United Kingdom · spareroom.co.uk
SpareRoom alerts, and the Early Bird problem nobody explains
SpareRoom's instant alert is an email in a queue, and on top of that there is a paywall between you and new ads. Both are timing problems.
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Two timing problems: the send queue, and Early Bird
SpareRoom offers more than most sites here. You can have a daily summary each morning, or instant alerts, meaning notification of new ads matching your requirements as they arrive. If you are on the daily summary, switch, because it is free to.
Instant still describes SpareRoom's end of it. The ad is posted, a job works out whose search profiles it matches, and an email goes to all of them through a bulk sender and its queue. SpareRoom is one of the highest-traffic room sites in the country, so that is a large list to get through, and the thirty seconds Notifio takes to notice the same ad on the page is a different order of thing entirely. You are reading the advert while the alert is still being dispatched.
The bigger problem on this site sits somewhere else, and it is not one we can solve. New free ads less than 7 days old are reserved for Early Bird users, and SpareRoom's pitch for the upgrade is that you can contact around 60% of new listings a week before everybody else. Early Bird is sold by the week, at roughly £14 for seven days, £25 for a fortnight and £28 for 28 days. So on SpareRoom, being first to know is necessary and not sufficient: you also have to be allowed to message the person who posted it.
That has a specific consequence, and it is the honest reason to run Notifio here. If you are paying for an Early Bird week, that week is expensive and finite, and its value depends entirely on how quickly you act inside it. A monitor checking every 30 seconds turns a £14 week into one where you are first to every ad that appears, rather than one where you check the site when you remember to.
The second reason is that SpareRoom is almost never the only place people look. A room search usually runs across SpareRoom, Gumtree, a couple of Facebook groups and whatever the local equivalent is. Notifio is one place where all of those are watched at the same cadence, and one inbox where they all land.
Sources, so you can check whether SpareRoom has changed this since we wrote it: SpareRoom – Early Bird explained · SpareRoom – Why set up email alerts?
Setting up a SpareRoom monitor
Example search URL
https://www.spareroom.co.uk/flatshare/london/?search_id=&sort_by=age&max_rent=900&per=pcmA London flatshare search under £900 pcm, sorted by newest. SpareRoom's sort_by=age is the newest-first ordering.
- 1
Set your search up on SpareRoom properly first
Area, maximum rent, whether it is per week or per month, room type, and the couples/smoking/professional filters. SpareRoom's filters are unusually granular and it is worth the five minutes.
- 2
Sort by newest before copying the URL
sort_by=age puts newest at the top, which makes the alert click-through land on the ad you were told about.
- 3
Sign in through the in-app browser
SpareRoom shows different things to signed-in users, and if you have Early Bird active, the monitored page should be the one your account can actually see. Use Open in Browser, sign in once, close it.
- 4
Turn your Early Bird week on deliberately
If you are going to pay for Early Bird, start it on a day you can act. With a monitor running you will be alerted in seconds, which is only useful if you are in a position to send messages that day.
What to know about monitoring SpareRoom
- Does it need a login?
- Sign in once through Notifio's built-in browser. On SpareRoom more than most sites, what an anonymous visitor sees and what your account sees are different pages.
- How the page loads
- Server-rendered and predictable. One of the easier sites to monitor reliably.
- Auto-reply on this site
- SpareRoom messaging runs through its own on-site form, which auto-reply can complete after being shown once. It cannot bypass Early Bird: if your account is not permitted to contact an ad, nothing we do changes that.
SpareRoom alerts: common questions
Will Notifio let me message new SpareRoom ads without Early Bird?
No, and any tool claiming otherwise is worth being suspicious of. SpareRoom reserves new free ads for Early Bird users for seven days. Notifio tells you about listings sooner; it does not change your account's permissions.
Then what does it actually get me on SpareRoom?
Two things. It makes a paid Early Bird week much more effective, because you are alerted in seconds rather than whenever you next check. And it puts SpareRoom in the same alert stream as every other site you are searching, which is usually three or four.
Is it better than SpareRoom's own instant alerts?
On speed, yes, though the gap is smaller here than on most sites. SpareRoom's instant alert is a real trigger but it is still an email sent to everyone whose profile matched, through a bulk sender and a queue. Notifio sees the ad on the page within 30 seconds and mails only you. The larger advantage is running one setup across every site you are searching instead of a different notification system on each.
Does it work for SpareRoom searches outside London?
Yes. Any SpareRoom search URL works, in any city, and you can run as many as you like at once.
Most people watch more than one site
Notifio runs every monitor at once, so SpareRoom does not have to be the only search you are watching. These are the ones people usually pair it with.
Start watching SpareRoom today
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