Daily Drop Pro Review – The New 1-Stop-Shop for Award Search
Running award searches to redeem points & miles for flights and hotels can be confusing and tedious. Up to this point, you’ve either had to run searches manually across many different platforms or use multiple search tools to find what you need. Thankfully, Daily Drop Pro has just launched and it’s an industry game changer. It’s now a one-stop shop for award searches, but also features cash flight deals, a way to organize your credit cards, and a robust community feature to ask questions, learn, and connect with likeminded travelers.
This post may contain affiliate links, which means I’ll receive a commission if you purchase through my link, at no extra cost to you.
What is Daily Drop Pro?
FareDrop, the previously cash flight deal alert website, has now rebranded to Daily Drop Pro. With the rebrand comes all the new award search features, the card organizer, and the community function. While FareDrop was primarily only useful for those flying from the United States, Daily Drop Pro is useful for users worldwide.
Daily Drop Pro, Fare Drop, and Daily Drop are all the brainchildren of my favorite Youtubers, Kara & Nate. They’ve made it their mission to help people travel cheaper and better with points & miles and Daily Drop Pro is their newest (and best) vehicle for this.
How does this relate to the Daily Drop newsletter?
Daily Drop is the name of the free 6-days-a-week newsletter that you can get straight to your email with travel news, promos, and other insights. It’s the best way to stay on top of ever-changing offers. You can sign up for the free newsletter here.
Daily Drop (the newsletter) and Daily Drop Pro (the website) are separate arms of the same company. The newsletter is a great way to dip your toe into the world of points & miles for only a couple minutes of reading each day.
Daily Drop Pro Pricing
LIFETIME LAUNCH OFFER: This week only (starting October 28, 2024), Daily Drop Pro is offering a $99/year lifetime membership. That means no matter how high they raise the price, you’ll continue to pay only $99/year.
After this week, the price will be $149/year.
I will also personally be offering exclusive travel content in Daily Drop Pro to anyone who signs up through my link.
Daily Drop Pro also has a Limited Plan that’s completely free. You’ll receive:
- 3 deals a week from your home airport
- 5 flight award searches
- 5 hotel award searches
If you want even more deals than that, you can go Pro!
**NOTE: the Daily Drop team has said that your Pro subscription should code as travel on your credit card.
Features
Here’s the full breakdown of features between the Pro and Limited plans:
Cash Flight Deals
If you’ve used FareDrop in the past, the cash flight deals in Daily Drop Pro remain the same. For those that are new, here’s a quick overview:
Flight prices are constantly in flux, so if you don’t want to spend every waking hour running Google Flights searches for a good deal, you can set up alerts. You can customize the US airports you want to fly from, the fare classes you’re interested in, whether you want domestic or international deals, and more. These are sent right to your inbox so you can jump on a deal (they often don’t last long!). If you’re not based in the US, these cash deals will be much less helpful for you.
I love that you can toggle off “non-lie flat business class seats” and “budget airlines” to make sure you’re only getting the deals I really want.
The “Deals” tab of Daily Drop Pro also shows current deals worldwide if you want more inspiration.
Flight Award Searches
Running award searches is very easy in Daily Drop Pro. You just type in departure and arrival airports or cities. The fact that you can search cities is such a great feature – London has 6 airports, Chicago has 2, New York has 3, etc. so this saves a ton of time.
You do have to specify a specific date for your flight, which means if you have flexible dates for your trip, you’ll need to run several searches in order to find the best deal. This is the case with all other award flight search platforms I’ve come across too.
There are tons of options you can filter by, including award program, airlines operating the flight, time of day, number of stops, fare class, trip duration and even aircraft type! I’ve never seen aircraft type as a search filter before, but if you’re wanting to minimize jetlag by flying an A350 or Boeing 787, this is an easy way to find those planes.
Because it’s scraping data across so many platforms in real time, it takes about 10 seconds to run a search, so it’s not quite as fast as Google flights. However, in my tests, Daily Drop Pro has been faster than its competitor award search tools.
**NOTE: not all airlines are currently included in the search feature. For example, Emirates is currently missing but the team has said they’re working on this.
While your Pro Plan allows you unlimited searches, the team at Daily Drop Pro did post in the Pro Lounge that there are soft limits on award searches of about 50/day to limit account abuse (aka you shouldn’t be sharing your account with other people).
When you click on a flight, it will also allow you to see the current cash price so you can quickly calculate the cents per point redemption rate and see if it’s a good deal.
Hotel Award Searches
The hotel award search filters may have impressed me even more than the flights. You can filter by hotel program but also check if you have any free night certificates with various brands. If you have transferrable points with banks, you can filter your search by bank as well. You can also set availability alerts to be notified if availability opens up.
For hotel searches, you can also see a specific hotel’s award availability calendar, including cash and points prices each night.
Education Features
For either flights or hotels, once you select the flight/hotel you want, it shows you a step-by-step breakdown of how to book it with the points you have. Redeeming points is sometimes confusing and convoluted when multiple banks and alliance partners are involved, so this is especially helpful for beginners. So many people get the hang of earning points but then get overwhelmed when it comes time to use them!
Daily Drop’s great free course, Points & Miles 101, is accessible straight from Daily Drop Pro, so it’s easy to access if you ever need to reference it. If you’re just starting out with points & miles, this course is the perfect starting place.
Card Wallet
I am so excited to be able to track my credit cards in the same place I run award searches. For years, I’ve used a spreadsheet, but it’s much easier to have everything in one place.
Within the wallet, you can also input how many points you have across all the various programs. This data can then be used when you run searches to show you options that you can afford with your points! Right now, you can only input your points on 10 different airlines. Notably, British Airways’ Avios is currently missing – I’m hoping they add it soon! You do have to manually input your points as they are not directly connected to your accounts and updating in real time.
There are a lot more features I hope to see from the card wallet, including tracking cards for Player 2 and being able to track opening/renewal dates. Don’t worry, I’ve already submitted requests for these features!
Pro Lounge Community
I’ve been part of the Daily Drop Lounge Facebook group since the very beginning and absolutely love that it’s a space for people to share their wins, ask questions, and gain valuable travel insights. However, the group has now grown to over 50,000 members which is amazing, but it means it’s harder to keep up with all the posts. That’s one part of why I’m so excited for the smaller Pro Lounge in Daily Drop Pro.
There are several sub channels in the Pro Lounge, which keeps things much more organized than the Facebook group. If you’ve ever used Slack, it’s a similar set up with channels like Resources, Chat, Events, Redemption Travel Diaries and more.
You can also set up your profile within the lounge complete with your social links to connect with other travelers. You can also DM each other (or choose to turn that feature off if you like).
Status
Daily Drop Pro also has its own status program. By posting in the lounge and adding value (aka please don’t post spam!), you can get rewarded. Here’s the breakdown:
Bronze Status – 0 points
Silver Status – 1-12 points
Gold Status – 13-39 points
- No rewards for these levels as you’re just warming up!
Platinum Status 40-79 points
- Access the Travel Toolkit, a one stop for all of our best resources and classes!
Titanium status 80-159 points
- You get your first Pro Status Tag (each level will unlock a new tag and replace the previous one). You’ll be seen as a travel expert in the community!
Sapphire Status 160-319 points
- Unlock a discount code for the Daily Drop Shop.
Emerald Status 320-639 points
- Receive a video reply from a Daily Drop Team Member to a personal points and miles question. Could be a challenge you’re running into, a redemption you’re having a lot of trouble with, or just something you really want to pick our brain on!
Ruby Status 640-1279 points
- Get your redemption request reviewed on a Podcast episode by a Daily Drop Expert
- OR get an invite to be a guest on the podcast to share your top miles and points tips
Diamond Status 1280-infinite points!
- LOCKED TOP SECRET PRIZE
More Features to Come
At this time, Daily Drop Pro is only available as a website, best accessed on a desktop. The FareDrop app is still functional, but I’m hoping Daily Drop Pro will be available in app-form in the future.
The Daily Drop Pro team is very open to feedback. In fact, there’s a place to submit bug issues, requests for features straight to the team. I really appreciate this open line of communication to ensure the best customer experience possible and make the product as great as it can be.
Bottom Line
I was extremely impressed when I first logged into Daily Drop Pro. It’s one of the sleekest award search websites out there and blows the competition out of the water when it comes to features. The price is well justified by all that it offers. This product is new, so they’re still working out some minor kinks and continuing to roll out new features, but they’re willing to listen and be transparent about what’s coming down the pipeline.
Overall, even if you only travel a couple of times per year, you’ll be able to benefit from Daily Drop Pro.
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