CruiseLink
The best app for messaging on a cruise ship
There is no single answer, because three different problems get called the same thing. Reaching your own party, reaching other passengers, and reaching home each need something different. Here is what actually covers which — including where we do not.
Written by the people who make CruiseLink, so read the comparison with that in mind. Everything below about other apps comes from their own store listings and is checkable.
Three different problems
| What you want | What covers it | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Reach your own travelling party | An offline phone-to-phone app | Free, or a few pounds |
| Reach anyone else on the sailing | The cruise line's own app | Free on some lines, paid on others |
| Reach people at home | WhatsApp etc. on a wifi package | Per device, per voyage |
The cruise line's own app
The only thing that reaches passengers outside your own group, because everyone on the sailing has it. It runs on the ship's network without an internet package.
Royal Caribbean, Princess and Disney include guest chat free. Carnival and Norwegian charge per person. P&O does not offer it at all. The comparison, line by line.
Its weakness is the same everywhere: the app only receives while your phone is awake and on the ship's wifi, so messages arrive in a batch when somebody next unlocks their phone.
Offline, phone-to-phone apps
This is the only category that works with no network at all. A few exist and they are not the same.
- CruiseLink — ours. Free, iPhone and Android, no account. Messages hop between phones in your group, so one that moves can carry a message to somebody out of range.
- CruiseChattr — the same idea, sold as a yearly subscription per person or per family. Free for crew, which is a market we have never addressed and is a real one.
- Offline Walkie Talkie — iOS only, free trial then a one-off purchase. Its own listing describes a star network with an elected host, which means everyone has to be in range of that host rather than messages being relayed onward.
The distinction in that last point is the one nobody can see from a store page, and on a 345-metre ship it decides whether a message gets from deck 16 to a cabin on deck 5. What we measured on real phones, including the time it failed.
WhatsApp, iMessage and the rest
All of them need the internet, so at sea they need a package. They are the right answer for reaching people at home and the wrong answer for reaching somebody two decks away, because the message goes up to a satellite and back for a journey of fifty metres — and packages are sold per device, so a family doing that pays several times over. What each one does at sea.
What we would actually tell a friend
- Install something offline on everyone's phone before you sail. Nothing installs at sea, and this is the step people miss.
- Use the line's own app if it is free on your line, for reaching people outside your group.
- Buy one internet package, not one each, for whoever might be needed at home.
- Agree a meeting point anyway. None of this is instant across a whole ship.
Get CruiseLink
Free, no account, nothing to set up beyond your group. On iPhone and Android, and the two work together.
