Cluster

Between family issues, moving, and a LOT of loving church members, babysitters, and relatives, this app has been AMAZING for posting updates on our niece. As legal guardians, we wanted to keep her pictures private and separate from social media, give everyone simultaneous access to the same pictures/updates, allow them to add their own pics, and the notification system tells everyone when there’s a new picture or post. It has been a safe space for everyone on both sides of the family to enjoy watching her grow. We would have lost touch with so many people if not for this app. They send her birthday presents and get to watch her open them on videos we post. My only complaint Is that the video quality is not super crisp. It’s not terrible by any means, but improving that would make it 5 stars, easily.

I have been using this app for 4 years and love it. One weird quirk is that sometimes when I upload multiple pictures it uploads them then a few hours later when I open the app again it uploaded them for a second time. I just delete them so it’s not a big deal, just a quirk. Mid May 2022 I got an email saying Cluster was shutting down and was devastated. Mid June a family member / fellow user got an email saying Cluster was saved (!!!!), which is amazing news but I didn’t get the same email (checked spam, all folders, searched, etc). I emailed support twice but haven’t heard back. Please make sure you keep all of your users informed!

I have been using Cluster for a little over 2 years now to post photos of my daughter for family. It has more or less been a decent experience, though their app can be glitchy, especially when you’re creating photo books on mobile. I found that anytime I’d try to swipe up to review my books on iPhone that it would totally crash out of the book and I’d have to go back in and start over. I got over that aggravation and proceeded to finish my books. When I went to order them, you can only order a single book at a time, so you get hit with shipping for each individual book. A full 100 page book costs $80 plus $8 shipping. They’re only tiny 12x12 books and honestly, $80 is asking too much for the result. Unfortunately, several years and thousands of photos later, I was married to the site and wanted to get my books created so I emailed customer service (Marlene) about the shipping costs which she said she’d credit back after placing my order. Five emails and three months later and I still have received NOTHING back from them. Not to mention the title printing on one of the books was cut off and I asked about correcting that as well. The app is fine if you won’t ever have to pull anything out of it, such as creating books. God forbid you need customer service to assist because it is non-existent with Cluster. I would say go elsewhere and find a better app that has actual support.