the season.

Campercontact works extremely well on mainland Europe, Searchforsites is better for the UK.

 

[jongood]

If you re Ok with French then IMO www.campingcar-infos.com has a bit more info on france and Morocco but yes Camper contact for everywhere else.

If a place doesnt have a recent review then I like to have a fall back plan.

 

[Grianan]

If you re Ok with French then IMO www.campingcar-infos.com has a bit more info on france and Morocco but yes Camper contact for everywhere else.

If a place doesnt have a recent review then I like to have a fall back plan.

Always a plan B. The place we planned for (P4N, CC) last night (middle of nowhere of course) was totally shut up when we got there at 9.05pm. So a 30 minute detour to the side of a yet another small lake ... ? ...

 

[peterc10]

Our go to app is Campercontact. We have used P4N but found that it had too many places in that we would not consider suitable.