Josh vs Vestaboard
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Josh
This app offers AI-powered control for your smart home, allowing you to manage connected devices, personalize your interface, and create automations. Access your home from anywhere with intuitive touch, text, and voice commands.
- AI-powered smart home control
- Personalize home interface
- Create automations and alerts
- Intuitive touch, text, and voice commands
- Remote access to property
- Manage connected devices
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Josh.ai: AI powered smart home control. Powered by Josh.ai's award winning software platform AI OS, the Josh App provides seamless access to your connected devices and dynamic tools to personalize your home intelligence experience to the fullest. Refine administrative settings, adjust a home's floor plan, nickname devices, create automations and alerts, and add custom photos to your bespoke interface. Access your property from anywhere and easily navigate to what's important. Simply swipe from the Interactive Home Page to access custom dashboards, areas, devices, and scenes. The Josh.ai platform is designed to empower every member of the family with intuitive control and intelligent assistance through touch, text, and natural voice commands. Note: The Josh App requires a valid software plan and accompanies Josh hardware, which is exclusively available through certified home technology professionals. Visit www.josh.ai for more information.
Vestaboard
This app allows you to remotely connect and control a smart messaging display. Easily craft, send, schedule, and curate messages, or collaborate with others. It offers inspiration with templates and content picks, and helps manage your display's settings for a personalized experience.
- Visual message editor
- Instant and scheduled sending
- Inspiration with templates
- Message history and drafts
- Remote collaboration
- Quiet hours and time zone settings
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Connect and control your Vestaboard from anywhere with the Vestaboard mobile app. Whether you're sending a quick note or curating a moment of inspiration, the app makes it easy and fun to manage your Vestaboard. Key features: - Craft beautiful messages with the intuitive visual editor - Send instantly, schedule for later, or pin a message to display longer - Get inspired with daily content picks and ready-to-use templates - Browse, edit, and favorite past messages or start fresh with new drafts - Invite others to collaborate and manage your Vestaboard remotely - Set quiet hours and time zone preferences to fit your routine Vestaboard is a stunning smart messaging display, inspired by the classic split-flap signs of European train stations and reimagined for the modern home or workspace. Use it at home to share inspiration, stay organized, and connect with loved ones, or bring it to work to engage teams, welcome guests, and keep everyone in sync. Ideal for offices, retail spaces, hospitality, education, healthcare, and more. Learn more at vestaboard.com. Need support? Visit vestaboard.com/help
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is ads: Josh at none against Vestaboard's shown. Josh also leads on update cadence (weekly vs every 2 months) and monetization model (free vs free with in-app purchases). Vestaboard's advantage is iOS requirement (16.4 vs 18). On price, ratings volume, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Josh holds the better App Store score, 4.8 against 4.6. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 115 and 141 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 87% of Josh's written reviews are positive against 71% of Vestaboard's.
Josh ships an update weekly, Vestaboard every 2 months. Both last shipped on November 11, 2026.
| Parameter | Josh | Vestaboard |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.8 (115 ratings) — better | 4.6 (141 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 87.1% of reviews — better | 70.6% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 115 | 141 — better |
| Update frequency | Weekly — better | Every 2 months |
| Ads | No — better | Yes |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free — better | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 18 | 16.4 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 144 MB | 137 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Josh.ai Inc | Vestaboard, Inc. |
Customer experience
Josh
Vestaboard
User reviews
Josh
From 115 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 👍 Intuitive and easy to use
- ✨ Elegant and modern UI design
- 💡 Powerful scene creation
- 🗣️ Natural and effective voice control
- 🏠 Seamless home automation
Room to improve
- 🐛 App fails to load home
- 🗣️ Natural language processing issues
- 🧠 Lacks memory for device names
- 🎶 Music control is confusing
- 📱 UI changes inconvenient (button placement)
Vestaboard
From 141 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- ✨ Amazing product and looks
- 👍 Easy to use app interface
- 🤩 Entertaining and fun to use
- 💡 Great for office communication
- 💖 Inspires creativity and delights users
Room to improve
- 🐛 App updates cause issues (mute functionality)
- 🐛 Sending new messages doesn't work
- 🐛 App is not super responsive
- 🐛 App takes a long time to load or errors out
- 🐛 Manual editor is painfully clunky
Bugs and requests
Josh
Reported bugs
5 issues- App completely fails to load home
- Natural language processing fails to recognize simple commands
- App has zero memory
- Josh doesn't consistently communicate commands
- Music control is confusing and unintuitive
Requested features
6 requests- Improve music control interface
- Allow device name changes
- Enhance memory for device names
- Improve natural language processing for commands
- Better scene creation based on habits
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- Control all lights in a room at once
Vestaboard
Reported bugs
9 issues- Mute for a period of time functionality is inoperable after update
- Sending new messages to the board simply doesn’t work
- App update forces updates when there aren’t any
- Unable to set time zone or make changes to quiet hours
- Device will not connect to internal WiFi
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- App crashing upon opening
- App takes at least a full minute to load or runs into an error
- Bluetooth keyboard doesn't work in manual editor on Android
- Pairing with WiFi issues out of the box
Requested features
9 requests- Option to switch off WiFi module for power saving
- More specific controls for sending messages by time
- Include Vestaboard+ in initial hardware purchase
- Add iCal support
- More basic tools for text editing (preview, alignment control)
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- Improve manual editor for better text control
- Support for French applications/language
- Ability to center text
- More creative control beyond limited templates
In-app purchases
Josh
No in-app purchases
Vestaboard
No in-app purchases
