Virgin Pulse Reviews

I want to give it 5 stars but no app is without its kinks. VirginPulse definitely has room for improvement but is amazing for where it is at now! I have personally spent years tracking different aspects of my life such as health/ finances/ work through various methods. Virgin Pulse houses all that in 1 place, I love it. And it offers tips and advice so even better! Navigation is pretty straight forward but still not as smooth or seamless as I would like. Since it houses so much information on different topics it would be nice if the user that the ability to organize and group certain portions together at our discretion. Also color coding would be great. It currently has its own version of color coding which is not explained anywhere. I had to call and ask what ever color meant. I was so thrown off that some goals I was tracking that I was falling behind on were labeled green. Some where yellow. And others that I was doing well at were red. It made no sense. But the colors correspond to genres and not for how well you are doing on that goal. Regardless, I have my personal color preferences I would like to use. I’m excited to see VirginPulse improve and for now will be content with what it offers, as no other app/ journal/ or tracker I have ever used even comes close to this one.

VirginPulse works fine. The wellness program itself is nonsense. As with other wellness programs, you can earn points by exercising, but also included is completing health “journeys”, reading daily cards about diversity and wellness and cyber security and mindfulness. The points earn entries in a quarterly raffle for prizes. You earn multiple raffle entries for the more pints you earn, a max number of 100 raffle entries for 10k points. Problem is that there is no publicity about who wins what quarterly prize. That’s because out of my company of 10,000+, 20 prizes are given out. There’s no incentive to earn more than the max of 10k points a quarter. Even with 100 entries, the odds of winning any raffle prize is only slightly better than winning the mega lotto. I earned 24k points the first quarter of the program, partly cause I completed a smoking cessation “journey” (don’t smoke, never have, wanted to see what would happen). Guess I could also complete the pregnancy wellness “journey” (I’m male). Guess they could give me the insipid response of “but the real reward is your health”. Um I already exercise. Only reason to participate in the program is to get paid. How about setting this up like the Blue Cross Blue Shield wellness program - average 7k steps a day validated by my Fitbit, earn $50 a quarter? THAT is an incentive. Discourage your company from using Virgin Pulse as a wellness program - waste of time, self defeating.

I’ve used VirginPulse faithfully every day for several years... When you are self disciplined to live the lifestyle you can obviously incorporate updating an app to track your dedication... Updating your VP cards and Healthy Habits just becomes part of the process... however when VirginPulse shows them already completed one tends to initially move on and think to yourself oh, I must have completed that and forgotten I did it... only to find a few days later that tracking shows you missing several days which is very annoying because once those days are skipped there’s no way to make up the ‘card’ points!!

Becoming more aware of this occurring, I’ve opened and closed VirginPulse 3-4 times before it registers the current day is in fact still requiring completion.. I’m sure everyone can agree in today’s overly busy society no one has time or patience for dealing with this type of glitch long term.. we are conditioned nowadays when things don’t function properly to fix it or replace it...

I lost interest in logging into Facebook and that app enables us to connect to the most important people in our lives... so, if that factor alone couldn’t inspire me to overlook all the drawbacks to FB, I’m not too confident I’ll sustain interest in using this intermittently functioning app to track the daily routine of my already established dedication to living a healthy lifestyle.

The only reason I have to use VirginPulse is because our medical insurance is using it to track 3 measures which they will pay us out HSA contributions for completing.
I have been fighting to get this to work for a month now. The sleep tracking that maps over from Fitbit does not match what Fitbit says I am getting, on an average night it’s mapping over an hour and a half to 2 hours less. I will never get my sleep measure with this inaccuracy. They have told me that I can try wearing a different device they provide, which I tried last night and then I went to sync it up, it’s telling me there’s no unregistered Max Buzz’s....so that’s not working either. I shouldn’t have to wear multiple devices to get an app to work. I shouldn’t have to give up on a device that has been in the market for years for something that only counts steps and maybe sleep.
The mapping over of calories from MyFitnessPal requires that you take three steps for it to map over. If you don’t do that, it will not pull the information.
Numerous emails and phone calls with this company...at one time somebody told me they don’t register the REM sleep....ummm, wrong....training needs to be had.
I’m done fighting, I’ve raised these issues to my HR team who have also raised them to the medical carrier. I’ve just come to the conclusion that even though I’m doing everything right, I’ll never be compensated for it.

Here is a product that holds you prisoner with employers. Once you buy a pulse product, you cannot use if you leave employer. If you plan on staying with your current company forever than it may be worth it. I left employer just after purchasing and can’t use unless sponsored. Customer service cannot and will not help you. The reply from them after my review is political in nature and not set up to resolve your problem, they are not working on it. My advise don’t buy this product that is really made to help your employer more than you. Get a Fitbit or other product for your health you can take anywhere.
Their response says it’s a company sponsored program, then don’t charge me for a tool I can use when I leave the company. This now places a bad flavor with not only Virgin Pulse but also my former employer. Again it does not take much to have the watch function work but your to cheap to do anything about it. Your responses are political damage control and still worthless. This review is meant for you to lose customers for not treating them fairly for service on a product they purchase with hard earned money for their fitness only to be deactivated. I really do hope the corporations you support see this as well. They only use you to lower insurance for the business owner and many times don’t bring down the savings to the consumer.

Overall does an okay job of very basic self-tracking behavior and (for me) was easy to get in the habit of entering info every day. It is limited in capability and lacks much in the way of functionality. Where it really falls short is tracking steps. I have a MaxBuzz wrist device. VirginPulse does not accurately counts steps - and sometimes just stops recording. I have noticed this in several different scenarios but especially when flying. I travel a lot for work and noticed VirginPulse gets locked up when I get off the plane. I recently got off the plane on concourse B in Atlanta and walked to baggage claim. That should have been at least 1000+ steps. Instead, it recorded zero steps. I tried turning the phone off/on but VirginPulse refused to update. This happens too often and is very frustrating. Maybe it can’t handle the phone being put into airplane mode. VirginPulse also doesn’t recognize my time zone no matter how many times I enter it in the profile; it always shows the last sync time 6 hours ahead - as in UK time. I am at home today and logged my stats first thing this morning and checked my steps through out the day but VirginPulse says last synced yesterday. VirginPulse could be so much better if they would put some effort in the development.

What is going wrong over there? Every time you release an improvement you take out the best things. The most recent change, separating the daily points total from the total points is about the worst idea ever. The reason I like using VirginPulse is seeing my points increase. Maybe it’s worse for me because I have over 18,000 points now so it’s hard to pay attention to daily changes. But isn’t that the point of gamifying your life in the first place? Maybe that little animation wasn’t critical to the experience but it wasn’t distracting and I liked the feeling of reaching and passing the goals. Now I am forced to look at a single screen dedicated to the total and I have to change screens to see my daily total?

I feel so disappointed. I’ve used VirginPulse almost every day for more than 2 years and was delighted to see how I earned my daily points. Now not only do I have to make an added and annoying unnecessary click, it also separates the connection between the daily effort and the total. Why would you do that? It seems you’ve lost touch with your reason for being. I got used to the hideous and uninspiring blue interface color but this change to communicating points makes me feel dead inside. : (

Overall, this is a good app for keeping track of wellness but there are too many problems. 1. The requirement to use MyFitnessPal to tally food intake is a problem. Many might not want to share the level of detail from MFP. 2. The other VERY annoying quirk is that even with notifications on, they do not appear at the time specified. In fact, in the years that I have been using VirginPulse (required through work), I have never had a notification — not a single one. The whole point of an app is to make life easier. Unfortunately, VirginPulse fails. 3. The Sleep Tracking portion directs me to open VirginPulse when I access it through VirginPulse (sending me to VirginPulse Store). It was an annoying quirk until in the last few days the page won’t display at all in VirginPulse . It just shows blank with the link to VirginPulse Store. Utterly useless. 4. It could also use additional features like meditations (2, 4, 8, 10, and 15 minute breathing/meditation exercises), counting "meditation" through the Breaths app on Apple Watch, heart rate (high, low, and average), among other things available on the AppleWatch. The developer should trash this garbage app and start over. The program is sound — it is just a horrible app.

We have to use this for work to track & boost our health & well being and to earn points toward discounted benefits. Has some useful tips & tricks for better/easier living & organizing your life. It’s not bad for something that is required, but personally I wouldn’t use it, because it detracts from more productive & helpful ways for me to achieve these goals than constantly being tied to VirginPulse to stop & enter everything I’m doing. Ends up backfiring on the very things it’s supposed to help & feels too much like a chore instead, provoking anxiety & stress. Doesn’t customize all that well either and could use better algorithms to provide more appropriate tips for individual situations, rather than just a standard cookie cutter that fits most but not all people. This review comes from an active user with more than 73,000 points, so I’m almost maxed out on the scale with two weeks left in our annual health track requirements. I’ve far exceeded the goal my company sets for us with regard to points. But again, not bad as far as a required health tracking tool for employees.

UPDATE: I received multiple emails stating that this app wanted to investigate this further and I should contact support... which I did (04/27 @ 9:23am cst - in case support wants to find my call and listen to the recording)... WHAT A FREAKING NIGHTMARE!!! The support tech basically told me it was a automatic letter and there was nothing he could assist with - I realize he’s probably not VirginPulse support team, but he could have at least put me in contact with the proper person/team. He and I went round and round until finally I was so frustrated I said “I’m done” and hung up on him. If this rating wasn’t directly related to VirginPulse , I would drop my rating to 1, because their customer service was pitiful!

Not everyone in the world uses MyFitnessPal as their nutrition/activity tracker. I, and many others, use MyNetDiary. Within my organization, we get health points and ultimately a health bonus ($) for tracking this information. I do not like MFP, and because I don’t use it, I am penalized for it. PLEASE ADD SYNCING WITH MYNETDIARY! Thank you.

Once this sync option is added, I will change my rating to 5 stars.

I started using this when I finally signed up for a company challenge walk. Once set up, it is super easy to use! I have it synced to my Apple Watch for syncing my steps which is great because I walk a lot! Best of all is it is tied to my company’s HSA so I earn well-being dollars by doing different things like walking 7k steps per day, reading cards each day, checking off on healthy habits and other things. These are all things we all do already. VirginPulse makes this so easy to do every day. Every well-being dollar earned is one less out of my pocket so to speak. I’m not sure what would happen if I left my company. I wouldn’t be able to earn well-being dollars but I’m not sure if I’d still use VirginPulse or could do so. I’m happy at work and I believe work is happy with me so for now I don’t need to worry about this what-if. 😄

We love VirginPulse for the health benefits and the point system. We take advantage of as much of the programs as possible.

*However*, occasionally, certain features won’t load properly (not because of one particular phone or Internet; already checked those possible causes). In addition, my husband’s account was locked because of an accidental wrong credential entry and instead of a quick reset link, his account has been locked for a week and a half. Customer support has basically not helped us at all but to continue saying “it’s with the team that will unlock it.” Meanwhile, we are unable to track points for the point system and unable to utilize the health benefits.

So, I suppose that I would caution you against making any mistake, or you won’t be able to use VirginPulse for possibly weeks (which in this day and age of technology is mind-boggling). While I appreciate the features, this has become incredibly frustrating and has left much to be desired concerning their customer service experience.

I like VirginPulse for tracking my activities to earn points that can be redeemed for merchandise or gift cards; However there always seems to be tech issues.
Most recently I was redeeming points to get a virtual gift card. I received a message that said there were problems and that I should try again later. So I waited and did this two more times, getting the same message. Turns out that the purchase went through all three times so instead of having one gift card, I have three, two of which I don’t need.
When I contacted Virgin Pulse support & asked for a cancellation and a refund of two of the gift cards, they said that there was nothing they could do since they don’t issue the cards. They may not issue the cards; however the problem was on their platform. I wouldn’t have requested three cards had I not gotten the message that the purchase didn’t go through. So the message for all: even if it says your purchase didn’t go through, it did.

I, like many others, have been forced to use VirginPulse on my cellular device or by logging in on a desktop version due to our company healthcare policies. Well this used to work almost seamlessly it seemed, for the past year so it’s been absolutely crap tastic! I will go in and mark my daily cards, as well as mark my activities, and the next thing you know when I look at VirginPulse the next day, it shows I did not mark anything for the day before. I’m lucky in that I can add my weight in, but because I don’t subscribe to the my fitness app, or any other tracking device that can track me wherever I go, any workouts I do are not recorded. Losing my 40 points that I get on a daily basis for doing my cards is ridiculous (you can’t recover them), telling me to go to the chat option is ridiculous because I’m usually using my phone most often during the day. When you say that bugs have been fixed, why aren’t they actually fixed?

***update***again, an update broke VirginPulse . What in the actual hell are you “fixing”??? I’m losing points, again, because VirginPulse isn’t recording my daily cards!

Not sure why this is reviewed so high. I have experienced syncing issues time after time, and it has affected my reimbursement from my employer rewards program. Now to sync steps they insist you must remember to manually sync it every 2 weeks, because it will not sync any data from beyond two weeks prior. It requires clicking in VirginPulse 5 times in a convoluted hidden path to find the sync button…Rather than having the common sense to put a sync button on the homepage of VirginPulse . This is 2021, so apparently manual syncing is required for VirginPulse instead of auto syncing like literally any other app that syncs information on my phone. It also does not manually sync predictably with my fitness pal for my calorie intake tracking. I have given up and no longer track my steps, calories, or sleep and am probably less healthier because of it, and this has also tangibly lost me money. Get it together virgin pulse; make VirginPulse auto sync without constant issues. VirginPulse is supposed to promote health yet does anything but reduce stress to get it working properly.

Bottom line: I really like VirginPulse. I find it to be an extremely convenient way to participate in virgin pulse. I like that I can easily complete daily cards and healthy habits, track my iPhone steps, get access to challenges, track my stats, and remain aware of opportunities my company is posting. In fact I find it so convenient, it has a place on my home screen.

HOWEVER for such a handy app, I have a major complaint. The iOS badges feature that shows you the number of uncompleted daily cards and healthy habits refreshes after opening VirginPulse but is only accurate until midnight—not increasing to reflect new available cards the following day, and it’s been this way for the last three years I’ve used VirginPulse . It doesn’t seem to be my phone either as I’ve tried to uninstall and reinstall VirginPulse several times, and hav gone through phone upgrade cycles too.

The whole point of the badges feature is to help remind you when you have something that needs your attention. When I complete all cards and healthy habits, VirginPulse will clear the badge count, but since VirginPulse doesn’t refresh the count the next day, I get no reminder the next day and then forget to complete the cards. And once that day’s cards are missed, I’ve lost the opportunity and can’t get those points a later day.

So my only request for Virgin Pulse to improve VirginPulse is to fix this problem. If it got fixed I’d be happy to change this review to a 5!

What I mean is I feel like it’s pretty thorough, and goes way deeper in the features than you would expect. Such as finding recipe plans to tracking your calories by connecting it to fitness pal and tracking your steps by connecting your smart watch account and giving you points and rewards for tracking everyday. Well I use it through my work and they reward me in everything that goes from credits towards their fitness merchandise which even includes one of a kind backpack/tote bags that have pretty cool logos to converting to gift cards or even depositing your credit as actual cash straight to your bank account. Insert mind-blown emoji here. I don’t know how many other companies use this, but I really appreciate this thing!

My workplace requires employees to use VirginPulse to get health care discounts as part of its wellness program. It is easy to use for the most part, but I had to hunt around for a while to figure out how to find a few things, such as where and how I could redeem points. I’m also using the Max Buzz tracking device that I got for free as part of my company’s program and it was super easy to link to VirginPulse and serves as a motivator to see how many steps I’m getting—or not, getting—as the case may be.

VirginPulse encourages you to interact with it to earn points, and that’s mostly OK, but I’m not a child anymore and most of the advice provided in the “journeys” are things that should be common sense. And, of course, I don’t like that the company is getting so much information from me. I have to find a balance between including enough to help me reach my goals without giving them too much.

My employer switched from a gym benefit (X dollars annually) to Virgin Pulse. Not many were happy about the switch, but I tried to make it work. After a few months, I found it too tedious to keep up with swiping the cards daily and logging habits, which strangely count more than exercise for Virgin Pulse. I thought I’d still do all right, since I was syncing my steps from the Health app on my iPhone.

Turns out Virgin Pulse conveniently dropped the step tracking connection during a month I didn’t check in, and in the process I lost around a hundred of dollars of benefits. If you’re a user of VirginPulse, check it every day. Don’t trust it to function as advertised. If you’re an employer considering Virgin Pulse, recognizing its business model is taking data from your employees and leeching off the benefits you think you’re providing to them.

As for the developer, if you want to improve your reputation, users should be able to earn the full point allocation without logging into VirginPulse daily so long as they get enough steps.

My employer's health insurance gives rebates for doing this daily. VirginPulse tracks steps, exercise and reading little tips each day, many of which are useful. The optional competitions with your coworkers is nice too.

But the WORST part are the bugs, mostly the "network error" messages that pop up multiple times per week. Not my network errors, theirs. I've had it not record the tip "cards", which get me the rebates. The errors will also prevent you from seeing the tips, which also give rebate points.

There are interface errors too. For example today I was trying to read tips on way to relax, BUT the text of the tip wouldn't open, no matter where I tapped. How's that help me relax? That's what finally prompted me to post this review, the increased frustration while trying to learn how to relax! :-(

Do you get kickbacks for the more apps and devices this requires your users to engage? Truly ridiculous.
If you are truly a busy professional, pray your company doesn’t adopt this as part of your health care benefits package. You must use external apps to build points and the program forces you to use separate apps to track different things and you get to duplicate your entries. If you already use apps, well lucky you - yiu now get the tedious benefit of entering your work outs and food twice. I have entered workout data in pulse itself, and into myfitnesspal which is required for your food entry. My insurance gives me a different app for food diary and it isn’t listed. Nope neither work for tracking toward necessary points. You must use Garmin or strava. Or you can sacrifice the benefit your company gives you.
Developers- please integrate the option for us to select which device or app feeds our workouts, food, calories etc. your integration of stacking numbers from all really makes it impossible for us to get any true numbers that help. We have to go back to the apps feeding this to make any sense - in which case you are just wasting our time and getting in the way of our work.

I’m pretty good at figuring out apps, computer programs, and other types of technology. The amount of time it take to go through this full app is ridiculous. The list of “achievements” are extensive and do not tell you when you’ve completed one or the other leaving the user guessing. Selecting items to read details may result in the completion of the item. Is there any reset for “journeys”. Somethings can only be completed by extensive circumstances, for example, I might talk to the same 3 people a day. How is that going to allow for creating a large group. Information is not always found in the area needed, for example: “One journey should be fully completed in each quarter to gain the points”. Started all my journeys before finding this, looks like I missed out on the remaining year. It would have been nice to have this information on the screen with journeys. There no explanation as to how we can track 30 mins of exercise. This is a highly stressful app to try and keep up with; I I lose my incentive on benefits if I quit VirginPulse. So looks like I’ll just figure things out or hopefully reach a bench mark.

I started using the virgin pulse app over a year and a half ago. It is by far the best thing I could have done. Once I ordered my first activity tracker I wasn’t sure what to expect. After the first month I noticed that I would constantly check it and see how I was doing throughout the day. When you check your tracker you are more aware of what you have done and what you have to do yet. I love the designs they have and I absolutely love the max buzz tracker. I actually showed it to one of my co workers and he ordered one the next day. I love the fact that my max buzz lets me know when I hit my goal for the day. It actually keeps my mind more focused and on task. I would highly recommend the Virgin Pulse app and all of their devises. I will never go back.

iOS user here. Generally, VirginPulse is decent. The lack of a mobile version for the Programs page is exceedingly frustrating, as the pop-up for any trophies you’ve earned can’t be closed because you can’t move the page to reach the “X”. Logging into the website via safari resolves this issue as you can zoom out and close it, but then why use VirginPulse at all?

The biggest issue however is the fact that I generally take anywhere between 9,000 and 14,000 a day, and yet for the past three days it has not updated my steps in my points statement. Looking back through the month, there are at least 7 other days where they haven’t been reported on my points page. They show up in my stats, but I do not receive the points for them. I have a Fitbit Charge 2, and have disabled phone statistic recording in lieu of the more accurate Fitbit. I did not have this issue prior to the latest update. I’m missing out on at least 1,000 points from this (and that’s just from this month)... obviously this is extremely frustrating.

This is also the case (although far less frequently) with my sleep recording. The number of hours slept is also different by an hour or two, usually stating that I slept longer (I wish!).

Will the points be retroactively applied to my account when this issue is resolved?

I have contacted VP previously about data errors and they did not email me back a personal response- just articles that did not address my problem. So, last week when I discovered my colleagues were getting up to ten times the reward I was receiving for earning the same number of points I went to my work’s benefits officer. She contacted VP and got the ribbon at the top of the points page updated so the described reward listed there is the same one offered to other participants in the program. But my earned reward listed below that is still 30 dollars when it should be 75 for the points I have received according to the count on the ribbon. And now my 15,000 boot has disappeared my trophies also.

I should also note that my VP app has paid out this way the entire time. On my highest performing quarters I earned points for 275 dollars and instead I got 40. I’ve been doing the program for about a year. I hope this can be straightened out.

Virgin Pulse is my new nemesis. Spent the day realizing I have to use VirginPulse (or the even more horrible web site) pretty much every working day for the foreseeable future or I will have the privilege of paying more for my health insurance. I realized I really had to figure this all out...in tears trying to sort it out. I had to call the help line twice today they admitted the website was terrible and I should only use VirginPulse . VirginPulse is horrible too. Can’t for the life of me figure out how to enter my hip and waist measurements. The kicker is that I am already doing a weight loss program that Virgin Pulse referred me to (Omada) so I am already entering all my food and steps into another app. Now I find out the two apps don’t communicate so I get to enter everything twice. Oh and I bought the wrong fitness tracker so get to enter all steps manually! Oh and Virgin Pulse does not let you track calories directly so you have to download another app-that costs money and/or is full of ads- for that. Have fun!!

App is extremely easy to use and integrates with multiple devices and apps (FitBits, My Fitness Pal, Weight Watchers, iPhone Health app) at various times. It has notifications and alerts to remind you to “do your daily cards,” and if you somehow miss a day, you can still get points retroactively for steps, activity, food intake, sleep, and healthy habits - just not cards. That being said, I generally track steps, minutes of activity, sleep, habits, and the cards in less than 5 minutes per day and get well over twice the required points for my employer’s health plan without really trying at all.

5/5 Would recommend.

Hello! VirginPulse is user friendly enough but please include a Contact Us button in VirginPulse settings menu perhaps that leads to an email generator or embedded comment box, so suggestions can be made to the limited set of options for living a healthy lifestyle. My favorites that aren’t found in VirginPulse yet include gardening, essential oils, vitamins including DHA, and making healthy food choices at home and out such as fish versus red meat, poultry, salads, oil and vinegar versus creamy dressings or sauces, low sodium, grilled not fried, and skipping the sodas and dessert. Maybe also brushing teeth one extra time per day than usual, flossing several times a week, and going to the dentist annually - because dental health affects stroke and heart health, improves confidence and relationships, etc. Thanks for considering some or all of these, especially the gardening and essential oils!

They finally fixed it so you can look back but the stupid auto scroll is crap. While trying to do the health survey it auto moves to the next question, even when you haven't entered an answer, if you hit the question mark. And it wouldn't let you go back. You can scroll back up but it auto scrolls back down before you can answer the question. Also the smoking question is a double negative with an "or" condition. I thought I answered correctly as never having smoked but when I got the health result it gave a red dot (fail indicator) on smoking. If this is accurate I failed smoking for having never smoked in my life. Please explain how never smoking is failing. Are you saying it would be more healthy if I started smoking? Should I run out to the store now and buy a pack of cigarettes? How many do I need to smoke to pass your test? One pack? Or do I need to smoke regularly? Every day?
VirginPulse is crap.

I’ve been using VirginPulse for months. With the most recent updates, something has gone wrong. It doesn’t synch to my Fitbit or to my fitness pal app as it should. I pull it down to synch and nothing gets updated. The only way I can get the 2 apps to synch correctly is to disconnect them. That is a hassle and complete waste of time. Tonight I couldn’t even get VirginPulse to open correctly so I had to delete it. I reported the syncing issue via the web last week and received a generic “we’re working on it” email. It’s been a week now and the issue still exists. I’m ready to delete VirginPulse and stop using it all together because you can’t seem to get things right. What happened to quality assurance testing software updates before they are released? Frustrated beyond belief.