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Bobby — Keep track of your subscriptions
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@gabriel__lewis Hey Gabriel, thank you for your kind words! Oh, that's strange, we've sent out a newsletter this morning so you should have gotten a mail... If you still want to view the newsletter you can find it here haha: http://www.billyapp.co/newsletter/
Thanks @emieljanson for hunting Billy!
Hey everybody,
My name is Jeffrey (22) and I'm the maker of Billy. I'm really excited to share what we've been working on for the past couple of months.
Six months ago I moved out and started living on my own. Because of this, I suddenly had to take care of things I didn't know about. My parents used to take care of things like rent, electricity, gas, TV, Internet, but now I had to manage it myself. To manage all these things I thought about using an app for that, however, I just couldn't find a proper app that suited my needs and was really committed to do one thing right: keeping track of subscriptions. Most of those apps required an account, had too many features or where quite expensive.
Today we introduce Billy, the easiest way to get insights in your fixed costs. Billy helps you finding all your subscriptions and keeping track of them. Choose from hundreds of existing services or create and add custom subscriptions. Normally you won't know when a service is billed and you have to go to the app of your bank whether or not a subscription is billed. This makes it really cumbersome to track subscriptions, especially when you have lots of them. Billy solves this by reminding you about all your upcoming due dates. This way you'll never forget when a bill is due! We're using a freemium business model, that allows you to add up to 4 subscriptions. For just $0.99 users can get unlimited subscriptions. Forever.
At the moment, Billy is still learning and improving himself. We aim to make Billy super smart so he can auto detect all your subscriptions, view your due dates in a notification center widget and on your Apple Watch.
We've been in beta for three months and got some really great feedback and insights, thanks to everyone who participated in the beta and has been using Billy intensively.
Would love to hear what you guys think about Billy, I'm excited to answer all your questions!
Have a nice day! 🐿
See what Billy can do for you, download for free here:
https://itunes.apple.com/app/bil...
@jeffreydgroot Congrats! App looks really nice.
How does Billy compare with others in this space? Seems like there is growing competition here. FWIW I'm not sure a text-based bot is the most effective approach for this space so I like the path you've taken
@bentossell Hey Ben! Thanks for the kind words.
You're totally right about the competition and there are indeed a lot of apps that allow you to manage your subscriptions. I think where Billy really sets itself apart is the simplicity and design. The main thing I missed in other apps is the ability to quickly get an overview of your monthly costs. Most of them felt too bloated and feature heavy, while we're focussing on one thing: get insights in your fixed costs.
Would love for you to give it a try and hear what your think!
@jeffreydgroot yeh, like I said I love the design of the app... haha I'm still wanting to have more insights on managing my money but I cant bear looking at my account at the moment... hopefully in a few months I'll be on it ha!
@jeffreydgroot Great product, since this the first version. It will only get better 😎
@bentossell Haha, we're familiar with that problem yes... We really hope Billy can help you getting back the control over your fixed costs! As mentioned earlier, we really aim to make Billy smarter so it will be even easier to add / list subscriptions.
Beautiful design. I downloaded it and will set up my subscriptions. Are there plans to allow us to separate personal and business subscriptions?
@benbelser @stormlux Thanks guys! Being able to use multiple 'accounts' is on our list, I think this is a feature that goes hand in hand nicely with 'Shared subscriptions'.
Downloaded it and I like it. This is typically the kind of app people would pay for, right? Is there a reason why you kept it free of charge?
@ldesserrey Hey Laurent! Well, we actually think it's the opposite. Especially with a dead simple app like Billy, we feel it makes more sense to use the freemium model and to get as many users as possible. Users are able to add up to 4 subscriptions by default and when they like it (and have more than 4 subscriptions) they can unlock it for just .99. But as you might know, doing pricing right is really, really though haha
@jeffreydgroot Sure, it actually makes much more sense to make them pay after they're hooked. Anyway, simple products like this are the best. Keep up the good work 🤘🏼
a good start but it seems so...manual. in this age of integrations with banks, I'd expect something more than a list I could make on my reminders app. the only added value is the logos.
I'm interested in where this will go, because at the moment it's just not worth another platform for me to have to integrate with.
@thejeremycarson Hey Jeremy! We've launched Billy as an mvp and to get know our users and their behaviour. We really want Billy to become smart and to connect your bankaccounts, homescreen or inbox for recurring payments. We envision Billy to be your personal subscriptions manager and therefore it would be awesome to let Billy do all the work.
We're currently investigating the ability to connect you CC, though we had a lot of feedback from users that find it scary to 'give away the control' of their CC. But this is definitely something we're on and so I totally see your point. Thanks for your comment :)
@jeffreydgroot @thejeremycarson Not all feedback is good feedback. Users hook up their credit cards to 3rd parties all the time!
@jeffreydgroot @thejeremycarson Connecting to gmail to ingest this data would be welcomed, search for subscription and currency signs and ask the user if it is recurring or one time charges.
Love the name - and the headaches this relieves. With the subscription economy getting bigger and bigger - this will be a huge value.... do you guys do stuff for enterprise?
Hey Jeffrey your product is amazing it's exactly what I was looking for! I started putting my subscriptions on the app, but some are in euro, some in dollars, some in gbp. Is there a way to choose the currency for each subscription?
@david770 Hey David, thanks for your kind words!
Supporting multiple currencies is definitely something thats's on our list (I really need that feature too). We're currently investigating the best solution for this, as it's quite a though 'feature' haha!
@jeffreydgroot indeed because you don't know which FX to choose when you sum up everything. I would suggest the FX of the day, you don't need to get the historical FX
@david770 Yeah exactly! This is the main reason why we're currently not supporting it, but we'll be sure to make this feature as easy and clear as possible :)
I just started using Truebill yesterday because it syncs with my bank account (in Canada! a rarity) and have been super impressed. I do like the mobile UI of Billy though, and the fact that it shows you how many days until your next bill.
@tombielecki Hey Tom! Yeah, we like Truebill ourselves as well, they offer some nice features that make discovering subscriptions really easy. I think that Billy is like the 'young and keen brother' that focusses on simplicity and 'doing one thing right' (if that makes sense to you haha). We'l definitely want to make Billy smart and integrate with other services as well, so please keep an eye us! :)
I'm rather obsessive about personal finance applications and love seeing new approaches.
@jeffreydgroot how does Billy pick up your expenses? Are they all manually input?
Why did you decide to focus on fixed costs which are mostly static instead of non-fixed costs which are dynamic?
@ggnall Hi Graham! As mentioned in my first comment, Billy is quite 'dumb' now, meaning that you have to input expenses manually. We launched Billy as an mvp and really want to improve the app along the way. Our goal is to reduce the user input to the bare minimum as Billy manages your subscriptions.
The main reason why we focussed on fixed costs is that most people have lots of different subscriptions these days. As most services work with subscriptions models its becoming 'sort of a problem to manage all those recurring costs'. Hope this answers your question!
@jeffreydgroot thanks for the info Jeffrey. just because it is not MY biggest pain point, does not mean it isn't others... good luck!
I am biased, but I'm loving Billy. It's just a very simple way to get a quick overview of your monthly expenses.
@vschwid A comment like that, from a co-founder of the huntet product, does more harm than good for me.
If you want to increase traction of this hunt, it would be a lot more valuable for you, if you gave or added value to the discussion instead of writing 'I love my own product'.
@trovatten I'm really proud of my team (and external additional forces) and wanted to let them publicly see that. Do you feel the same during Apple keynotes?
@jbrooksuk @vschwid Guys. I love the idea of the product. I think it looks like unroll.me for payments, which is super-cool for a forgetful guy like me. If @vschwid wrote 'I'm really proud our hard-working team and the finished product' I would have no issue. I just felt the comment was kinda shallow and it didn't talk about the team or the fact that he is proud of the product.
Anywho - I might have been a bit cranky yesterday, and I just wrote down that I thought.
That said, I'm actually really excited to try the App!
I love it! And I like your approach. TBH, I am not very comfortable with the idea of scanning my CC for subscriptions. Also, I loved the UI. :) A simple feature request - How about I send my subscription mail to your custom email and then it auto detects and adds it to my list? Somewhat similar to sending mails to your Evernote notebook through custom Evernote email. This way I don't have to give my CC and the job can still be done efficiently.
The simple design here is excellent, kudos to your designer 👍 I like the freemium model too. Just to point out there's a typo; 'EA Acces' (sorry I'm a bit ocd with spelling!)
@marsh931 Thanks Alex! We really aimed to make Billy is simple and clear as possible. We think there's definitely room for an app that has been designed with usability and simplicity in mind. Haha, whoops, that one slipped through, will fix it!
This app is freaking awesome, @jeffreydgroot! Just a few suggestions. I'd love to
1. chose from multiple currencies. I live in India. So I'd love to use INR.
2. be able to add my own icon when creating a custom subscriptions. I see that Ghost blog isn't available on your platform yet. So, if you allowed me to add my own icon or maybe I could just type the link of the website and you could automagically fetch their logo? You could also use this to keep track of what subscription services people are using and you can add that to your list. :)
3. I want to be able to choose on which date I'll be billed.
I hope this helps. So far, I love this app.
Congrats on the launch, guys! :-)
Looks great, Jeffrey! I'm gonna give it a go. I have only approximate idea about my expenses, so I hope this will make my life a little bit more organized :)
Came from Dribbble. Loved the name Billy, but it seems to be Bobby now. Too many comments to read why, but who cares, the concept is great! Love it.
@jeffreydgroot yeah! This idea is very useful and with your simply but functional UX your app is fantastic! Congrats! I have just tip for you: some subscriptions may be run for 28 days instead of a month (for example here in Italy, mobile operator subscription (😡)) so could be useful to specify a custom date cycle.
@fstrazzante Hey Francesco, thanks for your support! For now, we only focussed on the most common cycles, but we'll definitely look into supporting different cycles as well
Loving this. A feature I would love is sharing categories for expenses, so I could group them to credit cards or expenses I share with roomates.
@bolivar Thanks Bolivar! Yeah, this is also something that's on our list :)
I love it! I've been searching for something like this for ages... Mint Bills was close, but even that is too clunky. I don't need to pay bills via the app, just track them. Well done @jeffreydegroot!
P.S. Only feature request is to add bimonthly time period.
@joshtodd Thanks so much for the kinds words Josh! The things you mention are exactly what we're aiming for, just simple bill tracking, nothing more (as well as great design). And yes, the bimonthly billing is something that's on our backlog :)
Billy is awesome. Congrats on the launch, Jeffrey! I've been using the beta for quite a while now and I've been able to manage my subscriptions with it. I think the product, as small as it might seem, has a lot of potential.
Really like the simplicity of the app @jeffreydgroot and Team, congrats! Curious about your roadmap and plans. The terms button in the app is not working though...was curious about them ;)
@donfontijn Hey thanks Don! As mentioned in my first comment, we aiming to make Billy smart so he can do all the work for you (not having to enter subscriptions manually). And yes, the terms button slipped through our fingers, has been fixed now and we'll be included in the next update. In the meantime you can view the terms here http://www.billyapp.co/legal/
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