Prayer Apps that Help

I rate several apps in terms of usefulness not gimmicks...

Today I’m rating a few apps for iPhone (but I’m sure they are similar for android). These digital tools can help with growing our faith. Some of you may prefer a paper prayer journal and that’s fine. I’m just sorting through some prayer apps here so that when my church members ask me if I use an app for prayer I can get a better response than just, “I’m sure there are some good ones…”.

Ratings

I’ll be rating each app in terms of: 1) ease of use, 2) useful features, 3) could I actually envision myself using this app, and 4) points off for anything annoying. When I talk about useful features, I won’t be including stuff that doesn’t have a clear purpose. I’ll be rating each one 1-4pts in each category, so that 4pts = best in category. I’ll also primarily be inputting characters from the office, except for in the instances when I import contacts from my phone’s contacts. FYI, if you disagree with me or think I’ve missed something, please let me know in the comments because I want to learn!

Prayer Mate

I see this app recommended all over the place. I even see ads in my social feeds sometimes. But that just means they have ad money, so let’s see how the app works. First off, let’s look at the user interface in terms of ease of use.

In terms of ease of use, it’s a pretty clear main page. I was instantly able to understand how to do what I wanted. So in terms of ease of use it’s good - let’s call it 4. But also, it became clear there were some things that I didn’t want…

In the biblical prayers section (which I was delighted to see existed) I was a little disappointed. Several of the options require purchase. I guess I understand that people want to be paid for there work, but in a world where the Bible app is free thanks to Life.church I suppose I just feel weird paying for access to prayer stuff. Consider this 3 points off for annoying stuff.

I also like the ease of adding a contact to a prayer list. Here I’ve added my co-worker Adam (who I know will both laugh at his inclusion and appreciate any extra prayer). It’s pretty simple - which is a plus.

It has some useful features, such as the clear look and direction for “today’s prayer session”. So in terms of usefulness I think I would give this 4 points. Next, I’m thinking about if I would actually use this app, and I think I might but there are others I like better - so let’s call it 2 points. That brings the total to (4-3)+4+3 = 8 points overall.

Prayer Notebook

This is not one I had heard of before, but in my research I noticed others really liked it. So how does it look?

It looks really clean. I like the simple design.

The menu sidebar is very clear also, which I like. So ease of use is a 4 here since it’s simple and easy to understand.

The ability to schedule how frequently I want to pray for certain things is a huge plus for me. I like to pray for certain groups of people or categories on certain days of my week.

It’s easy to set things up with a pretty simple way add contacts too. I’m not sure I would actually use this feature though.

So, the app has no annoying features… I like that. 4 points for ease of use, 3 points for useful features because echo has 1 nice additional feature, and 3 points for me thinking I might use it. 10 points overall.

Echo

This is another app that I saw recommended so I thought I would try. So I installed the app and this is the initial open screen.

Right off the bat, I’m not liking the way this looks like a cash grab. No it isn’t expensive, but I generally only spend money on a few things (You would probably call me cheap and I’m OK with that). So the fact that this was the initial open screen makes it a -4 points for annoying features.

The user interface is easy to understand, perhaps the second best of the apps I reviewed. So for this reason I’ll give it 3 points in ease of use.

One nice feature this app has that I couldn’t easily find in other apps is the ability to have a church prayer list. For a small church, or a small group bible study, this feature could be really good. I think it would get clogged up if a large church tried to publish everything here. Great feature that sets it above the others, 4 points.

I’ve included this pic because I found a somewhat local church using it and I like to support local bodies of Christ!

In conclusion this app gets 3 points for design, take away 4 for annoying features, add 4 for useful features and then add 1 for me thinking I likely wouldn’t use this one. 4 points total. Admittedly that subscription thing just irked me.

Logos Bible App

I already use Logos for most all of my Bible reading and teaching. So I thought I would rate it’s “prayer” tab against these dedicated apps.

Because this feature is buried inside a sub-menu it’s a little hard to remember. In terms of ease of use, that means points off.

The Logos app allows you to categorize prayer lists, and add things to each list. You can’t import contacts, and I don’t know how to do any “shared” lists. So it’s feature set is less robust than the others. You can schedule how frequently you want to pray for certain things, which is a plus.

It’s pretty simple to understand, mostly because it doesn’t have a ton of extras. But, no points counted off for annoying features either. So I’ve rated it as a 4 for me actually using it. I’m biased because I already use it. But I like that it’s integrated into the app where I do my devotional reading and my studying. So 4 points. No weird annoying stuff, so -0 points. Useful features is likely 2 points; this app isn’t flashy. Ease of use is 4 because of how simple it is. So about 10 points overall.

Conclusion

For me, the winner is the Logos app. But the best dedicated app is probably Prayer Notebook. I’m giving the nod to Logos because from a Discipleship perspective, I like that it resides within an app that encourages devotional reading and study as well as prayer. I feel like I will recommend it for that reason, though I may have some caveats. If I’m recommending something to someone who is really strapped financially I might recommend Prayer Notebook because its a great app, and likely would not tempt someone to spend additional money on books like the Logos app has done to me(!).

More Stuff

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If you would like to view more stuff that I’ve written about technology and discipleship, I try to publish something on this topic each month. You might like to read how I used digital technology to invite people to Group Bible Studies this Fall.