Cruise Buddy Plus
Cruise Buddy is free to use. Plus is a one-off purchase of £9.99 that unlocks the features listed below, across every cruise on your account and on every device you sign in to. It is not a subscription: you pay once and that is the end of it.
📷 Screenshot needed: Cruise Buddy Plus screen (
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The short version
Free plans the cruise. Plus handles your money, your documents, your travel bookings and your memories.
That sentence covers almost all of it. The two exceptions are deck plans and the cost planners, which are Plus despite not being your own data.
What is free
Free is not a trial and it does not expire. It covers:
| Feature | |
|---|---|
| Itinerary | Every port and sea day, with excursions |
| Packing | Packing lists by category and bag |
| To-do | Pre-cruise jobs |
| Notes | Free-text notes against a cruise or a day |
| Reminders | Reminders, with notifications on your devices |
| People | Your travelling party and their details |
| Ships | Ship details and specifications |
| Daily tips | The tip card on the dashboard |
| Sharing a cruise | Both traveller and follower links, sending and importing |
| Encrypted sync | Your cruises on every device you sign in to |
| Search | Searching across your whole account |
| P&O itinerary lookup | Pulling a P&O itinerary from a cruise reference |
| Guided setup | The first-cruise walkthrough |
Free also holds two upcoming cruises at a time. See the cruise limit below.
What Plus adds
| Feature | |
|---|---|
| Budget and spending | Cruise price, payments, what is still owing, and onboard spend |
| Journal | Daily entries with photos, and the PDF download |
| Places visited | Every port you have visited on one map, and a poster to print |
| Documents | Tickets, boarding passes, passports and insurance, stored and synced |
| Flight tracking | Live status for the flights either side of the cruise |
| Hotels, parking and car hire | The rest of your travel, kept with the cruise |
| Weather and sea conditions | Forecasts for every port and sea day |
| Deck plans | The deck plan browser |
| Cost planners | Wi-Fi, drinks package and gratuity estimates |
| File sync | Documents, passport scans and journal photos stored on your account and available on every device |
| Unlimited cruises | The two-cruise limit is lifted |
How Plus behaves when you do not have it
This is the part most likely to surprise you, so it is worth reading even if you never intend to buy.
Features that hold your own records let you look, but not add. If you have a journal, a spending log, hotel bookings or a passport already saved, they stay visible and readable whether you pay or not. What needs Plus is adding new ones or editing existing ones.
Deleting is never blocked. You can always remove your own data, on any tier. Nothing you have put into Cruise Buddy is ever held hostage.
Features that are not your own data are replaced by a short explanation. Weather and sea conditions, deck plans, the cost planners and the Places map are live or reference data rather than records of yours, so without Plus the section says it is part of Plus and links to what Plus includes.
Why the difference?
Someone whose Plus ends — most often a passenger whose travel agent paid for a single cruise — should not open Cruise Buddy after their holiday to find their own journal and spending record behind a paywall. Nothing was deleted, but it would read as though it had been. So the gate goes on adding, not on reading.
The two-cruise limit
Free holds two upcoming cruises at a time, not two cruises ever.
The count is of cruises you own whose return date has not yet passed. When one of them finishes, a space opens up on its own — there is nothing to tidy up and no notification to act on. Cruises you have already taken stay on your account forever and never count against the limit.
A few more details:
- Importing a traveller link uses a space, because a traveller import becomes your own copy of the cruise to manage from then on.
- Following a follower link does not, because you are following someone else's trip rather than planning your own.
- A cruise claimed from a travel agent does not — your agent has paid for it.
- The limit applies across your whole account, so it's the same on every device.
If you are already over the limit when Plus ends, you keep every cruise you have. The limit is only checked when you add a new one.
Buying Plus
Open Settings → Plan and account → See Plus, or follow See what Plus includes from any locked feature.
The Plus page shows the price and a Get Plus button. Payment is taken securely by Stripe, our payment provider; Cruise Buddy never sees your card details. When you come back from checkout, Cruise Buddy confirms the payment with our server before switching Plus on — usually within a second or two. If it takes longer you'll see Still confirming your payment; nothing is lost, and Check again re-checks. Your receipt is emailed to you by Stripe.
Plus costs £9.99, paid once. There is nothing to cancel, nothing that renews, and no second payment later for the same thing. Plus is on your account, so it's on every device you sign in to as soon as they sync.
If Plus hasn't appeared after a few minutes, email us and quote the email address on your receipt.
Plus does not only mean "paid"
You may already have Plus without having bought it:
| How you got it | What it covers |
|---|---|
| You bought it | Every cruise on your account |
| You bought the original Cruise Buddy app | Every cruise, permanently |
| A travel agent included it with your booking | The one cruise they booked for you |
| A cruise line included it | The cruise it was granted for |
| A promotion or giveaway | As stated at the time |
| Our support team granted it to fix a problem | As agreed with you |
If any of these apply, the Plus page says You already have Plus and does not ask you to buy anything.
Plus from a travel agent or cruise line unlocks the Places map too, because the map includes the cruise they paid for.
Plus at sea
Cruise Buddy checks your access when it has a connection and then remembers the answer for 30 days. You can sail for a fortnight with no signal and keep every feature you paid for.
If you're away longer than that with no connection at all, features may lock until Cruise Buddy can check again. Connecting to the ship's Wi-Fi or getting a signal in port for a few seconds is enough.