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DashFlow — Private, ad-free Mint.com alternative
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@joshdance Thank you! We're a self-funded company supported by a Freemium model. We have a Premium option for a one-time fee to unlock unlimited everything, and a monthly Pro plan for all premium features plus automatic bank sync, which is currently available in the USA. When Plaid, the service we use to securely sync transactions, supports more countries, then we will too.
Hey Product Hunt! My co-founder Ben and I spent 14 months building this to scratch our own itch.
We wanted to solve three problems with the money management apps we've used over the years:
1. Privacy: We decided to only store data in the user's private iCloud account, even if they decide to do automatic bank sync or Apple's new CKShare iCloud sharing feature for secure family sharing. So the first goal was to offer totally private sync, backup and sharing, all with no signup required.
2. Business Model: There have been a lot of great apps since Mint that are based on the same business model - letting the user sign up for free, then showing ads and offers promoting credit cards, insurance quotes, credit scores, etc. - but we wanted to take a different approach...rather than showing ads and offers based on the user's financial data, we decided to stick with our first goal (privacy) and offer a fairly-priced premium plan. We have a one-time payment option to unlock unlimited everything for those that don't do automatic bank sync, and an optional subscription for users in the USA that want bank sync (Plaid only offers USA institutions for now, but we'll expand as soon as they do, and if demand is high enough we'll prioritize an automatic OFX import feature so everyone can sync their bank data).
3. UX: Using Mint.com since it came out, I loved it at first, but there are too many taps to get where I want to go, and it's impossible to organize things the way I want (e.g. They don't allow reordering of accounts or budgets, they make you set up budgets for every category, etc).
DashFlow is really easy to set up, yet totally customizable. You can organize and track everything however you like.
Just want to track a few flex spending categories? Cool. Set your total monthly budget and goals for those categories, and we'll automatically create an Other Budget for you to cover everything else.
Want to track a particular set of accounts or categories over time? Create a custom widget for your dashboard to focus on that goal, and you can sort your widgets in the most helpful order.
That about sums it up! It's private, with no ads, and it's easy to use yet extremely flexible.
@shantianyun Looks like the redirect link Sam used is down right now, but I just tweeted him about it. Thanks for the heads up! Update: Back in action!
Can the budget categories be set "to the cent?" Currently use EveryDollar, it's great but simple and a bit limited. I do follow the every dollar (cent) accounted for philosophy though, so that precision is imperative for us. Anyway, looks like a great system, congrats!
@joe_legnd Yep! We do display the values rounded to the nearest dollar, but all the math will be done to the penny so it's as accurate as possible. Thanks for the kind words!
@imakestrides Ah okay. I saw that you could set up a PIN. Didn't realize until I left the app and came back that it turned on Touch ID, too.
Wow, this looks seriously fantastic. How would you say it compares to YNAB? Thanks for making this. At first glance I see a lot of attention to detail on making it. 👏
@absurdlab Thanks so much Pablo! That means a lot after 14-15 months of hard work. :)
You Need A Budget is a great system. We started building DashFlow when YNAB was still a paid upfront product focused on manual transaction entry, but they've since switched to $50/year for automatic bank sync. I'd say the two biggest differences are (i) their app is of course focused on their budgeting system, while DashFlow is designed to be flexible enough so you can use it with any approach, and (ii) with DashFlow you can do any combination of bank sync and manual entry.
Whichever app you choose to use, I'd encourage you to sign up for their free newsletter and check out their free workshops: https://www.youneedabudget.com/w... They really know their stuff when it comes to budgeting, and they give a lot of valuable info away for free.
Thanks again for your interest in DashFlow, and best of luck with all your money goals!
Looks great. Been dissatisfied with previous expense/budget trackers I've tried so far.
But cries in iPhone 5C (╥﹏╥)
@dpencilpusher Thanks! Sorry, we couldn't support 32-bit devices due to some features we included. Have a great day!
@bailey_jennings Thanks! It was just featured by Apple and I was hoping it'd get hunted next week, but it's awesome seeing it here now. :)
This is great, and the type of product I have been looking for! (no joke! https://www.producthunt.com/ask/...)
I would love to see a sync status somewhere, in settings or something like that. Like "Last updated 4h" or similar. Sync update seems to be a big problem with these services imo. Even now in your app, I added a CC, and don't see transactions, but not clear if it's still syncing, or if that's not how it treats CC? Too "mysterious" without that input.
@jud5on Thanks Judson! Totally agree. It syncs in the background and when you open the app, and we can only get changes from the banks about 3-4 times per day, so we didn't think to add this on v1.0, but three people have asked about it. So, we're adding a nice little status bar notification with the first update (v1.1). It'll say "Syncing transactions..." then "Sync complete!" in the status bar, so it's easy to tell what's going on, without it getting in your way.
HOLY. GRAIL.
I seriously spent hours last weekend scouring the internet for ANY viable replacement for Mint (for exactly the reasons you pointed — privacy/security, and really sub-par UX). Definitely giving this a spin.
Couple questions:
1) Since everything is synced through iCloud, how can my partner and I share an account? Will we be able to use the same account on devices with different iCloud accounts?
2) Data import: will we be able to import budgets/records/anything from Mint? As much as I'm ready to jump off that Titanic of an app, I don't have time to spend dozens of hours rebuilding all our crazy budgets and re-tagging transactions. Any good news there?
3) A web app in your sights, I hope? I don't know if I missed the last millennial meeting or something, but I much prefer to do all my budgeting/financial work on desktop (mostly so I can have all my bank accounts/Mint open at the same time).
Can't wait to dive in!
@thejohnnyhill Thanks Johnny! Really appreciate it. Great questions.
1) We are using a new feature from Apple called CKShare. The CK stands for CloudKit, which is what Apple has opened up to developers for syncing data securely through iCloud. With CKShare, you can simply text or email a link generated by iCloud to your partner, and they'll be able to tap it to open DashFlow and start syncing with you! It's awesome. :)
2) We spent about 15 months in development, and we really wanted to ship v1.0. This was one of the biggest features that we wanted to do, but had to cut before going live. Since we're able to pull in about 3 months worth of data on initial sync, most beta testers said they don't need much more beyond that, so we put this on the backlog. That said, we definitely plan to allow importing of CSV, OFX, etc. so you don't have to feel like you're losing any data.
3) Since we're focused on iCloud for privacy and simplicity for the user, we won't be building for Android or Windows. So, our plan is to build a native Mac app, which will work beautifully with iCloud.
Thanks again for your interest, and good luck with your money goals!
@imakestrides @thejohnnyhill
Looks great and congrats on shipping! Do you have a rough timeline for a native Mac App? That would be the clincher for me.
Best, Cory
@achtan We can only support 64 bit devices due to the features we've included and some technical constraints, so we support back to the 5s.
Are the line graphs custom or there is a third-party library for it? Might need it for an application I am developing.
@chris_moore1 Thanks Chris! Our hope is that with PSD2 on the horizon Plaid, the service we use for bank sync, will expand to Europe. We're trying to keep things under one banking API if possible, but if they're slow to expand we will likely use Salt Edge or something similar.
Summer Bod 2020