offCents Carbon Offset App

I love this app. The only reason I’m not giving it five stars is because it’s a little clunky. There’s just a lot going on the homepage. I keep clicking the learn more about offsets button when I’m trying to offset because it’s kind of confusing. But other than that the app is great. The customer service is amazing too. They’re very transparent and make it clear they really are helping the environment. When I emailed to ask for clarification on things I didn’t understand they replied super quickly and honestly. Update: Changed to 5 stares. They recently updated the app (2020) and it’s a lot less clunky.

OffCents has been an amazing way to track my emissions, something that up till now I could only guess at. It keeps me thinking about better ways to move around and holds me to a high standard when I do take a longer trip. It does drain more battery to be constantly sending location pings but I’ve been impressed at how accurate the journey tracking is, and how it can identify walking or biking versus other modes of transit. Overall the cost is low to have the confidence that I am fighting climate change with each contribution I make to it.

I love the idea that walking + biking will offset automatically calculated travel emissions. For the most part, that is how OffCents functions. However, the app has several bugs—for example, the home screen feature displaying amount of emissions remaining to be offset always shows an incorrect number. On the Trips tab, trips remaining to be offset sometimes show up & sometimes don’t. Clicking the “offset” button sometimes works, sometimes lags, & sometimes crashes the app. These are not essential elements, but they do detract from ease of the app’s use. The rewards are also, in my mother’s words, “a bit dinky.” Many are simply coupons you could likely find online. I understand that rewards are far from the main purpose of this app, but if you’re going to offer them, it would be far more enticing to be offered something substantial. OffCents does a good job in being transparent about the types of offsets retired by the company, but making this a bit more immediately visible & interactive would be nice. Some sort of choice regarding which offset the user retires or more extensive background on the offsets would likely motivate offsetting more than offering coupons does.