Vs subscriptions
Packing Lists vs the monthly bill
On Packing Lists:
The trip surface aisle is stacked with subscriptions: TripIt at $49 a year, and Notion at $120 a year, or $12 a month. The Packing Lists is one HTML file that does the honest working core of what those tools sell, once, for the price of a Swiss Knife.
The bill you were quietly paying
Name the actual products and the arithmetic stops being abstract: TripIt ($49 a year: itinerary tidying, annual only), Wanderlog (trip planning behind a tier), Notion ($120 a year, or $12 a month: the DIY itinerary, still per member). An average travel stack lands at $4 to $10 a month, forever.
Run that out five years and TripIt costs $245, Notion costs $600. A Swiss Knife, with the Packing Lists folded in beside up to eleven other tools, is $95, once.
24 months of TripIt at $49 a year come to the price of a Swiss Knife at $95. Every year after that is pure savings on this category.
What the Packing Lists replaces cleanly
You are somewhere over the Atlantic when you remember the phone charger, precisely where it can do no good. That is the working shape most subscriptions in this category are wrapped around; the Packing Lists delivers it without the wrapper.
Concretely: TripIt would keep item and packed on its own servers, behind its own login, on its own pricing schedule. The Packing Lists keeps the same fields in a file on your disk — same shape of work, no monthly line on the card.
You keep the workflow. You lose the login, the sync outage, the price hike email, and the export deadline.
What you honestly give up
Team collaboration in real time. Auto-import from third-party APIs. A mobile app that pings you. TripIt does those things and does them properly; if any of them are load-bearing for how you work today, keep paying TripIt — the Packing Lists is not trying to compete on those fronts.
Most people, honestly, were paying for features they did not use. The Packing Lists is what remains when you strip that back to the tool.
What you stop renting
- TripIt: $49 a yearItinerary tidying, annual only. $49 a year, every year.
- Notion: $120 a year, or $12 a monthThe DIY itinerary, still per member. $120 a year, every year.
Questions people ask
How does the cost compare to TripIt?
TripIt runs about $245 over five years and Notion about $600. 24 months of TripIt at $49 a year come to the price of a Swiss Knife at $95. A Swiss Knife folds the Packing Lists in with up to eleven other tools for $95, once, and there is no year two.
Is the Packing Lists a like-for-like replacement for TripIt?
For the working core — item and packed — yes. For itinerary tidying, annual only, no. We would rather say that plainly than sell you a switch you'll regret in a fortnight.
What if my needs grow past a single file?
Excellent problem. Keep the Packing Lists for what it does well; add a specialised SaaS on top only when you have a specialised need. Nothing here locks you in — it is a file.
Can I import my current data?
The Packing Lists is deliberately hand-entered. Two minutes of typing on Monday keeps you closer to your own trip surface than an integration ever will.
The subscription was renting the arithmetic. Buy the arithmetic instead.