Marco Polo

What reviewers actually said

Built only from these 120 real reviews (foreign ones translated). Superscripts jump to the quote here. Apple has no per-review links, so [ref] opens that app's reviews on the App Store.

1. [R1] 5/5 · US Communicating: It’s so nice to send these back and forth to family
2. [R5] 5/5 · US Marco Polo: Marco Polo is great for friends who have moved away so you can keep in touch like FaceTime!!
3. [R7] 5/5 · US Best way: Best way to chat with friends in different places!
4. [R12] 5/5 · US Best app ever: Best app ever it makes it so that I can talk to my entire family even when I don’t respond that moment, I can still see what they Marco Polo mean later on my free time best app ever
5. [R24] 5/5 · US Simple and easy: What I love about this is it it is so simple to use. I do wish that it had some more functions sometimes, but I also realize that that is the beauty of the program. It is not hard to use. It is not hard to figure out.
6. [R29] 5/5 · US The best: Marco Polo is so fun. You have to like it. It’s so fun so thanks for making this up.
7. [R31] 5/5 · US Love this app: Love this app it’s quick and easy but it’s needs extra things to make it more fun like streaks so we can stay in contact more maybe filters. And for free no one wants to pay just let us have fun
8. [R61] 3/5 · US Great idea: The idea is awesome and is easy to use. Unfortunately it works when it wants to work. Some get deleted for no reason or it’s unable to view. It is free so I wonder if we payed for the subscription if it would work better. I can’t justify the price when I only talk to one person though. If I had a family and more friends on it then it might be worth it. Over all it is a neat way to keep
9. [R23] 5/5 · US The best: Marco Polo is such a great app I get to talk to my friend and they don’t need to respond right away I could be sitting in a chair outside drinking coffee or watching movies and I will just make a Marco Polo or catch up with my friends such a good game download it,Great job
10. [R30] 5/5 · US Keep in Touch: Best app to keep in touch with loved ones. Especially when you live on opposite coasts/ different time zones. So convenient. Message whenever & watch when you have time! I love Marco Polo!
11. [R38] 4/5 · US Love: I love Marco Polo it makes communication nice and easy cause you can see there face. It reminds me of texting and FaceTime in one, it’s videos you can send and they can send some later if they can’t at that point. I gave 4 stars cause some of there Marco Polo plus perks should be normal like skipping parts of the video if you watched it already or only doing a voice recording instead of show
12. [R9] 5/5 · US Great Teaching Tool: Marco Polo is especially useful for student presentations. They have time flexibility so they can upload their work ANYTIME from ANYWHERE for ANY length of time and we can ALL SEE it. Bravo!
13. [R25] 5/5 · US Communication at this great: This is a great app to communicate with my friend who is hard of hearing it is easy for her to send audio messages and it is easy for me to do it back with voiceover. This app is so amazing if you’re communicating with a death blind person who can’t use iMessage that well Marco Polo is the way to go me and my friend absolutely love it.
14. [R15] 1/5 · US Buns: Will literally delete everything if you don’t pay for it
15. [R20] 1/5 · US Most features are PAID: Free features are extremely limited. Would rather use WhatsApp than this
16. [R28] 1/5 · US Used to be great, greed ruined it: It’s really a huge disappointment. My whole family loved Marco Polo. It was our preferred method of keeping in touch. We would use the Sharecast feature for video updates of our kids. The ability to upload videos, the unlimited storage, even the transcripts of Polos was great. What was really amazing is that as a Plus member you used to be able to gift temporary P
17. [R37] 5/5 · US Love: I love Marco Polo so much because my cousins mom has Marco Polo and I can text her mom but I can talk to her on this the only thing I don’t like is if I want to do some things I can’t cuz I have to pay
18. [R14] 4/5 · US Great, some glitches: Marco Polo is a great way to connect with people you may not see very often or talk to as much. It’s easy and fun to use, however when I try to put in a photo in seconds it freezes and skips over it. But overall really good app.
19. [R34] 1/5 · US It lags: The video most of the times doesn’t show up
20. [R36] 5/5 · US buggy: sooooooooooo buggy
21. [R41] 3/5 · US Great until you pay for it: I have had Marco Polo for a while now, this is how I talk to my best friend everyday. I decided to upgrade to premium because we use it so much that it was worth the money for the features. However, ever since upgrading and now paying the app has severely lacked. When actively talking back and forth most of the time the “live” doesn’t come back until 3-4 minutes into th
22. [R13] 2/5 · US Terrible notification system: No, I don’t want to be notified in the middle of the day that I’m all caught up. No, I don’t want to know when my contact is online. I just want to know when I receive a message. Thanks to Marco Polo’s extremely limited notification settings, that’s not a possibility.
23. [R21] 3/5 · US Notifications needs attention: The app will notify you anytime your friends are online. This is way too often, and there’s not a specific setting to turn it off. It’s miserable. So I’ve had to just disable notifications entirely - I review polos whenever now. My friends are adjusting lol
24. [R162] 1/5 · US Annoying: The app spammed me with “John Doe is on. Talk to them.” notifications. No, thank you. I will talk to them if I feel like it. I was given no option to turn this type of notification completely off. The max time I was allowed to silence it was 12 hours. I uninstalled.
25. [R203] 1/5 · US Privacy violation: Constantly sending me notifications suggesting I chat with people from my contacts, even for someone I blocked years ago due to safety concerns. I did not give the app access to my contacts, and some of the suggested people are from contacts I deleted years ago. I have no idea how the app has access to these other than a privacy violation, and the notifications are obnoxious and
26. [R50] 3/5 · US Cool app won’t pay: Been using Marco Polo for years liked it much better when it was free and they were trying to sell you on a subscription or something. There’s too many other ways to video chat with people that are free so why should I pay a subscription for Marco Polo?
27. [R54] 1/5 · US So EXPENSIVE now. “Free version” terrible.: Stop making excuses. You created a great app and then ruined it by pay walling all of the features. You claim to have a free version, but the free version is so hard to use it’s ridiculous. It’s obvious only there for marketing purposes to catch people and suck them in. Cannot justify at these prices. The current annual price should be a one time forev
28. [R63] 3/5 · US Desires in an app: I wish it was free to close the app while listening to the video I want the ability to put the phone in my pocket while listening with my EarPods without the video stopping I also wish it was cheaper to get the premium and even a one time purchase would be great!
29. [R39] 1/5 · US WHY DID YOU REMOVE CLOSED CAPTIONS!!??: My wife is deaf and can only watch our family Polos with captions! Very ableist and a dirty trick by the developers and needs to be reversed! Even people who aren’t deaf or hard of hearing may like this feature to watch a Polo without the sound as to not disturb others. The developers of this app are constantly removing basic features and placing them behin
30. [R44] 1/5 · US Transcript copy removed from pro: Hopefully this is just a bug, but the absolute best feature and the reason me and my developers where using pro and sharing was the transcript copy feature. This has been removed and it is rather frustrating. We are working around this of course but we are a small hobby team right now with the hope of growing capital in the future.
31. [R49] 2/5 · US Please bring back closed captioning!: The transcript hasn’t been working and my app removed the closed captioning option so I have no way of reading what my friends are saying! Edit: They replied saying I should reach out to the support team, I already did 6 days ago with no response.
32. [R52] 1/5 · US ableist to get rid of captions: what a weird & ableist choice to decide to remove the captions option/CC button… I feel like it’s one of those things that now people need to pay for, since I have a free Marco Polo account, but really? making people pay so they can actually access something? I feel like that’s literally illegal, because you are supposed to make things that are available for the pub
33. [R80] 3/5 · US Video quality: Bad quality of videos
34. [R136] 3/5 · US Love the app but..: I absolutely love the app! However the video quality is terrible even in HD. It’s very glitchy and laggy regardless of cell signal or wifi. I truly hope they update this to better quality video :(
35. [R232] 3/5 · US FIX BACKGROUND NOISE!: I love Marco, my family has used it for years, BUT the coding/software for background noise is HORRIBLE. Going on a walk the cars passing by are louder than my voice and I have to yell. Driving in the car the road noise eclipses the speaker. Pushing a stroller the sound of the wheels fills in the space. For the cost of Marco + this is ridiculous. Im tired of not being able t
36. [R443] 3/5 · CA Seems fun but camera quality sucks: Why is the camera quality so bad compared to every other recording app?
37. [R152] 1/5 · US Lags and glitches - no support: I’m writing this review because support is unable to be contacted for some reason. I’ve tried multiple times and continue to get error messages. We have the plus version of the app and those features have not worked for months. The live text feature does not work. We have done trouble shooting on our end and again have attempted to reach out to support but still get
38. [R156] 1/5 · US Poor customer service and not useful if others won’t join: I purchased this a year ago to try it out with my sister and family. They didn’t want to join and download a new app, and without anyone’s adoption it’s useless. I tried to cancel it the very next day, and I couldn’t get anyone to help me through Apple Store or Marco Polo. They refused to refund my subscription even though it was NEVER US
39. [R174] 1/5 · US Disappointing: I renewed my Plus two days ago and I am STILL not able to use the features. It’s STILL set as basic Marco. Customer service has not responded after 48 hrs!!! I am STILL awaiting a response!!!! Very bad customer service.
40. [R107] 1/5 · US Can’t hear phone calls while using this app: I can never hear my phone calls while I’m making a video
41. [R120] 3/5 · US Please remove “Recording” light on iPad version!: On my iPad version of your app there now mysteriously has a red light saying “Recording” at the top of the screen when I’m making a Marco Polo. Can you please please take this off and have the app be like it used to? That light is REALLY annoying to look at.
42. [R166] 3/5 · US Nice for long distance family: Been using the app for more than a few years now. It works fairly well on IPhones and Androids. It’s annoying on IPads because it won’t rotate for the camera to be in the middle to make it look correct when you are talking. Definitely worth it for keeping in touch with family when not able to be on a live video feed. They have free versions, but constantly ask you t
43. [R243] 3/5 · US ‼️ Please Update: Please update the iPad app to properly support the front camera in horizontal (landscape) mode. Since 2022, Apple has redesigned iPads with landscape-oriented front cameras, and this is now the standard across newer models. Marco Polo still behaves as if iPads are portrait-only, which results in awkward framing and a poor video experience, especially when using a keyboard or stan
44. [R112] 1/5 · US Crazy price increase: I have loved this app for over 5 years. This year they are increasing the family plan by $40! That’s crazy, $119.99 to 159.99. They have not done any updates or improvements to justify such increase. Look elsewhere.
45. [R150] 2/5 · US $80? Are you crazy?: This app sadly is WAY overpriced. I’ve paid for years but this price hike is too much.
46. [R213] 2/5 · US Plus Feels Like a Paywall, Not an Upgrade: I’ve been a loyal Marco Polo user for years. It’s been a meaningful way to stay connected with a close friend across the country, and I originally subscribed to Plus to support the app and try the added features. When I joined, Plus was $60 per year. It’s now $75 annually or $10 per month ($120 per year). That’s a significant increase, and the overall va
47. [R251] 3/5 · GB Why the huge price increase?: My sister in law and I use this to communicate and have done for several years. Her quality of videos is great but mine are a bit blurry if I watch them back. But the reason for writing this review is the huge price hike. I only pay for premium because I want the ability to jot notes and occasionally speed a message up at times but a huge hike from £44.99 to £79.99 a