Price: $0.99 Score: 8/10 Category: Lifestyle
Craigslist is notorious for its poorly designed user interface. The site feels like it’s stuck in the 90’s, but with Craigspro for the iPad you can use Craigslist the way a modern day person ought to.
Developed by IOCo, the option laden CraigsPro allows you to save search preferences, favorite, reply, tweet out, post your own content, and much more. Better than that, the whole browsing experience is so much improved you may never go back to the actual website.
That said, CraigsPro isn’t perfect. You still have to deal with semi-clunky graphics and while the app is flexible, it’s not as slick as some of the other utilities apps on the market today. Craigspro may lack a certain element of design cache, but it still functions well with a little bit of getting used to.
The Craigspro app is set up with an online search line with boxes below that allows you to narrow down your keyword search by city (or cities), overall category (e.g. For Sale, Services, Jobs, etc) and Filters and Settings. Overall, this set up is efficient but sometimes lacking. While it’s great to be able to search multiple cities at once, it would be even better if you could search “Apartments no broker fee” along with “Apartments by owner” etc.
Instead, each category and setting must work as a separate search. This doesn’t affect the app too much though, since you can save specific searches and refer to them via a toolbar along the bottom of the iPad screen.
Saved searches are stored in the searches screen as a list with the date the list was created, the most recent time it was checked, and the customizable search name. A delete all searches button on the top does just that, and swiping over the search like you would in email allows you to delete lines on a case by case basis.
The toolbar across the bottom of the app also allows you to Post your own items with a Craigslist account and browse favorites.
Actually browsing posts on Craigspro is much easier than using the site through a regular browser. Search results are listed with picture thumbnails so you can see images before clicking through, and little green checkmarks show which posts you’ve already read. The actual layout of posts is clean and concise, and switching search settings from the results page is simple via a horizontal and vertical toolbar.
This app could improve a little, but it’s already better than Craigslist.com. If you’re a serious Craigslist user this would be a great timesaver for the times when you want to work your way up from trading up from an old phone to a Porsche.
Bottom Line: There are still a few kinks to work out when it comes to searching for very specific, multi-option items like apartments in specific categories, but once you go CraigsPro you might never go back.
