Tech Review: Making Parking An Ease With Flowbird Mobile App
Parking should always be easy—whether you’re rushing to a meeting or getting together with a friend. While technology has essentially made paying with coins and bills a thing of the past, contactless payments may still require finding a machine, selecting expiration times, and printing a ticket.
TheFlowbird mobile parking app has simplified the process making parking easier and safer, eliminating the need to carry cash, pay from virtually anywhere, avoid fines, and ditch lines at the parking meter.
How to use the app
The app, free to download for iOS and Android users, works superior to other parking apps because of its intuitive user interface. Once your account is setup, three simple steps has your parking set and ready to go. Choose your location, set the duration you plan on staying there, confirm your payment, and you’re good to go.
As finding parking lots can be cumbersome, Flowbird intuitively uses your GPS to identify your location and automatically see where you’ve parked. Plus, you’ll get notifications during your parking session, so you know when your time is almost up, and only pay for the actual parking time—saving you effort, time, and money!
If you need to stay a little while longer, remote ticket time extension has you covered. Simply tap to select an extension to add additional parking time on your session—all without having to return to your vehicle.
Why Flowbird works so well
Parking availability and reserving ahead of time
Drivers often complain of parking availability—especially in urban metropolitan centres where weekday parking can be a challenge. Flowbird thinks ahead and helps you find a parking space faster by narrowing down parking lots in your desired area where availability of parking spots is highest. This takes away the pain point of aimlessly driving around looking for an available spot to discover all spaces are taken.
Security
Security is a big plus within the Flowbird mobile app. With easy authentication using a Facebook account, it’s easy create a new login via an email and password, plus secure access using Touch ID or Face ID on your iPhone. Users can create a secured payment method on the account that remembers details and minimizes exposure to unknown parking meters in lots and garages where credit card skimming could happen.
Register multiple cars and enforcement
If you drive multiple cars, you can register each of them under the same account, and simply select which car you’re authorizing for parking them when you’re in a spot. This feature is specifically great for families with multiple vehicles, and not having to memorize licence plate numbers alongside make and model means you can focus on where you’re going instead of how you’re parking.
Parking enforcement personnel have access to Flowbird on their mobile devices, so they can validate your spot with ease and for business users, logon after the session to retrieve receipts for expensing.
Final thoughts
Parking can be a headache and protocol can vary from lot to lot. The combination of an easy-to-use UI alongside intuitive functions built around managing your parking from your mobile device securely without having to return to your vehicle makes Flowbird a go-to download and gold standard for digital parking solutions.
Winston Sih
Technology Journalist