Help and FAQ

Alerts are available for campgrounds across the major reservation systems in the US and Canada, and the Coverage page shows which parks and campgrounds can be monitored today. Some parks and campgrounds show up in search before alerts are available for them — those can't be selected yet.

Those campgrounds are on our radar, but we're still finishing the work to check their availability reliably. Rather than let you create an alert that can't actually run, we hold them back until they're ready. Want one sooner? Request it from the Coverage page and we'll prioritize it.

Most active alerts start on about a 10-minute schedule. OpenCampsite may check high-demand parks sooner and quiet parks less often, and provider outages or processing load can also affect timing. If you want a fresh result, open the alert and use Check Now.

An alert fires when someone else cancels a reservation, and cancellations are unpredictable — many alerts catch an opening within days, others never do, especially for the most popular sites. We check around the clock either way. For the best odds: widen your date window, watch a whole campground rather than one specific site, and set alerts as early as you can.

Yes — everything is free while we're in beta, with no credit card required. When paid plans launch, we'll announce it clearly with at least 30 days' notice, and founding campers — anyone using OpenCampsite during the beta — get 50% off their first year. Nothing will ever start charging you silently.

Self-serve, anytime, from the billing page — it opens a secure Stripe customer portal where you can cancel, update your card, or download invoices. Cancelling stops future charges; your plan stays active until the end of the period you already paid for. No emails, no phone calls, no retention scripts.

Your first subscription has a 7-day money-back guarantee — email us within a week of your first payment and we'll refund it in full. After that, we don't refund based on whether a campsite opened up: alerts watch for other campers' cancellations, which no one can guarantee. Billing mistakes are always refunded. Full details on the refund policy page.

Alerts you already created keep running until their trip dates pass — we never turn off an existing alert because of a plan change. Plan limits apply when you create alerts: if you're over your new plan's limit, existing alerts finish out normally, but you won't be able to add new ones until you're back under it.

Email is the only customer alert channel during the launch beta. SMS remains disabled; we'll announce it separately if it becomes available after delivery and carrier approval are complete.

We track every email we try to send. If delivery fails, the opening remains eligible for a later notification instead of being treated as successfully delivered.

Yes. From your dashboard you can pause, resume, or turn off an alert and change its trip dates. Launch-beta notifications are sent by email.

Every alert email includes a link that turns off just that alert — one click, no sign-in needed. You can also sign in and turn off any alert from your dashboard.

You're giving OpenCampsite permission to send alert confirmations and availability updates to the email address you chose, and agreeing to the Terms and Privacy Policy linked from the alert form and footer.

The alert turns off by itself — no more checks or notifications for dates you can no longer book. Its activity history will note that the trip window ended.

No. You can create your first alert right on the home page by confirming your email with a one-time code. An account (email and password) is optional — it lets you sign in and manage the same alerts from any device. And turning an alert off never needs anything: every alert email includes a one-click link for that.

Open the alert from your dashboard. You'll see its current status, recent checks, every notification we've sent, and — if something is preventing checks from completing — a plain-language note explaining what's going on.

Email support@opencampsite.com with the campground name, your trip dates, and the email address used for the alert. Your alert's recent activity timeline helps us see exactly what happened.