Cigarro is a cigar tracking and review web app built around a structured review discipline, the Cigarro Method. The Boveda app is the companion software for a small Bluetooth hygrometer that Boveda now sells under the name Boveda Butler, having originally launched the hardware in January 2018 as the Smart Sensor. Type “boveda app alternative” or “cigar humidor management app” into a search bar and Cigarro tends to surface alongside it, as though the two apps solved the same problem.
They do not. One is a sensor’s companion, built to read the air inside a specific humidor and alert you when it drifts. The other is a reviewer’s journal, built to capture what you actually thought of a cigar and hold that thought somewhere searchable a year later. Confuse the two and you end up disappointed either way: buy Boveda’s hardware expecting a review framework and you will not find one; sign up for Cigarro expecting a live humidity reading and you will not find that either.
This is not a takedown. Boveda has spent close to a decade refining a genuinely useful piece of hardware and its Bluetooth companion app. What follows is a plain, feature-by-feature look at what each one actually does, where each earns its keep, and why a good number of serious collectors end up running both rather than picking a side.
What the Boveda App Actually Monitors
Boveda, the Minnesota company best known for its two-way humidification packs, introduced the hardware behind this app in January 2018 as the Smart Sensor, a small Bluetooth device, about the size of a car key, that pairs with a free iOS or Android app. Shortly after launch the device was renamed Boveda Butler, and that is the name on most current retailer listings, though “the Boveda app” is still how most smokers search for it.
The Butler itself does one job. It measures the relative humidity and temperature inside whichever humidor it sits in, using Bluetooth technology built in partnership with Blustream, and reports the readings to the app, typically over a range of around 100 feet. Leave a phone or tablet within that range and the app updates live; step outside it and the device keeps logging, storing up to ten days of hourly, daily, and monthly readings until your phone reconnects. Push notifications alert you when a reading drifts outside your chosen range, which is the feature most owners buy it for.
A few details are built specifically with cigars in mind rather than borrowed from a general-purpose sensor app. The interface lets you log a humidor’s capacity and attach a photograph, and the app can sync with an account on Boveda’s own store so replacement Boveda packs can be ordered as your current ones lose their charge. The Butler is not locked to Boveda’s own humidification products either. Cigar Aficionado’s original coverage of the device confirmed it works with any humidification method already sitting in your humidor.
None of this touches what is inside the box. The Boveda app has no field for tasting notes, no structure for a review, and no record of which cigars you have actually smoked. It was never built to. It is a hygrometer with a phone attached, and by most accounts a well-regarded one.
Feature by Feature, Side by Side
| Feature | Boveda app (Boveda Butler) | Cigarro |
|---|---|---|
| Core purpose | Bluetooth humidity and temperature monitoring | Structured cigar review and collection tracking |
| Hardware required | Yes, a paired Bluetooth sensor | No, software only |
| What it tracks | Live relative humidity and temperature inside a humidor | What you smoked, when, and how you rated it |
| Review structure | None, a monitoring app rather than a review app | The Cigarro Method (review by thirds) |
| Humidor inventory | Not tracked | Cigar entries scaled by tier, 30 to unlimited |
| Data history | Up to 10 days of readings stored on-device | Ongoing review and rest history, no expiry |
| Alerts | Yes, on humidity and temperature drift | Not applicable, no sensor to monitor |
| Social feed | None | The Lounge: public profiles, nods, comments, follows |
| Platforms | Free iOS and Android app, requires the physical sensor | Web app and PWA, no hardware or app store dependency |
| Pricing | Free app; sensor priced roughly $20 to $30 depending on retailer, no monthly fee | Free tier plus four paid tiers, $4.99 to $29.99 CAD monthly |
A table like this flattens some nuance, so treat it as a starting point. The next two sections do the actual arguing.
Where the Boveda App Genuinely Wins
If what you want is a live, alerted reading of a specific humidor’s air, the Boveda app and its Butler sensor do that job well and cheaply. halfwheel’s own review, after testing six units across a home and an office, called it the best choice for most people once Boveda dropped the price, citing the low cost, the simple interface, and ten days of stored data as more than enough for most collectors. The cigar-specific touches help too: logging humidor capacity and attaching a photo are small conveniences a general-purpose sensor app would not bother with.
It is also the cheaper route into Bluetooth monitoring. halfwheel’s comparison put the Butler against SensorPush’s HT1, a $50 device that needs a further $100 wifi attachment to check readings away from home, meaning a three-humidor Butler setup came in at a fraction of the cost of the SensorPush equivalent. Against Cigar Oasis’s wifi-enabled humidifiers, which charge a recurring $2.99 monthly fee for remote monitoring, the Butler’s one-time hardware cost and no monthly fee is a real point in its favour.
None of this is a flawless picture. Reviewers have flagged that the Bluetooth connection can be finicky, that the app rounds humidity and temperature to whole numbers rather than showing decimals, and that current retail pricing and stock vary noticeably by seller, with at least one long-standing retailer currently listing it out of stock. Still, for the specific job of knowing what the air inside your humidor is doing right now, the Boveda app remains a sensible, well-tested choice.
Where Cigarro Earns Its Place
The Boveda app has no answer to the question Cigarro was built around: what did you actually think of the cigar, and can you say why. The Cigarro Method breaks a review into three acts, first third, second third, final third, so a review captures how a cigar changed rather than a single average impression. Nothing in a humidity sensor’s app can do that, because measuring air and judging a smoke are simply different tasks.
Cigarro also tracks the collection itself. Humidor capacity scales by tier rather than by hardware, from thirty entries on the free Pocket Humidor tier through to unlimited on Private Reserve, and every entry can carry a full review, not just a name and a count. Pair that with The Lounge, Cigarro’s members’ feed, and a review stops being a private note and becomes something other collectors can actually read, comment on, and follow.
The absence of hardware is a feature in its own right, not a compromise. Cigarro runs as a web app and a PWA with nothing to buy, charge, calibrate, or lose Bluetooth connection with. If you are travelling, sharing a humidor with someone else, or simply do not want another gadget on the shelf, that is a real advantage, even if it means Cigarro genuinely cannot tell you the humidity in the room. For the humidor-management side of things, our guide to digital humidor apps covers what a serious tool in that category should and should not try to do.
Pricing, Hardware, and the Software-Only Question
The two products sit on opposite sides of a simple divide: buy once versus pay monthly. Boveda’s sensor is a one-time hardware purchase, historically launched at $50 for a starter kit before dropping to a standalone $20 with a calibration kit included, though current retail listings vary. Holt’s Cigar Company, a long-established Philadelphia retailer, currently lists the Boveda Butler at $29.95 and shows it out of stock at the time of writing, a reminder that pricing and availability on a single-SKU hardware product can shift with the retailer and the season. Whatever the exact figure on a given day, there is no recurring software fee attached to owning one.
Cigarro runs the opposite model. There is no hardware to buy, install, or calibrate, but the software itself is the product: a free Pocket Humidor tier for thirty entries, then four paid tiers running $4.99 to $29.99 CAD monthly as the entry ceiling rises, with reviews unlimited on every tier. The full breakdown lives on Cigarro’s pricing page.
Worth noting plainly: Boveda is a United States company and prices its hardware in US dollars, while Cigarro’s tiers are billed in Canadian dollars. Neither currency detail changes the underlying trade-off, but it is worth knowing before comparing the two figures directly.
Many Collectors Run Both
If your main concern is knowing whether your humidor is holding at the humidity you set it to, and getting an alert the moment it drifts, the Boveda app and its Butler sensor are a proven, inexpensive way to do that. It suits the collector who has already solved storage and organisation and simply wants a quiet second pair of eyes on the air.
If your main concern is remembering what you actually smoked, how it changed across the three thirds, and whether you would reach for it again, Cigarro is built for exactly that, and it costs nothing to start on the Pocket Humidor tier. It suits the reviewer who wants their own notes to mean something a year later, and who would rather that record lived somewhere searchable than in a stack of handwritten cards.
Plenty of serious collectors use both, and there is no conflict in doing so. The Boveda app watches the humidor. Cigarro watches the cigar. Running a sensor and a review journal side by side is not redundancy, it is simply covering two different jobs with two different tools, and our wider list of cigar apps covers the rest of the field if you want to see how other tools split the same problem.
Five Questions Worth Asking
Log the Cigar, Not Just the Air
The Boveda app and Cigarro were built to answer different questions, and neither one is pretending otherwise. One watches the air in a specific box. The other watches what you actually thought of what came out of it. Choose on that basis, or better still, let each one do the job it was built for. Cigarro is free to try at cigarroapp.com.
