"Brex – Great for Growth, But Startups Might Struggle Now"
I’ve been with Brex for a few years now, and it’s been an overall solid experience. They’re great if you’re looking to streamline expenses and keep things organized, and it’s clear they’ve built a system for scaling businesses.
What Brex Does Well:
- Expense Management & Tracking: Brex makes it easy to manage expenses with virtual cards and spend controls. It’s a huge plus if you’re handling various departments and want to set limits or monitor specific costs. Really shines for keeping everything organized.
- Perks & Integrations: They offer some decent perks, and the integrations make syncing with accounting tools smooth. It definitely helps simplify things when you’re handling a lot of transactions.
The Not-So-Good:
- Virtual Card Creation Is Now a Hassle: This used to be one of Brex’s standout features. Creating virtual cards was quick and simple, and it helped us separate specific costs (like Facebook ad spends) without a lot of manual effort. But recently, it’s become harder to create new virtual cards... not ideal when you’re managing multiple accounts.
- Onboarding Isn’t as Startup-Friendly Anymore: We recently raised funds for a new startup, but getting that new account set up on Brex was surprisingly complicated. It used to be a straightforward process, but now it feels more geared toward larger companies. For startups looking to hit the ground running, the onboarding process can feel like a barrier instead of an asset.
FINAL TAKE
Brex is still a powerful tool for growing companies, especially if you’ve got a lot of expenses to manage and need structure around spending. But... for startups and those who loved the old flexibility with virtual cards, it might not feel as accessible as it once did. Faster, simpler processes would go a long way in keeping Brex startup-friendly.
Use Relay instead, or anywhere else. 0-star customer service and due to their total lack of friendliness to startups.
Do not trust or use Brex—they gave me short notice they are closing my account with incomplete information—causing over a dozen hours and approximately 100 tasks (updating credit cards and more) I now need to do on top of running my company.
Do not use this shitty "bank" for your startup at all costs. Most importantly, they don't care about you, your company, or providing a good product or customer service.
definitely better than alternatives, and hosts quite a few features that beat using a manual system of bank cards + spreadsheets + emails etc., but doesn't mesh together perfectly. some features like bill pay & reimbursements have been flimsy and buggy from our experiences, and the constant changes of vendor cards -> budgets -> spend limits + cards means we have to adjust our internals every couple months to match. fine for a smaller company but i can imagine it getting annoying at scale. great product still!
Closed our active business account without warning. We've been in business 15 years, we employee 30+ people, we have never had a negative payment, we always have cash in our account, we use it almost daily. No explanation just 'withdraw your funds and leave'
We do website development for huge companies and have no strange activity that would contribute to this, and the decision is final. We have a few months to uproot everything and switch to a new account, update all our ACH info etc, connected accounts, etc.
