Outdoor Swimmer membership benefits
Magazine subscription + membership benefits
Whatever kind of swimmer you are, your Outdoor Swimmer membership supports you to take your swimming further. With your subscription to our completely independent magazine, membership to our community, and loads of benefits, it’s the full package.
Simon Griffiths launched H2Open Magazine in 2011, which we renamed Outdoor Swimmer in 2017. At first, it was simply an independent magazine for people who were fanatical about this activity called outdoor swimming. Then, the activity grew – and so did we.
Soon, we had a community of swimmers from all over the world. And, we didn’t just open water swim for fitness and challenge reasons – we dipped, travelled, and ice swam for better health and wellbeing. So, we grew and developed our membership to fit this new world of outdoor swimming.
It starts with your subscription
You can read our content in three ways:
- Print: If you subscribe to our print magazine, you get 10 beautiful new issues a year through the post. You can also access all our back issues and read the current issue digitally via Pocketmags or the Outdoor Swimmer app.
- Digital: If you subscribe to our digital magazine, you can read 10 brilliant new issues a year and all our back issues via Pocketmags or the Outdoor Swimmer app.
- Online: If you subscribe to Extra, you can read premium content as blog posts and in a flipbook version of the magazine on our website.
Add your membership benefits
- Gold: If you subscribe to our print magazine, you get Gold membership benefits
- Silver: If you subscribe to our digital magazine, you get Silver membership benefits
- Extra: If you get the online content via Extra, you get Extra membership benefits
- Patrons and Super Patrons get all the benefits of Gold membership, with some very special added benefits
What are my membership benefits?
You can choose to use any of the benefits below. Pick those that suit you and use them when you like:
- Free, automatic entry into a monthly ballot to win free swims at venues around the UK
- Free, priority tickets to our sell-out Virtual Event series – Q&As on different topics with experts in their field
- Priority tickets to events like our Pool Parties
- Members-only community app
- Our entire back catalogue of 100+ issues to read on any device (Gold, Silver and Patron/Super Patron)
- Discounts on Outdoor Swimmer courses and apparel
- Exclusive offers, discounts and competitions from brand partners
Find a list of discounts and offers here.
How do I access my membership benefits?
The easiest way to access your membership benefits is through the members-only community on the app, Heylo. We post announcements there first, and you can browse events and discounts on swimming gear, gifts, services and courses. You can chat with other members and us, too. If you don’t like the noise of notifications, you can easily turn them off.
To join, follow these instructions. You’ll need your name, registered email address, and membership/subscriber number.
It’s also worth making sure that you’ve opted in to receive emails. We won’t bombard you with information or marketing – we send out newsletters about upcoming issues and events.
What’s the Outdoor Swimmer back catalogue, and how do I access it?
Our back catalogue has a digitally optimised copy of every issue of Outdoor Swimmer magazine. Gold and Silver members and Patrons/Super Patrons can download and read these magazines on whichever device(s) they like. Great if you’re off on holiday!
Pocketmags hosts our back catalogue, and you can read it on the Pocketmags website or get the Outdoor Swimmer app from your app store. To find out how to access the digital library, follow these instructions.
Why can’t I read articles online?
Only Extra members can read articles on our websites. Gold and Silver members and Patrons/Super Patrons can find these articles – and more – in the digital back catalogue. Look at the date of the article you want to read and pick the corresponding magazine.
What does my membership cost, and what if I want to cancel?
We keep our prices as low as possible. Your membership not only benefits you, but it also supports our independent, experience-led journalism – we’re not owned by a big publisher, and we never write with AI. This means we can give honest reviews of gear, talk freely about important topics, interview whomever we like, and – perhaps most importantly – add our voice to campaigns such as Swimmable Cities and to end sewage pollution.
We understand that the time may come when you want to cancel your membership for whatever reason, and you’re free to do this. But we ask that you consider dropping down a level rather than cancelling completely.
For a full list of current levels and prices, click here.