I’m one of those people who no longer subscribe to the traditional way of shopping. Finding a parking space at the malls is hectic. Standing in a low queue is honestly not my thing. And I’m not a fan of a crowd of shoppers either.
Maybe it’s because I’m too used to shopping online, and, to be honest, I love the experience. I can buy literally anything I need right from the comfort of my home.
With a few clicks of a button at my favorite stores, it takes me less than 30 minutes to find the products I need, place orders, checkout, and wait for shipping.
As internet shopping become popular in this tech obsessed and inspired generation, cashback technology is growing rampantly to become the next big thing. Built to earn you some of the money you spend on online shopping back to your wallet, the concept is that you can take advantage of these technologies, buy goods and service at discount prices, earn points, and redeem them as cash or gift cards for future purchases.
Drop App is one of the few cashback apps that I’ve thrown to the test. And if you’re wondering if it’s something legit or just a waste of time, I’ll give you a detailed review, based on my experience, to give you more insight into the app.
So let’s get started.
What is Drop App?
Drop is one of the cash back apps that let you earn rewards by shopping online. It’s a cross platform technology, and therefore available for Android, iOS, and PC users. Drop has a solid reputation on the web, with over a million users and partnership with some of the most popular brands on the internet.
Like Rakuten and iBotta, Drop works on the premise that a cashback platform should be easy to use and therefore its audience should have the best user experience. If you’re new to the world of cashback offers, or the idea of shopping online and earning rewards for doing so appeals to you, Drop is a good platform to start with.
Who Should Use the Drop App?
Drop is a good platform for you if you do a lot of online shopping. Whether you spend only a dollar a day or hundreds of dollars a month, Drop will help you to earn some of that money back in terms of points, which you can then redeem to buy more items at your favorite online stores.
It’s also a good platform to use even if you’re not a frequent online shopper because you can still accumulate points over time and redeem them at a future date.
How Does Drop Make Its Money?
When it comes to critiquing apps that let you make money, the first question that often comes to mind is how exactly the platform itself makes money in the first place. This is an important, and perhaps a mandatory, question to ask because you don’t want to waste your time with a system that won’t give you the value for your time.
Drop has partnership with hundreds of online and offline businesses. When you buy a product or service via the app, they’ll earn a percentage of the sales and then pass a small percentage of that money to you in the terms of redeemable points.
As you can see, it’s a win-win situation for you and Drop. All you have to do is shop via the app or refer someone to the platform and then earn points.
How Does Drop App Work?
If you’ve used a cashback app such as Fetch Reward and Swagbucks, you already know how cashback platforms work. Primarily, Drop lets you earn rewards when you shop at your favorite online store via its app.
To get started, you’ll have to download the app to your device, signing up for an account, setting up your profile. When it comes to creating an account, the app will prompt you to choose your five topmost favorite retailers, but you’ll still see a long list of all the retailers with partnership with Drop.
On using the app to earn points and get cashback offers, all you have to do is choose a retailer you’d like to buy something from, select the item or service, buy it, and then earn points for doing so. The app will show you the number of points to earn by shopping at a particular online retail store.
It’s important to keep in mind that the number of points you can earn is dependent on the retail store you shop at and not on Drop. For example, Instacart will reward you 5 points for every dollar you spend while Gap gives you 30 for the same amount of money.
So if you want to earn more points for every dollar you spent on Drop, consider shopping at stores that give you reasonably more points for the amount of money you spend.
Now, shopping isn’t the only way to earn points on Drop; you can also earn them by simply referring people to the app.
Drop will give you a special referral code, which you can share directly with your friends or post on social media. When someone clicks your referral link, downloads the app, signs up for Drop, and link their credit or debit card, the both of you earn $5.
With Drop, 1,000 points is equal to a $1 gift card reward, so you have to accumulate as many points as possible if you want to redeem a decent amount of cash in retail gift card.
How Do I Redeem Rewards on the Drop App?
You can redeem your rewards on the Drop App as retailer gift cards. At the time of this writing, the business doesn’t give you the option to earn some of your shopping money back as direct deposit or PayPal credit, so keep this in mind before you start using it.
It’s important to note that there’s no definite time to receive your reward as people have different shopping habits and therefore varying shopping history. As soon as your account has the minimum number of points that you can redeem for retail gift card(s), you get your reward instantly.
The best thing about Drop points is that they don’t have an expiry date. Therefore, you can redeem them for retailer gift cards any time you wish to do so.
Is the Drop App Legit?
I’ve tested Drop for about 6 months, although using it sparingly, and I can say that it’s a legit platform that you can use if you’re interested in a cashback platform that truly rewards you for your purchases.
Drop doesn’t have a strong reputation in the terms of customer experience, though, and I feel like they should work on improve on making their customer care team and making points earned easy to redeem.
When it comes safety, Drop is undeniably one of the most secure platforms on the internet. At its core, the app uses the same security encryption as your bank, so you never have to worry about any hacker compromising your personal data – especially your credit card information.
I love that the app has a 2-factor authentication feature, which is an additional layer of security implemented to keep your account safe. This means you’ll get a text code sent to your phone, which you’ll have to use to access your account or make any changes to it.
You’ll love using Drop because it doesn’t use your personal information in any way except for market research. According to the company, Drop only uses your information to give you a more personalized shopping experience and share your user data anonymously.
Advantages of Drop App
1) Drop is Free to Join
One thing I genuinely love about earning with Drop is that it’s 100% free to join. It does require you to connect your credit card when signing up, but Drop isn’t going to charge a dime to be a member of the platform.
This, in a way, explains why it’s such a big platform with over a million members. And I can only imagine that it will continue to grow in the future.
2) Drop Gives You Access to Hundreds of Stores
There are so many popular stores I never even knew existed, but when I joined Drop, I discovered just how vast the number of its partners is. It means that with Drop, there are many platforms to explore besides the big stores like Amazon, eBay, and Walmart.
So when it comes to options of retail stores that that you can buy goods from, Drop undeniably spoils you for choice.
3) Your Drop Points Don’t Expire
If you’re like me, you probably don’t shop online every day, which means it might take a while to accumulate redeemable points with an app such as Drop. As such, you want to be sure that the points you accumulate won’t expire and that you can redeem them even at a later date.
Fortunately, Drop makes it clear that your points don’t expire, and that’s a good thing for someone who doesn’t use the platform frequently. You can come back to your account at a later date, do your shopping, continue accumulating points, and redeem them for gift cards in future.
4) Number of Points Vary Depending on Retail Store
Something I noticed as outstanding about Drop is that the points you earn for every dollar you spend vary from store to store. All you have to do is to use the app to compare the number of points you get from different stores depending on the product that you intend to buy, and then shop at the store that offers the highest point for every dollar you spend.
Disadvantages of Drop
1) Drop App Doesn’t Pay You Money
Perhaps the biggest problem I’ve noticed with Drop is that they don’t earn real cashback per se. In other words, they won’t send you the money to your PayPal account or pay you via direct deposit.
Let me explain:
When you use the Drop app for shopping, you’ll earn points, which you can covert in money form. As I stated earlier, 1,000 points is equal to $1.
You have to accumulate at least 5,000 points to redeem. These points are equal to $5.
Instead of allowing you to covert the points to money you can withdraw to your PayPal account or have sent to your account via direct deposit, Drop lets you redeem the points into retail gift cards. In other words, you can only use the redeemed points to do online shopping at popular stores such as Amazon, Whole Foods, and Starbucks.
In my opinion, the goal of Drop is to get you to spend back with them, which is why it’s not a perfect app for those who wish to get some cash sent back to their accounts.
2) Drop Places a Weekly Earning Cap on All Account
Just when I thought that Drop would allow me to earn as many points as I like per week, it turns out that they have a set earnings cap at 5,000 points per week. With anything earned beyond this point not counting, the maximum amount you can earn for a redeemable gift card, assuming you earn 5,000 points every week, is only $20 a month.
Placing an earnings cap is, in my opinion, the worst thing about Drop. Should they have omitted this feature, it would have perhaps been the best cash back app for many people – myself included.
Conclusion
The bottom line on the Drop App is this:
It’s a genuine platform that helps you to shop and earn points while you are at it. You can earn as much as 20,000 a month, which is equal to $20.
You won’t get this money in cash, but you can redeem it as gift card and use it to do some shopping at popular online stores such as Amazon, Starbucks, Walmart, and eBay.
That’s everything you need to know about the Drop App shopping platform