Yoga International

Clunky interface, it often times out, and it always crashes when I try to skip forward or go backwards.

I purchased the yearly membership last year so I could do prenatal yoga classes. I didn’t even use this app much since there are not many prenatal videos and I ended up finding better classes for free in YouTube. I canceled my subscription from my App Store months ago and I even deleted this app. Yesterday I was charged $204 for another year when I did not receive any notice just the notification from my credit card. I’m trying to get in touch with someone and all they have is an email. ?????? Makes no sense, they make it impossible to get rid of this membership.

Yoga International was once a great resource, initiated by the Himalayan Institute to teach very sound and beneficial yoga asana, meditation, and pranayama courses online via some very good teachers. Sadly, YI was sold in late 2021 to another company who promptly removed some very good content and over time, new content from the very good teachers gave way to quite substandard content mostly by teachers brought over by the acquiring firm. Nothing against the new teachers personally, it’s just that the new content was quite insufficient vs. what had previously been offered under original ownership. In late 2023, we cancelled our membership, the end of quite a few good years of practice.

This app is developed for vertical orientation and a cellphone. Given it’s subject matter, I more often like to use my iPad for the larger screen. If you’re iPad is in a support case, you’ll notice it won’t rotate for horizontal viewing. An update to allow this would be a great improvement to this app.

I would love to use this app. But I’m on a fixed income, which means that I can’t afford any subscriptions. I’m Blind and Disabled as well. All the money I get goes to rent, bills, and food. This means that subscriptions are completely out of the question. It would be nice if you guys could figure out a way to make the app free for those of us on a fixed income. I’m trying to get back into yoga after a long absence. Please consider finding a way to make the app free for people on fixed incomes. It would help a lot.

As a yoga instructor and yoga student I enjoy the content of YI for several years now. I found teachers, courses and other content I enjoy, use in my classes and personal practice. Sadly the usability of the app is left much to be desired. I view it on my iPad most of the time. The size of videos doesn’t fit to the screen when I open them (I have to switch to another app, then back, and by chance the app would show video full screen). I can’t open videos from my saved list and have to type in the name of the class in a search to get an access to smth I already saved. The web version and mobile app version do not really sync (I had issues while viewing my purchased courses). Sometimes a teacher’s intro video plays over a class video (!!), because it just has an autoplay… There are many more annoying issues. They need a good QA team on board to check on all that bugs, both mobile app and web. I don’t want to level up on my subscription because all these bugs.

They automatically will charge you card for over $200 and not inform you until AFTER it is done. They don’t reach out to let you know membership is expiring and ask if you want to keep. Then there is basically no way to contact them. There is a text/chat box but it is automated bot answer..then you wait for a team member to get back to you “as soon as they can”.

Out to get your money …

I’ve been a web subscriber for years, and the content on YI is no nonsense, solid information. I recently downloaded the app to have mobile access to a course, but the screen goes blank almost every time I try to progress. I can’t even go back to the Home Screen on the app. It’s not until I come back a day or two later that I can access the app at all. Stay a subscriber to their content, but don’t bother with the app.

The videos and teachers are amazing, but the UX design in the app and website both are designed for someone who wants to find a random yoga class, similar to searching for a single class in YouTube. Where the app and website fail is that we (users) cannot easily organize or save ‘members only’ courses, classes, find followed teachers. I will keep using the app and update as I experiment with it.