Wondery: Must-Hear Podcasts

I’m on my final dealing with this app after years of Wondery+. I’m cancelling. Not because I don’t love the podcasts, I do. I’m cancelling because this app is terrible. In its current rev it crashes after about 15 seconds of playing and has for about a week now. This is different from the normal random crashing this app always has, and the joy of having to log back in through the network; not locally. On a remote drive? On a plane? Listening to downloaded episodes? Doesn’t matter. When this app crashes it won’t let you log back in without an internet connection, even to listen to downloads. I can’t even access the content I’m paying for when I want to access it despite planning ahead for a lack of internet access. So now that I can’t even listen at home, with a high speed connection on my own network without the app crashing, I’m done. I’m not giving Wondery any more of my money until this clunky, slow, unreliable app is fixed, and I suggest you don’t either. Edit- lol at the lame boilerplate response to my criticism. Hey guys- if you want to actually fix your lousy app maybe try listening instead of churning out lip service form responses to people complaining about the same problems for years.

Does not work well when your internet connection is intermittent, such as mobile cell service. If you try to load an episode with bad service and then move to an area with better signal, the episode will remain stuck on playback error cannot load episode please try again later. It will eventually start working, although it seems to be stuck in this state longer than necessary. The error message keeps popping up even after I can switch to other apps and load data. Pressing any button often lags for a few moments before going to the screen. Together with the network issues, it feels like the app overall is not very snappy and untrustworthy. Dowloading multiple episodes sometimes cancels the download of other episodes. I will not be resubscribing to wondery with expection that I will listen through this app.

(I will preface this by saying I am a former journalist who now works on a UX team, so my feedback is from both a personal and professional standpoint!) I absolutely love Wondery and truly believe this is best team of storytellers out there. The hosts are engaging, informative and creative, and the shows encompass an excellent variety of topics. It is clear the group works REALLY hard to deliver fresh content regularly. The music tracks are nice/not overpowering, the editing is clean, and I find the overall production quality strong, which is so impressive in the era of at-home recording. I was pumped when the app was rolled out because I devour Wondery episodes and wanted to ditch the ads (I do enjoy this perk of the subscription). However, the app is buggy and glitchy. I have to close and relaunch it multiple times per day, sometimes hourly. Playback stalls constantly, shows do not necessarily automatically resume, and the layout/navigation is not intuitive. I do a lot of fumbling and clicking. I think some simple user testing and validation would go a long way in improving the experience, so I have no doubt the developers will continue iterating and improving. For now, though, while they work out the kinks, I am not sure if the value matches the price point. I will conclude by saying it pains me, a total Wondery fanatic, to leave a less-than-glowing review here. BUT, I know the team will nail it, just like they do everything else!