Trails Offroad adding pay tier of service

[open_circuit]

I received an e-mail from Trails Offroad overnight discussing their decision to split the site into free and premium sections. It isn't entirely clear to me whether free users will lose things they already enjoy or if premium users simply get more of something new. Would be a shame if this move causes them to go the way of traildamage and see usage collapse.

Anyone else received this?

[Hypoid]

Thank you for being a part of our Trails Offroad community! Today we are excited to announce the launch of Version 2 of the Trails Offroad website.

The biggest change that you will see is the introduction of a two-tiered membership. The Basic Free Membership will continue to enjoy access to GPX files, basic trail information, and our basic overview maps. All-Access Members have expanded access to our detailed waypoint and route analysis, access to exclusive All-Access-Only trails, track overlay maps, advanced search features, and much more.

When we launched in April 2015, we had a big goal of building the best off-road trail resource in the United States. Today, we are proud and humbled to have one of the largest off-road resources in North America with over 1,400 trails in 20 states representing 10,285 miles of backcountry roads and trails that would take you 2,244 hours of trail time to explore!

To create our database of trails, we estimate that our Crew has invested in over 4,350 tanks of gas and 8,700 hours of desk time to produce and maintain what we feel is the best-formatted trail guide around. These estimations do not account for the extra trail time spent performing the field work. As our database of trails grow, so to will our investment in this excellent off-road resource.

We thought long and hard about how to pay for what we have built and are expanding on. In our heart, and as community members who use our own trail guides, we would ideally love to provide Trails Offroad to everyone free of charge. However, this is not sustainable.

To be sustainable for many years into the future, we have just introduced a two-tier membership system as part of our Version 2 Trails Offroad website launch.


Basic Free Membership: where you can find trails, download a GPX track, and read the basic information regarding the trail. We believe we are still the largest free database of off-road trails and provide a tremendous value to the off-road community as a whole.
All-Access Membership: where you get the complete trail guide with complete waypoints, expanded trail information and local knowledge, access to more trails, and all of the future goodies we have in the works.


Our Future
Without a doubt, we want Trails Offroad to be the best experience for finding trails, camping, and other great information to make your adventure the best adventure. After all, we use the website ourselves and it’s our own dream to plot courses across multiple states with as much off-road adventure as possible.

While we do not want to disclose all our unique and proprietary advancements we have in the works, you can be assured we will continue to launch a host of new features and tools as they are completely developed and tested for reliability.

We have a goal of 2,500 hand curated trails by the end of 2019 and 4,000 by the end of 2020. As we expand our coverage of new trails, we remain committed to our trail guide quality standards which include regularly updated trail information and community involvement with trail clean ups and adopt-a-trail programs.



If you see any of our Crew out on the trail, stop and say hi to them. They are just like you: they have family obligations, regular careers, life commitments and all the other things that go along with living life. On top of their normal life commitments, our Crew have been instrumental in building our trail guide database and helping thousands of people like you get the most out of their recreational time. I couldn’t be any prouder of our Crew’s accomplishments and dedication in creating the best off-road trail guide trail database for America. They are some of the hardest working men and women I have ever been associated with, and I am honored and humbled to have the Crew as part of the Trails Offroad team!

I invite you to continue to use the website as either a Basic Free Member or an All-Access Member because no matter what, we are happy to have you as part of the adventure!

If you decide that our All-Access Membership is best for you, we have a one-time discount code that expires on February 21, 2019.

Kindest Regards and Happy Wheeling!










There is a coupon for $6 off, good until Feb 21st: lovetrails

Links:
https://www.trailsoffroad.com/

https://www.trailsoffroad.com/all-access

I have not logged in for some time. I remember banner ads that were annoying, but not buggy as photobucket.

[Spieg]

Nothing good stays free for long. :frown:

[Java]

If you use the Funtreks books they have a map that works with them: https://funtreks.com/off-road-trails/

I think that's the best free one. There's a lot of other free stuff, these are some I have bookmarked. I have to say there is a MAJOR quality difference between these and trailsoffroad or traildamage:

https://mhjc.clubexpress.com/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=241053&module_id=184970&sl=1092436472
https://www.jeeptheusa.com/colorado-jeep-trails.html
https://www.coloradodirectory.com/maps/atv-trails.html
https://forum.ih8mud.com/threads/colorado-4x4-trails-data.255597/
http://staythetrail.org/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=266593&module_id=224600
https://soajeep.com/trail-maps-conditions/trail-conditions/

[jaybroncos30]

They went exactly the way of traildamage, there’s next to no info now for the free tier. Sad, but I’m sure it’ll just be cyclic and some other free site will pick up the traffic and expand.

[FINOCJ]

It does look like quite a bit of the waypoint or detailed point to point trail description information is now limited to paid members. But so far, the large locator map, general trail rating and descriptions, nearby trail info, and question/discussion board at the bottom are all still available to free members. Although its certainly frustrating to loose a good free trail info resource - I don't know that anyone should ever feel like they should be 'owed' free information on the internet. I will also say that I think the circumstances are quite different than traildamage, and comparisons are not necessarily fair to either site. TD is an actual wheeling club that posts trail run reports - it was not originally intended as a trail information website and nobody in the club really benefits from maintaining a free public source of info. I am not sure that they even view their trail database as an information center even now with the paid membership - but those that joined the website database could tell us more. I would guess the members of TD don't actually care if usership of their database collapsed as that was never its intended purpose. TrailsOffroad on the other hand was developed with the specific goal of creating a database of trail information, and people are paid to gather that information. The question has always been who pays for that - where does the money come from? Website advertising...membership fees...various industry sponsorships? As much as I really like using TrailsOffroad, and will debate a membership cost, its not really surprising that the website would eventually seek some sort of monetary gain....

In many ways, the amount of knowledge in this club is equal to or better than most of what is online - its just we don't have an easy to access database, instead its a word of mouth or typed trail run report. ALthough we have tried to some extent in the past (http://www.frontrange4x4.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?172-Trail-Directory), creating a list of trails with some sort of rating would be useful. But we always have the challenge that different people would rate the same trail very differently based on personal preference, vehicle etc. Its very hard to create a standard, normalized grading report, as well as have it updated as conditions change over the years. It would never be as nice and user friendly as a map driven database (like TrailsOffroad), but we could actually use a 1-10 scale for the trails with a trail description in the trail directory above - this wouldn't necessarily be a run report - it would be factual for those looking for information?

[ndogg]

TD is $12 for the year so I just pay it. It is an excellent resource and well worth $12 to me to be able to download the gps files.

[newracer]

Personally I only use these types of sites to find what trails are in close proximity to each other and the general difficulty. Any other info is just bonus.

[Tom]

TD is $12 for the year so I just pay it. It is an excellent resource and well worth $12 to me to be able to download the gps files.
If you just want it for the gpxs don’t bother. Here’s a link to all colo gpxs. https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ato6TRKXJiDQhO0WgpDbultV8bhUUQ As a zip file
or to get indiviual files
https://1drv.ms/f/s!Ato6TRKXJiDQhOpKG_m8lLc2B-UW-w


I also have a bunch of utah. Not certain but all of these may be orinally from Chris our founder.

[ndogg]

Thanks for that link to all gpx files! That saves me $12 👍

[Tom]

Thanks for that link to all gpx files! That saves me $12 
Let me know if you want the utah ones.

[Brian]

If you just want it for the gpxs don’t bother. Here’s a link to all colo gpxs. https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ato6TRKXJiDQhO0WgpDbultV8bhUUQ As a zip file
or to get indiviual files
https://1drv.ms/f/s!Ato6TRKXJiDQhOpKG_m8lLc2B-UW-w


I also have a bunch of utah. Not certain but all of these may be orinally from Chris our founder.


Thanks for those links! Will they be up for a while?

[Tom]

Thanks for those links! Will they be up for a while?
I dont’t have any plans to remove them anytime soon. Its just a convenient storage loacation for me as I use them on multiple devices.

I also have kml files for use with avenza maps. They are on dropbox.

[Jim]

Let me know if you want the utah ones.

Tom,

This thread seems decent to make a post with your download links:
http://www.frontrange4x4.com/forums/showthread.php?17089-MVUM-s

Though if not, make new thread in Trail Resources

[Tom]

Tom,

This thread seems decent to make a post with your download links:
http://www.frontrange4x4.com/forums/showthread.php?17089-MVUM-s

Though if not, make new thread in Trail Resources
Jim that thread is fine except that its closed so I cannot add to it.

[Jim]

Interesting. Opened.

[Tom]

Links shared here previously and others posted to this thread: http://www.frontrange4x4.com/forums/showthread.php?17089-MVUM-s

[RockyMtRebel]

So I went ahead and paid the $25 fee and found out that its the same as it used to be....... no new or updated trails, just some fancy "Access Member Only" flags on the map for trails that previously were on the free website. Definitely a little disappointed.... so I reached out letting them know that there are errors in some of the current trail descriptions and there were missing trails and they have reached back out asking me to have a call to potentially become one of their writers. Not sure I want to go thru some "job interview" type of process just to correct some misinformation on the website.......
That said, I do like the layout of this website. The mapping is pretty good and the descriptions with pictures and videos are very detailed (but not always accurate). If I do join them I will add a "trail report/conditions" to all the trails in my neighborhood and keep it updated. I haven't replied to them yet, still thinking about it....

[Spieg]

Wonder if you at least get free membership if you produce content for them?