I love a good indie app. I love a good indie app that comes out of nowhere because someone decided to solve a problem that was personally annoying them. After picking up a single Pepsi for €3 and finding 3 Pepsi for €5 in the next supermarket one Redditor decided to make a supermarket price comparison app just for Ireland. It’s called Cisean.
Save Money While Shopping in Ireland
Cisean, the Irish word for basket, has a single goal. To make price comparison between the aisles of Irish supermarkets easier. While many supermarkets have battled hard to get you to do “the big shop” with them, the experience has become increasingly fractured. That used to be because Lidl didn’t have your bread of choice, or Tesco doesn’t have that specific milk you like. But now it’s because supermarkets have different deals to attract your attention, and more importantly your wallet.
That’s where Cisean comes in. The idea is simple. Users of the app update the prices of products as they buy them, crowdsourcing an Irish-specific database of price comparison.
In the app you can compare prices, few leaflets from supermarkets and check both single buy deals and multi buy deals. What I particularly like is the ability to save loyalty cards, quickly open a barcode scanner to submit a bargain you’ve spotted or, surprisingly hard to find a good app for, create and share shopping lists with loved ones.
Ultimately, the idea here is as you put something into your basket, you can scan and check the price in the supermarket you’re in, double-checking a walk up the road wouldn’t save you a small fortune.
Gamifying Shopping Data
Another initial weakness has been overcome by reactive, quick and clever developer work from the app’s creator. A natural limitation with Ireland is that we rarely have databases ready to go for projects like this. But the app’s developer has added games to the app. Barcode Hunter lets users verify prices and earn points to battle it out on a leaderboard. Match Maker asks users to duplicate products and merge them, overall cleaning up the catalogue.
Why would someone bother? Well, simply put the reaction to the app across two Reddit threads has been phenomenal. People see the necessity for an app like this and are eager to have it succeed. Should this succeed as a community-based project, the developer has potential to monetise that live database of products too. So I’m personally rooting for them.
Cisean is free to download on Android now, with the developer confirming iOS is in the works following launch feedback. The developer confirms the app will remain free, but you can support the project either by helping with prices or donating to the developer.
