The Official Blurb
From the Reperli website:
Mémorisez rapidement des adresses complètes et fiables
Retrouvez facilement vos adresses favorites
Partagez simplement vos adresses avec votre famille et vos amis
From the Reperli Facebook page:
A single address book, for all your favorite spots.
Reperli enables you to save, organize and share your best addresses in just a few clicks:
- Save full, reliable addresses very easily
- Find all your addresses listed by category, by city or on a map
- Share your address book privately and check out your friends’ favorite spots
Our Take
Reperli is like that Rolodex that you used to have sitting on your desk 15 years ago, full of taped and stapled business cards, before your life started to revolve around your smart phone (yeah, dating myself here a little). You can search addresses, add them to categories like “Store”, “Hotel”, “Outdoors”, and “Children”, plus some other ones. It keeps the cities you’ve searched in, and lets you explore some stuff around you via something that looks a lot like the built-in map on my iPhone. It includes a couple more features, like a Wishlist, but that’s it in a nutshell.
I’m feeling a little conflicted on the usefulness of the idea. Is it just me, or does it seem like it’s a second version of my contacts list on my phone, which also contains an address field? This may be because I lean on electronic communication for nearly everything, but I rarely send actual letters. I can see this being useful, though, if I’m on vacation and leave to explore the area, and need my hotel address my fingertips so I can safely return. But then again, I would probably just use my built-in, iPhone notepad for that.
The question I keep asking myself is – does anyone need a “Rolodex” anymore, to store physical addresses? I would love to hear from someone that does mailers for a living, or can fill me in on when they used it, and ask how it worked for them.
What We Love
The Wishlist feature is neat. As a person that tends to fling myself all over the world, I had fun with this part. I immediately typed in “Mykonos, Greece” to see if it would pop up and it did. Now every time I open the app, I get to remind myself that I want to go to Greece one day if I click on my Wishlist. Cool.
I also really like the email that comes from co-founder Stephane Benkemoun. It’s a really nice touch, kind of like when you get a handwritten thank you note after attending a baby shower. Warm, fuzzy, and indicative of good customer service should I decide I need something or have a question as a Reperli user. The email itself is also a win; the tone is conversational, informal, and actually addresses one of my concerns right there in print. He talks about how people probably use their Notes or contacts list, and how Reperli now gives you an option to “manage your addresses much more efficiently, and share them too!” Good job on recognizing what the typical response might be to your app, and taking it head on. Stephane also gives up his Twitter handle and Skype name in the bottom of the email. Yay for transparency!
They’re also active on social media, which is something else I like about them, and their website is clean, simple, and pretty.
What We Didn’t Love
Frankly, we had a few problems navigating the app. It’s a tad bit clunky when it comes to ease of use, mostly because I couldn’t figure out if what I was seeing was a glitch or if it was actually supposed to work that way. It left me a little confused.
For example, the little person with the plus at the top is what I assume adds contacts that you can share your lists with (stop me if I’ve got this wrong someone). I clicked on that, and see two options: “Invite Contacts” with a down arrow next to it, and a green button that says “Invite More Friends”. I don’t see anything under Invite Contacts (is this because none of my contacts use the app?), so I click the green button. Out of the 358 contacts that I have programmed into my iPhone, 26 of them appear on the list. Just 26. (Why? I don’t get it). Some are names, some are just email addresses.. I don’t understand how the list was populated. So I click on my friend in Indiana (and one I know wouldn’t mind if she gets a random message from me inviting her to use an app). I click her name, I get a popup that says “Invite Steph to join you?”, and I click yes. That’s it. I have no idea if it sent an email, a text, a Facebook message … and I have no idea what it said to her. This alone would stop me from using this for any business-related purpose, since I can’t edit the message and don’t know how it was delivered.
Also – no downloadable logo for the press, guys!!
Links-A-Lot
Want more Reperli?
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