Wesabe spices up your budgets
A couple years ago I started writing a web app called Budgetable to track my savings and spending by importing data from my bank. Although other projects pushed it to the wayside, it stayed a pretty useful expense tracking tool for me.
Since then, a couple startups have jumped into this game, and have outpaced my poor prototype by many miles. As Budgetable languishes, the least I can do is find a replacement for my loyal users-in-waiting (including myself.) So I tested out these two up and coming apps, and we have a clear winner: Wesabe1.
Why did Wesabe beat out Mint.com? Well, it supported Canadian banks! So it won by a factor of infinity. But in all honesty, it does everything I envisioned Budgetable would do, except for some UI issues. My review follows:
The Good
- Imports from a lot of banks, some automatically
- Has a reasonable dashboard with your total sum across accounts
- Allows you to graph spending on categories that you define
- It realizes that if JJ Bean was coffee last week it’s probably coffee this week
The Bad
- Doesn’t show you positive feedback for saving over time
- Noisy UI has some weird decisions and distractions2
- Deals poorly with banks that have two levels of password
- Too much focus on the social aspects, instead of “show me the money”
The Ugly
- The thought supporting all those banks in Budgetable
- Alignment issues on the left sidebar – if you’re a print designer, do NOT go in there
The Bottom Line
On the whole, it’s a win. All the Wesabe guys need to do is hire somebody with sharp, clear UI and design skills, and they’ll have a great product on their hands. Until they do, I’ll keep the source code for Budgetable just in case.
Jan 30 2009
9:28 am
I joined Mint a while ago and added my credit card accounts. They don’t support my credit union account, yet, but I’m waiting patiently. I just tried Wesabe (not for very long, yet) and it annoys me. You are giving the UI more credit than it deserves and the layout is very broken in Safari.
It does support my bank, though now that I’ve tasted Mint’s automatic updating, I don’t think I’ll be happy uploading obx files every time I want it updated. As for the visualization, I couldn’t figure out how to get a simple balance over time graph.
I’ll try to use it some more and post again if I change my mind.
Jan 30 2009
11:26 am
I totally agree about the balance over time graph – that was the #1 visualization in Budgetable, and it’s impossible in Wesabe. Overall, using Wesabe makes me want to go over to their office and forcefully redesign some of the UI.
One cool think Wesabe has is a Firefox plugin that you can basically train to do the upload from any bank. It records what you do, and you can have it “play it back” whenever you want it to update (even in the background).
I’ve asked the Mint folks to let me know when they support my bank, so if/when they do, I’ll post a review of Mint.
Jan 30 2009
2:02 pm
Thanks much for the kind words and the positive and negative comments – both help. I’ll just say that we’re working hard on pretty much everything you address above, so hopefully it won’t be long before you see a big improvement. Thanks again and let me know if you see anything else that needs fixing about the site.
Best,
Marc Hedlund
CEO, Wesabe
Jan 30 2009
3:30 pm
I’m glad to know you’re listening Marc! I look forward to seeing your improvements, and will consider writing up some more detailed UI feedback.