How useful are parking apps?

Banking, Instagram, beating your friends on Wordle, apps are fantastically useful for lots of different things. Where they’re growing in popularity is helping people with their parking.

There are apps that help you pay for parking, find chargers, plot routes, pre-book and more.

But how useful are they?

Parking in the palm of your hand

Think about it, how often can you say that you’re without your phone? There’s a very real chance that if you’re reading this it’s on your mobile.

Your phone is a connection, not just to different people but thousands of different services. We’ve reached a point where your phone is so multifunctional that it can be paying for your shopping one second and watching a TV show seconds later.

Parking apps let you pay for parking or arrange your stay without needing to use a ticket machine in a car park, queue up or rummage in the bottom of your bag for change. That gets rid of all the waiting around or going back and forth to your car and ticket machines. Just by using your phone you speed up being able to get on with your day, whether that’s meeting friends, running errands, or getting to work.

Make up for missing technology

Apple used to have a marketing saying, “there’s an app for that.” They weren’t wrong.

Apps work in loads of different ways, and in many cases are a great substitute for missing bits of tech. If your car doesn’t have a sat nav, there’s an app. You can access music, track milage and more. If a car park doesn’t have a machine that takes card, but exists on a pre-booking network, you can get around not being able to pay the way you’d like.

Being able to fill in the gaps technologically makes journeys much easier, you just need to connect your car to a phone, either through Bluetooth or by, you guessed it, using an app.

Is everything in one place better?

Having everything you need at the swipe of a finger is great, but it’s important that you make sure you avoid disaster where possible. Losing a phone or having it stolen is a nightmare, but it can be avoided by keeping it safe and secure when you’re out and about.

A flat battery however is a pain in the neck that keeps you away from all the apps you need to manage your parking. USB recharging blocks are a fantastic way to make sure you don’t run out of power when you need it. They’re relatively cheap and once you’ve charged it you can keep it in the car or a bad until its needed. Just make sure you’re checking the charge levels on them or giving them a top up before a long journey.

But is it worth filling your phone up with loads of apps to help a trip? Working out which app you need and for where, then trying to find them on your phone, then juggling different accounts feels like more hassle than its worth at times.

We’re slightly biased because our new app is great, but it also combines a lot of the parking payment, pre-booking, and other bits in one place.

The whole point of an app is maximum convenience which is what we’re aiming at.