App Review: Key Ring vs. mobile-pocket vs. CardStar

When I went through my wallet the other day, I was frustrated by how many store member cards I had to keep in my wallet.  All the grocery stores around here have them and then you add to that all of the restaurants, craft and office supply store cards.  Ridonculous.  Time to go digital.

I thought it would take days of crawling through apps and testing them to see which one I liked best, but one app quickly rose to the top.  There were not nearly as many options as I thought there would be and I compared three notable apps: Key Ring, mobile-pocket, and CardStar.  All of these apps are available on both iPhone and Android.

Key Ring (FREE)

• Pros
• unlimited cards stored locally to test without registering
• online syncing/backup
• simple interface, intuitive to use
• works for member cards and store gift cards
• ads are discrete - can be minimized to show only a single purple line at the bottom of the screen (shown at right)
• Extras
• built-in rewards programs for popular stores
• special offers section customized for your zip code
• displays circulars for nearby stores (customizable) from within the app
• share-able lists with pictures
• tracks balances for gift cards
• links from gift cards to handy store info (maps, click-to-call, etc.)
• Cons
• ad-supported (I list this as a "con," but that's not necessarily true.  Free apps may switch to charged apps at any time, disappear from the market, or may not have very good customer support if you experience problems.)
• extra features might not be that useful
• not sure if the gift card balance really works - somewhat awkward to input value and I couldn't find where/if it did display the balance.

mobile-pocket (FREE)

• Pros
• no ads
• online card syncing/backup
• database of images for commonly used cards
• clearly displays barcode
• displays thumbnails of front and back of card
• simple interface (LOVE the simplicity of this app)
• search buton on opening screen
• Cons
• the built-in camera function uses a small viewable area and doesn't rotate, which makes it a bit awkward to use
• images are smallish, even when enlarged (hard to read the text)
• can't share with other users

CardStar (FREE)

• Pros
• no ads
• clean interface
• database of popular merchants
• ability to sync to other devices
• Cons
• doesn't store photos of cards
• almost a little "too" simple.  It's not hard to navigate, but it did take longer than the other apps to figure out because of its minimalism

After playing with each of the apps, I pretty quickly ruled out Card Star.  It doesn't store photos of your cards.  I'm kind of skeptical of these apps to begin with and it comforts me to have the photos of the cards because if the barcode scanning doesn't work (many people report that the stores are not equipped to scan barcodes from the phone screen), at least I have all the information from the card in a photo so it can be typed in.  The first app I tried was Key Ring and I really liked it.  However, when I saw the beautifully simple interface of mobile-pocket I wanted to like that one better, haha.  Both apps run smoothly and have a lot of the same basic features (Key Ring has a ton of extras that I'm unlikely to use).  In the end, though, I decided to go with Key Ring.  Here's what sold me:

• stores large, clear photos of the front and back of each card
• designed for both member cards and gift cards
• ability to click through to find store phone numbers and locations (a feature I do think I'll use)

As I said, I'm skeptical about how well these apps work and if they're really ready to replace the physical cards.  I'm giving it a trial run and I'm not throwing out any of the physical cards until I've tested the digital system for a couple of months.  Note: many stores (Panera, for instance) will let you just give them your phone number, negating the need for an app or a card.

A Note about Loyalty Cards:

It looks like there are some other apps out there that try to replicate the paper loyalty card system (the "buy 10 sandwiches get 1 free" type of card) digitally, but the one I tried couldn't connect to the server 2 out of 3 times when I tried it on different days and when I finally did get in, the interface was annoying and immediately deterred me.  Having just moved to a new area, I haven't accumulated any of these yet so, for now, I'm just going to leave this issue alone.  Feel free to comment about solutions you've found, though!