DropIn A Social & Service Platform for Surfers
A surfer community app with a local feed, a live map of surf businesses, trip and meetup pins, and chat.
- Industries
- Platforms
- Android, Web
- Store category
- Travel & Local
- Country
- Canada
- Built with
- Flutter
- Laravel
- MySQL
The project
DropIn is a community app for surfers, built by surfers, that makes it easier to travel, meet people and find services. A news feed shows the latest posts from surfers near the user or near any chosen spot. The map shows surf shops, schools, camps, accommodation and photographers, plus pins dropped by other users and live location sharing. A drop-in can be a surf session, a ride share, an event, a request for a photographer or a board for sale. We built the iOS and Android apps in Flutter, with a Laravel and MySQL backend and an admin panel.
The challenge
- Travelling surfers had no single place to find others heading to the same break or sharing a ride.
- Surf shops, schools, camps and photographers were hard to find for visitors new to an area.
- Buying gear, booking a photographer or organising a meetup meant posting across several social groups.
What we built
- A location-based news feed of posts from surfers near the user or a chosen place.
- A live map of surf businesses, user pins and friends who share their location.
- Drop-ins: pins for sessions, ride shares, events, photographer requests and gear for sale.
- Profiles and direct chat so surfers can plan trips and book rentals.
- Business listings and an admin panel to manage users, businesses and drop-ins.
Screens
Key features
Local news feed
Recent posts from surfers around the user or any spot they pick, with filters.
Surf business map
Shops, schools, camps, accommodation and photographers pinned on the map.
Drop a pin
Users post a session, ride share, event or sale with a category, location, photo and description.
Live location sharing
Friends can share where they are so others can join them.
Chat
Direct messages to organise trips, book accommodation or arrange rentals.
Business profiles
Surf businesses add themselves to the map and talk to surfers directly.
