It should be simple: Scan receipts, digitize notes, sync to the cloud, thats it.
Useful, but not exciting.
But there are dozens, all nearly identical.
Others are a couple bucks.
Most have in-app purchases.
All of them are confusing as hell.
Document scanners have been in app stores since they launched.
Likefaxing apps, document scanning apps have been necessary evils most of us only need rarely.
The In-App Purchases Are Out of Control
Lets start with Scanbot.
Its free, and has multiple in-app purchases.
Its alsoone of the most recommended iPhone scanner appsavailable.
Out of the box, you’ve got the option to scan documents and save them locally.
For $9.99, you get everything listed above plus an extra copy of the app for a friend.
Thats four versions of the app locked behind three paywalls.
Its thesame kind of scheme Microsoft uses with Office.
FineScanner and CamScanner are even more confusing.
The free version of CamScanner is ad-supported and adds watermarks to any PDFs you save.
you might get 200MB of free cloud storage by registering for an account with CamScanner.
Beyond the in-app purchases, CamScanner gets confusing because there are four versions of the app available.
Theres alsoCamScanner Profor $4.99.
I have no idea what the difference between this and CamScanner+ is.
Oh, theres alsoCamScanner+ with Symantec, which is made for enterprises using Symantec tech.
That ones $1.99.
FineScanner is even worse.
A premium account is $6/month or $30/year (no, thats not a typo.)
you could also pay a one-time fee of $60 to unlock those same premium features forever.
I wish I was kidding about this.
Theyre asking you topay for features that you already have on your phone.
Scanbot is probably the least scammy free app, but the way the in-app purchases works turns me off.
Because its a one-time cost.
The only in-app purchases are to send faxes.
Every feature is included, including text recognition, password protection, and editing.
For $4, Ill never need to think about this stupid app again.
