Wesabe vs. Mint
Feb 8, 04:25 AM by Eric Allen
I’ve been using Wesabe to keep track of my personal finances for the past year or so now, and I must say I love it. Uploading data is fast, easy, and secure. Viewing my transactions is simple and intuitive, and getting numbers out for taxes was a piece of cake. It doesn’t do everything, but Wesabe is a great tool for a young person with fairly simple finances who just wants to keep track of his money.
Now, a similar site started up a few months ago called Mint. Their software is much slicker, with window-esque overlays and fading page transitions. However, they lack two features I consider critical: they won’t support one of my credit cards, and they have no API. This means that not only can I not get all of my data in, getting my data back out is a pain. When I needed to file taxes this year, I was able to whip up a little Ruby program that downloaded and sliced up the information in a way that helped my file my Schedule C.
Wesabe gets a few things very much right for the kind of company they are. First, they interact amazingly closely with customers. If you join the “Make Wesabe Better” group inside of Wesabe, you get access to a forum with long conversations between users and developers about how to improve Wesabe. When I have a feature suggestion or a need, I know I can ask for it there and be heard. Second, they favor functionality over flash. Mint is much prettier, but Wesabe actually works. Not only does it work, but it works well and securely. That’s pretty awesome for such an early-stage web startup.
Basically, Wesabe is awesome and I highly recommend it to manage your personal finances.
