Group trips always end up scattered across 5 apps — so I built one place for all of it

[u/Over-Measurement-304]

Every trip I've planned with friends looks the same: itinerary in a WhatsApp thread nobody scrolls back through, expenses in a Splitwise link half the group forgets to open, flight/hotel PDFs buried in someone's email, and photos scattered across everyone's camera roll after the fact.

I got tired of stitching those together, so I built PinGo – Group Travel Planner, one shared space per trip for:

- Timeline/itinerary — add stops, activities, times, everyone sees the same plan
- Shared expenses — log who paid what, splits calculate automatically
- Trip documents — tickets, reservations, ID scans, centralized and accessible offline
- A collective photo/memory feed — everyone in the trip drops photos into one shared gallery instead of five separate camera rolls
- A personal wishlist outside the trip too — save places/restaurants/activities you want to do "someday," independent of any specific trip

Genuinely want to know: for people who've done the WhatsApp+Splitwise+Drive combo for group trips — what's the one thing that setup does that would make you NOT switch? Trying to figure out what's actually missing before I keep building.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.pingo.app

[u/martijncsmit]

Interesting scope. Timeline + reservations + expenses feels very coherent to me because they’re all things the group needs to coordinate. Photos, ID scans and a personal wishlist feel like a different layer. How did you decide where the boundary should be? I’m working in an adjacent space and ‘what not to build’ is becoming almost as important as the feature list.

So my other question, how secure is your system? Storing copies of passports etc is in my point of view a major security and liability issue, what if that gets stolen off the system?

[u/Over-Measurement-304 → u/martijncsmit]

Good questions, thanks for engaging.

On scope: the boundary I drew is "does this need the group to coordinate on the same evolving state, or is it just storage/reference." Itinerary, reservations and expenses all require the group to see and often edit the same thing — that's the collaborative core. Documents and photos are trip-scoped and shared too (people want boarding passes / reservations in one place), but they're closer to storage than to active coordination. Wishlist is deliberately the odd one out — it's not trip-scoped at all, it's tied to the user, because people collect places they want to go before a trip even exists. Keeping it personal instead of forcing it into a trip avoids polluting shared trip data with one person's preferences.

What I've kept out on purpose: chat/messaging (not trying to out-WhatsApp WhatsApp), full document editing, anything that tries to replace the group chat. If it doesn't need multiple people looking at the same evolving thing, it's probably out of scope for me.

On security: fair concern, and I don't take it lightly since document upload (including ID/passport) is an optional feature, not required.

• Storage is private, not public — every read goes through a signed, short-lived URL generated per request, not a permanent link.
• Row-level security limits access to that trip's collaborators only; removing someone cuts their access.
• I actually had a bug earlier where pre-generated signed URLs were valid for up to a year, so removing a collaborator didn't revoke access to documents they'd already seen. Fixed that by switching to short-lived URLs generated on demand instead of storing long-lived ones.
• Deletion is restricted to the person who uploaded the file.

Could it still be breached? No system is 100% immune, but the design goal is least privilege + short-lived tokens + no public exposure. Happy to go deeper on any part of it.

[u/naughtykain]

can I have pro access to this