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Why not get paid in order to test out different applications on your smartphone? That’s what we’ll be covering in this FreeMyApps review.
I’ll examine step-by-step exactly if it’s worth your time to invest in an application that is based entirely on using other applications.
Table of Contents
Before Downloading: A Glance
When I am investigating a new app, my first stop always comes down to checking out their supportive information.
Specifically, I go digging for a website on better known applications because they usually at least have a paragraph, FAQ, or video besides a link to the stores that they support. I wasn’t able to do that for this review.
Specifically, the main hub website of FreeMyApps was dead on every browser type (Firefox, Chrome, and Firefox).
Oddly, however, the support website was still up in contrast the main promotional hook. It linked back to the same dead main page, so there wasn’t a case of any mistaken URL.
In returning to the support site, it’s laid out in a pretty bare bones sort of way. There’s basic information sections disclosing how to actually download the application on Android-based or iOS-based devise.
After that, the article count drops to five with very tiny topics on credit issues, gift card issues, and if you’re starting with a new device.
I didn’t expect a lot, but it’s considerably sparse compared to what I’ve seen on even other less reputable websites. On the bright side, the submission form was still working and not broken.
So once you identify your generic topic, it doesn’t take long to access a form to submit your inquiry to their support staff.
Oddly, the iOS support requires you to access the non-functioning website via a mobile version of Safari.
It’s not really surprising in the fact that the Apple app store has a much more selective nature then what is included on the Android store, but it’s a bit disconcerting when the first two directions are it can be done only via one browser type (Safari), and you’re going to have to definitely verify that you want the application because by default it’s not sanctioned.
The lack of update on the article seems strange since there was no flagged alert regarding this matter on the support page, but it may solely be their market is primarily based around Android users that they barely acknowledge iOS users.
These details combined with the non-functioning website made the app feel uninviting. If you can’t maintain basic website functionality, I tend to mentally raise my guard by a few notches.
Still, I figured I could dig through the actual Google Play store reviews a bit next to see if I was in for anything too far gone.
Almost Downloaded: A Glimpse
A link to the Google Play Store leads to a 3.8 star rating with roughly 303,820 total reviews at the time of writing. For the most part, it read like one might expect Google app reviews to often read.
A rather divisive extreme of people simply calling it a scam application and not to download it in contrast to a happy crowd saying it helped them receive popular items such as Fortnite’s V-Buck currency.
Two comments caught my eyes as follow-up from the support situation debacle. An anonymous Google reviewer with a highly upvoted comment stated, “Had over 2,600 credits, which was only enough for a $5 CVS gift card and 400 points short of more useful gift cards.
Remaining offers either required purchasing services or were bugged (i.e., you met the requirements and were never granted credit). New offers are added so rarely that my credits expired. Complete waste of time.”
Shortly thereafter, user Tyler Kelly commented with, “Some of the games did not grant credits when task was completed. Submitted screenshots to developers with no response.
No apps were added to allow me enough credits to redeem majority of vouchers. Ended up being an entire waste of time.”
Both sets of comments struck me as fishy because the application had pegged itself as simply an easy install in which all you had to do was use any application for a grand total of thirty seconds.
Quite precisely, it felt like a very underhanded bait and switch. The support article makes no indication that you have to do anything else besides launch the application for thirty seconds and collect your rewards afterwards.
I figured at this point that I wasn’t likely going to like the results with the application. It had failed at giving at least a basic rundown of what you had to honestly to earn.
Even on the official application page, it simply says that you have to “3. Earn credits for every app, game & video you try.”
Where did these users get these tasks and extra requirements from then?
At this stage, it read scam to me with a goal to target a younger audience, but I figured I’d get my own specifics and see how it compared with the website in case there was some negative circle jerk that had infiltrated the reviews.
I decided to test the app to make sure there was no misunderstanding with how it worked.
Getting Started With FreeMyApps
Admittedly, I had none of the usual bluster and enthusiasm at this stage when it came time to install the application. The official Google page had listed that “Install FreeMyApps & register with a verified Facebook* account (*required).”
I’m normally not a fan of any mandatory social media tie-ins as they normally result in a great deal of non-consenting sharing to friends on those accounts.
However, it allowed for the user to log in with their Google account or any generic email address as well. I chose to use my Google account for the sake of efficiency since there wouldn’t be any data entry additionally; I didn’t want to bind a test application to a public social media application.
The option was welcome considering the disappointment to follow, but it seemed strange that the app wasn’t worried about updating their information in such a way that would attract users who might otherwise be averse to including their Facebook so freely to an untested application.
Advertisements
Afterwards, your phone is going to be completed filled with an advertisement ushering you to take a survey to win an Amazon.com gift card for $20.
The estimated time will take between two-to-three minutes, so you can opt into the third party survey if you don’t mind using surveys.
However, if you simply click the upper left hand corner x to “close” the offer, you’ll get a large circle that will stay on your app screen (similar to a Facebook Messenger alert) until you click it again.
When browsing through your applications, this can be very annoying, as you’ll accidentally click it on a frequent basis depending on your scroll patterns and size of your phone screen.
This offer will also show up every single time you close the app and restart it. There’s no escaping it if you don’t participate and do it.
You can “officially” close the ad for your period of use on FreeMyApps by scrolling down on the advertisement (there’s no scroll bar) and clicking no thanks on the item.
It will not pop up again until the application is restarted or if it’s asleep or idle for a short period of time. It’s an annoying endeavor before you even start messing with the application, but if you start focusing on using your downloaded apps you’ll at least get to ignore it in the interim.
The Juicy Bit: What Applications Will You Get
As with any data-based application, you’re going to enter in some generic personal data to be fitted with your applications that the app wants you to try. It takes about a minute to enter your gender along with your date of birth in order to get the results.
You’ll receive about eight applications if you fit into a very generic field.
Here, however, is where a lot of the unsavory bits from the Google reviews pop into place. Of the applications offered, there are a total of 911 credit points available to be claimed.
Only 191 of those available points actually correspond with downloading the applications and running them for thirty seconds to receive your points.
The low credit applications appear to be somewhat randomized incentives. I received two counseling applications that I presume were offered because I just hit my 30’s as a male.
I then thought I received a generic football application; it was geared at trying to get your kids into enjoying football with you as a father with mini-games and customizable avatars.
The last head scratch was really just an extension of the game trend by offering a knock-off of Lords Mobile and Castle Clash.
3 of the 4 high-paying games were based around the town-building/battle-building genre where you have paid currency to speed up your advancements and get things done within the game.
The last two played with RNG gambling by including a slots casino game and a battle card game in which paid currency was also a facet.
Now, I’ll go so far as to say I recognized all the titles of the games that were under the task-based participation fields. I had seen them all offered generically to anyone browsing in games on the app store.
Still, the fact that all available options had an unhealthy amount of micro transactions attached seems unsettling due to the fact that youth are considerably more likely to download an app based around playing games, trying applications, and watching Youtube.
Not-So-Easy Tasks: You’re Going to Have to Grind Out Your Time
With that said, I’m not on board with the tasks to start with. Lords Mobile generically states, “Hit monster level 2 to get credits,” and Castle Clash: Age of Legends states, “Clear Here Be Monsters Challenge A to get credits.”
Both tasks didn’t sound beginner friendly in the slightest, so I decided to do some research on what it would take in either game.
If you were a layman, I could easily see the user simply give up in frustration and think the application wasn’t working because the tasks are hard to understand with their wording.
Lords Mobile
Still, I went ahead and investigated exactly what it might take starting with Lords Mobile since it was my first app download since I didn’t bother to read the fine print on the first go through.
As it’s a smaller game than Castle Clash, it was harder to find any explanation for the task I was given, so I had to go to a non-game related Reddit to get player-based commentary on what exactly the jargon meant.
It wouldn’t be a big deal if it were merely jargon that was easy to accomplish after it was explained; it required obtuse a specific strategy to get to the specific mini-quest that the site required that could easily never be accomplished by a casual player in a reasonable time frame.
The relevant quotes from the thread’s users are:
and
So not only did the user have to invest in a very game specific strategy, but they had to invest a couple days worth of their time for one set of points.
Another user in the same thread indicated that he did the activity; he did not receive his credit for actually doing it. It broke, in effect, much like the earlier Google review stated by the frustrated individual.
Since FreeMyApps relies on the user to simultaneously play the game now while having it running in the background, it’s not hard to imagine the many ways that might break when you have a variety of phone types and processors on board with each.
If one application hangs in the background or breaks down, you’re going to have issues. If there were better compliments anywhere regarding FreeMyApps’ support then there might be no issue here, but the same thread simply indicates the user gave up on it.
Castle Clash
Still, this was for a smaller game title, so I figured the other activity might be quicker. As Castle Clash is a bigger game, I was able to find Fandom Wiki articles that broke it down. However, the time sacrifice seemed equally annoying.
Castle Clash required that the user achieve 1,500 might. This seems great in theory if you understood what might as a term meant within the first thirty seconds of trying the game again.
However, instead, I had to dig for another related article on the same site to find out that “Might is a measurement of your overall ability in the game, and it is used to determine your skill level in the Player Ranking list.”
It didn’t break the jargon mold, and the array of numbers on the site following the simple description are certainly enough to make you rethink how much investment you want to put in for a very small subset of points.
Similarly, the card game and casino application both require a hefty level 12 investment. If you have time to simultaneously play multiple games for days to weeks in order to achieve the mandates, your time could easily have been better invested on another moneymaking route.
If by this stage you’re simply considering not doing any of these achievement-based applications, you can take into consideration what the support website says about receiving more offers, “We are always working hard to provide you with as many apps as possible as often as possible, and we try our best to add new offers several times a week. However, please know that the amount of offers you receive is dependent upon many factors, including your country of origin, the make and model of your device, the compatibility of the offer, and whether or not your device currently has any VPN damage.”
In other words, if you’re lucky, you may still keep receiving offers to amass credits with. However, if you’re simply unlucky or if your phone isn’t as up to date as the application requires, you’re not going to have much of anything to work with.
There was also no option to watch videos under the other offers tab, so the suggested item of “NEW! Introducing Video: Earn even more credits by watching videos from your favorite YouTube streamers,” didn’t exist in anyway for me as a user.
So if you were excited about this possibility, it may be out of date or targeted at a very specific age group.
All-in all, unless you’re ready to devote significant time to playing the applications for lack of anything better to do, the credits don’t line up with the effort requested.
There’s a lot of breakdown between what is advertised about FreeMyApps and what the actual user experience is like. While you can dodge a lot of this, the last issue comes with how you are rewarded for dealing with all these annoyances.
Struggle On: What’s in the Reward Basket
The two details you need to know about FreeMyApps rewards are the cash out options have been pinched in terms of what options you have, and the cash out options are inconsistently changed.
Let’s discuss the actual cash out options. There are Amazon ($10), iTunes ($15), Google Play ($10/$25), Playstation Gift Card ($10), Best Buy ($10), Fandago ($25), Groupon ($10), Xbox ($15), Facebook ($15), and Nascar ($25) gift card options.
The actual advertisement lists increasingly more with Visa, Steam, Sephora, CVS, Wal-Mart, Target, Starbucks, Dominos, Skype, AT&T, Verizon, Hulu, Redbox, Gamestop, in-game currencies, and charities mentioned as ways to cash out.
Why these are missing is uncertain and just an ongoing item to the list of questions that concern this application.
Also, the cash out values start at 3,000 credits at the lowest value, and it goes up to 7,500 credits.
I want you to remember earlier that if we had spent all of the required time to do the challenges for the applications that would be days and weeks of time to get only 911 points of a 3,000 minimum. That’s a lot of time potentially for a $10 gift card that could have been spent better elsewhere when it comes to earning revenue.
Furthermore, a recent review from July indicates that his cash out value has recently changed.
According to it, the practice was “All gift vouchers begin at $5 and $10, with the exception of Amazon gift voucher. You could get the Amazon gift vouchers beginning at 300 points or $1. To place that in the context you could get a gift voucher of $5 for 1500 credits.”
It’s definitely not as easy anymore, and if you look even further back it was once a lot easier to get some kind of reward for just using this program for a few hours. Why has it changed now?
The rewards simply aren’t worth the time.
How Do I Register With FreeMyApps?
FreeMyApps is a little bit different from normal rewards programs on your phone, but we’re going to break it down into a few simple steps so that it’s simple to use.
1. Since FreeMyApps is a web-based platform, we have to use a browser in order to sign-up. If you’re using an iPhone, this will only work on the Safari browser. Go ahead and go to FreeMyApps homepage to register for an account. Click on the “Get Started!” button once you are there.
2. When you click the Get Started button, you will be prompted to install some software from FreeMyApps. You don’t have to worry, as this software is signed and verified by Apple.
It will not harm your phone in any way, and is merely used to keep track of when you open apps so that they can reward you points.
3. Once you hit install, you will be redirected toward the homepage. You will notice a tab on the top left that says “Offers.” This is the section where you can download apps.
4. Choose any one of the apps to download from their list. The amount of points that will be rewarded will be listed next to the app so you can know how much cash you will receive for each download. Once downloaded, open the app and you will be rewarded your points!
The amount of points will vary depending on the type of app.
How Much Does FreeMyApps Actually Pay?
There’s actually two ways in which you can earn some extra cash with FreeMyApps:
- Enter their daily sweepstakes.
- Refer a friend.
There’s also a chance to earn an extra 7,500 points daily just by clicking the “Enter Now!” button. You can find this on the “Win” tab at the top. The more bonus apps that you download, there will be more entries given to you for their daily sweepstakes. Make sure to check back to see if you’re the winner.
The other method is by referring your friends.
When you post your referral link on Facebook, SMS, etc. and someone clicks on it and downloads an app, you will be rewarded with a bonus of 200 credits.
What’s best of all is that there’s no limit to the amount of referrals you will receive.
Two-hundred credits may not seem like a lot (only $0.66 cents), but it does add up over time. However, don’t bother going out of your way to get people to sign-up under your name.
Credits from referral can take anywhere from up to 24 hours to be credited to your account.
If you’d like to support us, you can use our referral link here. We’d greatly appreciate it!
No More Thoughts: The Final Verdict on FreeMyApps
At this time, I can’t recommend FreeMyApps to a user unless there is no better option. It would be an incredibly long endeavor to earn any income, and there seems to be some management issues and inconsistency pervading the application over a period of time.
This lack of transparency makes it very alarming to suggest as an item for use.
As far as I can tell, there have been no real complaints with the actual issuing of rewards, but there can be problems with not being rewarded for the offers. Still, for what you’re getting you could earn it via another route in a faster manner.
Don’t get baited in until the app fixes these issues and pay attention to the recent user reviews before you ever download it.
