The two following words will always get the attention of anyone, “Discount” and “Deals”. Everyone wants to save a buck. Everyone wants to find out where they can get something for free! There are Coupon Gurus who spend hours cutting out coupons, barcodes and advertisements out of newspapers. These frugal warriors dedicate themselves to getting the best for less. The question is however, why take a 20thcentury approach when we have 21st century technology? The Coupons App takes all of this and puts it on your mobile device.
Why This App?
The Coupons App can claim to be the best in the business. They have been around since the early days of smartphones, 2008 to be exact. Every day, the app is updated with hundreds if not thousands of coupons. Businesses can upload coupons at the cost of $149 for 3 months. That brings along with it constant broadcast to consumers and of course exposure to a very well established audience. For the regular Joe or Jane, you and I, that means that you will always wake up to a myriad of choices, coupons establishments, businesses, restaurant, and gas stations daily. Oh my!
Getting Around
The app comes in both iOS and Android flavors. The Android version has a slightly better user interface than the iOS version, and we will concentrate on the Android version for this review. Every menu option is accessible with the Menu key. Menu options consist of Home, Search, Search by Barcode, Local, Alphabetical, Expiration, Food, Stores, GPS Refresh, Notifications, Favorites, Clear History, Share App and Exit.
Many of the above mentioned options are self-explanatory. When starting up the app, you are presented with a bunch of local deals in your area. You’ll see the current date at the top of the screen. Next to each deal is the expiration date, deal description and title. Clicking on an entry takes you to its respective coupon. You can either screenshot the coupon and print it out, or just carry your phone to the establishment in question.
The app uses push notifications and GPS to auto-narrow searches to businesses in your area. Right away we saw Coupons to Kenneth Cole, Express, Arby’s, all venues which were in our immediate area. We saw everything from 30% of certain items, to buy one get one free deals. A nice touch! It is important to mention that we are in New York City, so we certainly expected to see many, many coupons, advertisements and deals alike. You can of course choose to see “all coupons” rather than just the ones in your immediate area.
We like the fact that the app includes gas deals. Currently, in our area, the gas prices hovers at $4. We were pleasantly surprised to find a link to the cheapest gas in our area. $3.72 was the price. Tapping on “Cheapest Gas” revealed the address of the gas station, date the price was set, the distance in miles and of course, the name of the gas station. Scrolling downward gives you listings of gas stations within the same price range incrementally in your vicinity. For example, the next listing was $3.80. This particular gas station was .87 miles away as opposed to the one aforementioned, which coincidentally was only .37 miles away from our location.
Scan Away
The Coupons App includes a QR barcode scanner. Tapping on the SCANBARCODE icon brings the scanner up. We tested it with a few QR codes we had on flyers. It worked flawlessly every time and bought us directly to the site which hosted the information relevant to the barcode scanned. In one case, we scanned a barcode on an Express For Men flyer. It bought us directly to the discount being offered by Express For Men; Another nice touch!
Verdict
The only criticism we could find for this app was that the iOS version wasn’t as elaborate as the Android version. That said, both versions work great and the app lives up to what it promises to do. We have reviewed quite a few “deals” apps, but none of them come as close to the depth and wealth of coupons and information allotted to you by The Coupon App. The fact that it is well established, being around for more than half a decade has a lot to do with that. Whether you are a coupon aficionado, or a business who is seeking a way to connect with as many people as you can on a modest budget, The Coupon App has something for you. We plan on using this one a lot. We recommend not just downloading their app, but also checking out their website and twitter page for updates on deals. 5 out of 5 stars.
GMA.
