First Due Reviews

Like most things the line guys are never asked for input. Addresses are off on the mapping . Getting incident notifications to turn off is cumbersome not as easy as active 911. Please take away the clock in order to turn notification off and just use on shift or off shift. Would love to go back to active 911. Still early on in using FirstDue so maybe my mind will be changed . Also whole dept switched to this software and no one from company came out to perform training with the guys on shift.

The idea of FirstDue is outstanding, BUT this app’s product team has failed miserably in their execution. FirstDue has all of the information as advertised, but their delivery of this information through this extremely non-user-friendly user interface makes it nearly useless. The absolute worst part of this software is their ePCR, with no improvements in sight from their product team. It’s like jumping back in time to the early 2000’s, sitting at a desktop computer trying to input your paper report, but WORSE. Do NOT buy this software for your department! The only part of it that is somewhat useful is the preplans, still not impressive, but the rest of the things advertised are almost unusable due to the horrendously bad user interface.

Frequently have to reinstall FirstDue due to it crashing while loading. After latest reinstall and login (multiple attempts at this cycle), I am stuck viewing the details of a seemingly random incident. I can't view the main dashboard with incident history, map, or settings. This means I can't change alert settings or see incident details, making FirstDue absolutely and unequivocally unusable.

Devs: this kind of issue should be impossible with adequate automated testing. I can handle the frequent reinstalls (though that should be fixed, too) but this latest issue is completely unacceptable. How did this get past QA?

UPDATE: Little improvement since last post. We’ve also noticed that this program is heavily reliant on downloads rather than using the hard drive (the gigabytes of memory available) in the host iPad or tablet. This slows down FirstDue making it a total slog fest.
Also, you can’t navigate in the Preplan Map, you have to switch back and forth between the Preplan Map to the Nav Map to see your relative position. LAME! Also, FirstDue is constantly requiring updates, usually when you’re trying to respond to a call, like daily version updates.

Clumsy, clunky, glitchy app. Not user friendly, especially while bouncing down the road enroute to a call. The screens are too busy with too many screens within screens (windows) that compete with each other. It doesn’t track other units as well as Incident View or Life 360. It’s slow to download hydrants. It’s a heavy program that requires ideal fast connectivity. You have to completely leave your navigation screen to look at Pre-plans. Way too much button pushing while trying to drive, navigate and get your crew briefed enroute to a call. Your head is buried in the screen the entire drive into the call. Needs to be streamlined.

Stop. Asking. Me. For. Them. Not “later”, enable a button for “no” and then STOP ASKING. This garbage app doesn’t allow system services to auto fill login info, clears your password as soon as to try flipping screens to view it (ya know, since it wont autofill), and then asks INCESSANTLY to enable location services. Change tabs? Ask for location services. Switch to a text message for 6.3 seconds? “ Looks like GPS is off and FDSU needs it for location purposes. Please turn it on.” maybe I changed my mind in that 6s, but if you view a map…. Don’t worry it’ll ask again. Within my first 4 minutes of using this garbage app it must have asked me 20 times to enable location services. TAKE A HINT.

Our county is switching over to First Due and I’m not happy at all. The navigation screen is horrendous and slow. Good luck trying to find out the basic details of the incident. You have to scroll through too much to find relevant information. And when you select your incident, you can scroll across the map. It continuously pulls you back to the incident location or your location. Not helpful at all. The icons make no sense either and should be more intuitive. All these are bad when it comes to emergency services/responses. I hope we continue to at least provide Active 911 so there is something familiar and easy to use.

Unfortunately 1 star is the lowest I can go……. Constant updates & multiple issues with FirstDue. In fact, FirstDue is so bad our Department highly recommends that we use a browser instead of FirstDue . I know of at least 20 Departments that purchased FirstDue and they certainly regret it. Most of the Departments using FirstDue don’t use the scheduling part because it’s just that bad. Some Departments prefer paper/pencil or an Excel spreadsheet over FirstDue. A great concept but it appears that they rushed the process & didn’t work out the kinks before bringing it to market. I’m no rocket scientist (or App Developer), but I do know that if I were a Chief of a Department I certainly wouldn’t spend money on FirstDue.

As for FirstDue , it’s completely clumsy, lacks basic UI and just general use features that should be on. Why the heck can’t I just turn off the silent override like other app. Why do I have to fully take my self off dispatches. Why can I not start a simple EMS chart from FirstDue .

As for the whole thing, any services looking to go to this “program”, don’t, you and you’re employees will be grateful. This program had no common sense put into it. I’ve used a handful of different software over the past 13 years, and this is by far the worse (and yes, worse then EMS Charts).

This feels like a money grab and that’s it. Doing anything on this “program” feels like a punishment. I have a very basic understanding of programming and web / App UI, and I feel like I would be able to spend 1 afternoon and put together something 10x better then is.

I thought apps were supposed to be user-friendly and efficient when in a palm sized device. FirstDue does work, but it doesn’t work great due to navigation issues and it’s generally all-around clumsy. Looking at calendars where it’s a screen inside of a screen that requires you to drag it around to see within the same week makes me want to jump off a bridge. Doing things like equipment checks where I needlessly have to scroll all the way to an item that I have already clicked on makes me wanna total my own car with me inside of it. It does everything that my old apps did for work, but worse. I’m only using it because my job is now switching to it and I hope the developers see this and make things more streamlined as FirstDue feels like it was created by someone who had never seen a smart phone before.

First Due is what my department chose to go with vs active 911. I’ve had it for a while now, and like what it can do. My problem is I have to wait a few minutes for it to load every time I open it. And now every time I try to open the group message it force closes. There’s always been one bug or another since I’ve had this that keeps it from being as good as it could be. What needs to be done is for it to work lightning fast as soon as you get an alert because we do not have time to wait for things to load. It needs to stop force closing when you try to open something on it. And if y’all ever have the ability too, it would be wonderful to have access to call notes. It shows the first few words of the notes and stops. If you could find a way that it could get the full notes that would be wonderful.

I work for a fire department and this is a new app we use. It is relatively easy to navigate, but it has so many options and it’s unclear for people who are new to it. It’s not very user friendly, but it works.
The main problem I’ve encountered is lack it consistency. We are using it for scheduling and as our alerting system when a 911 call comes in.
Sometimes I won’t appear on the schedule even though I’m supposed to. The alerts are always late and sometimes I don’t get any notifications at all.

As an Officer. I would love the Map and CAD note to be different pages. I need to be able to read live CAD notes without having to navigate a page. My driver prefers the map at times. Would like to have two different pages or be able to configure for responsibility. Also CAD notes in this problem load much slower compared to other programs. Not sure how to fix that as our other program is minutes faster then this program.

FirstDue tries to do everything for everyone, and in the process doesn’t do anything particularly well. It has an alerting function, but of the three alerting apps my department uses it is the slowest. It has a Prefire functionality which can become so complicated as to render it unusable. It has a scheduling component with endless glitches that our scheduling folks constantly complain about.
Everything is over complicated and thus buggy.

The last update that came out changed how FirstDue alerts you to an incident. You can no longer have a silent alert with just a vibration like if you’re in a meeting. Even with your phone silenced, if you open the incident to view it, your selected alert tone will sound. Or at night with your phone silenced, if you open an incident to check it out, the alert tone will sound. There isn’t an option to stop this in the settings either. Very annoying.

I spent months developing a system with this program for our department. After an update, many buildings and their extensive associated data went missing. Numerous months have now passed, and the problem remains unfixed. Very disappointing. In the beginning however, I spoke directly with developers who were open to many suggestions, unfortunately FirstDue has become more popular and the one-on-one attention is no longer…

First Due is a decent platform. The competition offers notifications on Apple Watch, First Due does not.
The platform is a bit clunky, but it is useable.
It needs some work. Ease of use is okay but not great, user interface is improving as they grow.
Active911 is still a better product for call notification, but that’s just an opinion.

While FirstDue has room to improve, this has allowed me to get a clear idea of available hydrants and major cross streets of medical emergencies. While I always verify with my department issued maps, I have had no issues with serviceability or stability, and it has been accurate so far in 3 months of use.

As an amateur app developer myself I am aware of the complexities involved in making an app like this, and it may take some time to streamline everything and make it as efficient as it can be, but as for now if you have a solid data connection you should have no issues.

As a driver, I am really loving FirstDue. As soon as the notification comes in I can quickly pull up the image of the incident and get a look at things like my water situation, FDC locations, and the structure itself. Helps me get a leg up on water and positioning and only takes a few seconds. If I’m heading out of the first due area it also lets me get a quick look at my first few turns, giving my officer some time to get settled and into the map books while I can already be heading down the road as soon as the crew jumps in. The only negative I have for FirstDue is that there is no way to silence the alerts as they come in. I would love to keep FirstDue running on my days off just to keep tabs on what incidents the other shifts are running but the notifications won’t silence and hearing the tones go off on my days off can get old. Even turning sounds off on my phone won’t stop the notification audio from going off. I have to turn off notifications completely in FirstDue settings and then I can’t see what calls come in at all. Just add a no sound option in the tones list, please.

First Due has changed the way our entire region operates. As a driver, I can look at the first couple turns while heading to the apparatus. From the bucket, it has encompassed situational awareness and the team concept with the ability to see and communicate supplemental incident notes, preplan information, hose stretches and any hazards from the aerial view. From the officer’s standpoint, with just a couple key strokes, they have access to water supply information, strategies, tactics, maps, photos, other units locations, and a wealth of information once reserved for research on the web.

The biggest thing that has impacted operations in my 30 year fire service career.

With the new unit tracking and some of the other enhancements. FirstDue continues to impress. We switch from another product to this about a year ago and have had a lot of benefits to the crews when they are responding. The only thing I would like to see is off-line functionality. Keep up the good work!!!