It’s never fun to return to your car after time out with your friends to find a parking ticket plastered under your windshield wiper. It might seem fairly avoidable (just don’t park there; remember to check the meter), but it happens more than I’d like. In NYC, a single parking violation can run you $65, while Philadelphia starts at $31 and can run up to $65 if unpaid. In Portland, Oregon, where I live, tickets start at $44 and can run even higher.
If you find yourself with a ton of expenses due to parking tickets, then, a single app that works via Android Auto might be the fix. Adding SpotAngels to my Android phone has me checking my screen before even exiting the car.
What SpotAngels actually does
It has one job — don’t get a ticket
SpotAngels covers more than 100 US cities, according to its Google Play listing. It’s got an average rating of 4.5 stars with more than 3,000 reviews, and has pulled in more than 500,000 downloads. It’s a press darling, with places like TechCrunch calling it the “Waze for parking,” noting that it raised $2.3 million from investors, including Google Maps’ co-founder Lars Rasmussen.
The app gives you a color coded map of free vs paid street parking with predicted availability, a great thing if you’re headed into a busy city you need to park in. It’s got street cleaning and alternate-side-parking hour lookups, residential permit zone information, and even a way to book a spot in local participating ga4rages with in-app payments. Plus, and this is the part that got me to download it, automatic parked-location memory via Bluetooth.
Basically, when you park, the app will use your car’s Bluetooth to auto-log where you parked, then sets a push notification to go to your phone when you need to move the car for street cleaning or any other posted rule. If you don’t have Bluetooth in your car, you can set the location manually.
Today, I went downtown to get a haircut, and I looked ahead at the area I planned to park in. There were several parking meters noted on the screen, so I went to one of them and parked. My phone was connected via Bluteooth so I could listen to music, and that way SpotAngel knows when I stop and park. When I hopped out of the car to pay the meter (via its ParkingKitty app), SpotAngels asked me to take a photo of the meter, which then adds to the user-contributed database.
Walking away from the car, I found that SpotAngels had saved my car’s location. If I had run out of parking time, or there was a street cleaning or other change to the status, it would notify me.
There is a subscription
SpotAngels Pro gives you more stuff
There are a few users on the Play store review section for SpotAngels that the map and free-parking overlays require a subscription.
“This app used to be great, says user Alex P. “But now when I search for an address, I no longer see the color on the streets for street parking. Turns out, you need to pay now to see where you can park for free, where you have to pay to park, etc. And not a one-time fee; it’s a subscription!”
SpotAngels support said, “Hi Alex, thanks for the feedback! The map and current regulation information do not and will never require a subscription. Maybe free parking has been deselected in the filters? You can toggle it on or off when searching for a location or in the filters below the search bar.”
SpotAlert — a feature the app uses to let you know when there are open parking spots — does require a SpotAngels Pro subscription, according to the app’s own pop-up dialog. YOu’ll get street cleaning reminders, open spot alerts, parking recommendations, and cashback when you park in participating garages. It’s $2.99 per month, and you can get a seven-day free trial.
No more tickets
SpotAngel fits in to your routine
There are other tools, of course, that help manage your parking. You can use Google Maps to remember where you parked, and it can also tell you when parking might be difficult. You can also use a different app, SpotHero, to reserve parking spaces ahead of time, and it even integrates with Google Maps.
None of these tricks will tell you when you’re about to get a ticket, though, whether it’s a parking meter expiration or a street sweeping schedule about to make your life more expensive. SpotAngel does all this with crowd-source info, of course, but that’s still better than no info.
I’m keeping SpotAngel on my phone
Of course, this isn’t an in-depth review of the app; your usage will determine whether it’s worth installing, or even worth the Pro subscription. Still, I think it’s a useful app for anyone who regularly street-parks in a city SpotAngel covers. It’s probably less useful for those who mostly park in driveways or non-metered rural areas.
If you’re looking to keep your windshield free from parking tickets, this could be the answer to your problem. Give it a try and see how it works for you.