A Craigslist Experience That Is Better Than Craigslist

You can buy nearly anything on the site, but you can also find nearly any kind of person you’re looking for or, if you seek nothing but entertainment, you can tumble into a voyeuristic abyss for hours.

But Craigslist is also stubbornly slow to add new features or adopt new technologies. A mo

bile app? Maybe in 2020.

The great news, though, is that independent app developers have built mobile software that offers a better Craigslist experience than from a traditional browser, even if the format is a bit smaller.

On Apple, CraigsPro+ and Craigslist Mobile Ultimate (both $2) are quite good, with distinct strengths that serve different constituencies. On Android,Craigslist Notification (free) offers an experience roughly similar to theiPhone apps, although it is less refined.

The biggest difference between the apps and Craigslist.com is convenience. With the apps, you can browse the listings much more easily while you’re on the move, but you can also receive alerts whenever someone posts an item of interest.

And on CraigsPro+, at least, those alerts aren’t limited to your local city or nearby cities, as they are on Craigslist.com or the other apps.

I searched recently for an acoustic guitar — a Taylor GS Mini — that sells for around $500. I live in suburban Connecticut, and I’d be willing to drive a couple of hours for the guitar if the price were right.

On Craigslist.com, I searched several regional and city-specific locations for the item and found nothing. With CraigsPro+, I simultaneously searched 30 cities in the United States, which I could not do on Craigslist.com. A few matches turned up in remote cities.

I then set up an alert for the item, and over two weeks, I found at least 10 different listings. That helped me determine the low end of the price range. Next, I refined my alert, so the app returned guitars of only that model selling for under a certain price and in cities within my preferred travel range.

Over a week, I found two listings that met my match, without having to visit Craigslist.com once for manual searches.

The site is useful for things other than shopping, and the apps help with these too. On Rants and Raves, a Craigslist forum, you can gauge the national Craigslist community’s take on budget issues, with a search on that term, or tune into discussions about a particular politician or business.

Or, if you were interested in a budget analyst job within the government sector, for instance, you could receive alerts, albeit within a more limited geographic range. In that category, users may receive alerts only from 10 locations.

Likewise, if you were interested in dating people who mentioned specific religious orientations in their ads, you could set up alerts accordingly and screen candidates within specific age ranges.

When it came to posting ads, CraigsPro+ was weaker than some of the others on my list. I tried posting a violin for sale in my local market, but because I had selected all cities for my recent product searches, it placed my post in Atlanta, which was atop the list of cities I’d searched nationally.

To post in the location nearest me, New Haven, I would have had to delete all the 30 other cities I’d selected for broader searches. The app’s developer said a workaround exists, but the procedure is not obvious to users.

Even with that workaround, I’d prefer to use CraigsPro+ as a shopping app and another app, Craigslist Mobile (free), for posting.

Both apps were built by the same developer and have earned raves from iTunes reviewers. Via e-mail, the developer said some users preferred the more streamlined approach of Craigslist Mobile.

Indeed, Craigslist Mobile is simpler, but perhaps as a result, it is also less versatile. When searching for listings or setting up alerts, for instance, the app returned listings that included only the Craigslist locations immediately surrounding a selected location.

You can’t select a broad range of cities in far-flung locations, as you can with CraigsPro+. The benefit, however, is that the list of cities you search doesn’t interfere with the posting process.

I’d recommend Craigslist Mobile for those who wouldn’t drive an hour or two to buy something and who don’t need the app to notify them when an item of interest is for sale.

Craigslist Mobile users also must tolerate a strip of advertising across the bottom of the screen. For $1, you can buy an ad-free version,Craigslist Mobile Pro, or for $2 you can buy Craigslist Mobile Ultimate, which includes alerts.

On Android, Craigslist Notification was the best of the ones I tried. The app, which is sometimes listed under the name CraigsNotifica, includes features similar to those of Craigslist Mobile Ultimate and CraigsPro+.

There are subtle differences, though. Users must open the app to review the alerts they’ve requested, and ads stretch across the bottom of the screen. Craigslist Notification was also slower, at times, than the iPhone apps, and the graphics weren’t as pleasing. (You can buy an ad-free version, CraigsNotifica Contribution, for $10.)

Another big difference is that you can’t post ads, although the developer offers a separate, and free, app, Sell on Craigslist. It is available for only some Androids, not including my Droid2.

That’s a less-than-catastrophic problem. Posting on Craigslist on a mobile phone is nice, but for shoppers or job seekers, browsing the service on a smartphone can be downright indispensable.

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