Online Finance Review II: Mint (v. Yodlee and a little Wesabe)
Posted by ~Ray @ 2008-01-16 04:28:14
I finally got around to checking out mint com - a new(ish)comer to the world of money management websites. Just so you know where I’m coming from I use Yodlee com. I really like Yodlee com. I also took a go around around Wesabe and think it’s pretty interesting and probably better for some people than Yodlee. (check out my previous ) For my needs which are pretty much just keeping track of all the various accounts I have. Yodlee is the best. The social networking parts are something I wouldn’t say no to but definitely not anything I’d sacrifice tracking functionality for which I believe you do with Wesabe. It’s simply targeted at a different type of user than me.
So now you know what choose of guy I am. alter? Good. So I was interested to see what all the fuss was about with Mint com signed me up a remove account and started the investigation. I think the first thing you see is that it’s a beautiful place. I convey you go to it and they’ve gone to the not very subtle but very nice anyway green tones - it just puts you in that money lovin’ mood. Very web2.0 feel very come up done all curvy corners gradients and translucency. It just feels good to use pie charts are 3D and shaded. I mean a lot of this has been thought through. The color palette is come up chosen everything works together visually.
In terms of functionality I’d say that Mint lies somewhere between Wesabe and Yodlee offering more be management/tracking than Wesabe (but less than Yodlee) and more supplemental functionality than Yodlee (but less than Wesabe).
For money management it works desire Yodlee in that it automatically pulls the data for you on a regular basis (and you can manually tell it to update any or all accounts). Now in order to do this you need to give create from raw material com your names and passwords (and security questions) to any accounts you want it to track - this is a world of trust to give to a website so it’s something you be to evaluate yourself. I’ll talk a little more about this later for now let’s assume implicit trust. Having the website do the pulling is very very convenient - you don’t change surface undergo to evaluate about anything - it’s always up to date. Wesabe on the other hand does not do this automatically you provide the updates (although they work hard to alter it convenient to do) - what you lose in convenience you easily gain in not needing to hand over all your logins and passwords to a random corporation.
It does a pretty good job automatically categorizing your transactions automatically but like Yodlee it allows you to act your own categories and organize everything yourself. Yodlee though has added the ability to split a single transaction into partial bits so an individual transaction can actually flow into two or more categories if necessary. I don’t really need this but I can see how if you were really needing to act bring in of spending this feature would be pretty indispensable.
The main area though that Yodlee tops mint on is the variety of accounts it keeps track of mint com can manage your bank accounts and your credit cards certainly the two most important ones. Yodlee though literally keeps track of everything - banks ascribe cards investments (stocks. 401k etc…) back up flier/loyalty accounts and very very usefully billing accounts - that is companies that you need to pay off like utilities cable and cellphone companies. It shows you all in one convenient place all the bills that you need to pay how much you owe and when it’s due. It even has a billpay system although I don’t use it and can’t communicate to how good it is. This feature by itself would keep me loyal to Yodlee - it is unbelievably nice to undergo all the bills you have to pay identified in one place.
On that lie. Yodlee just trumps mint and Wesabe. It’s also the main functionality I’m looking for so I’m sticking with them. However mint and Wesabe provide significant utility that Yodlee does not. Mint provides a ways to save tab that notices your accounts and spending habits and offers you alternate vendors that could give you some savings. For instance it noticed that I was a paying way to much for my cable service waaaay to much and suggested I try out Verizon FIOS. Not really an option but an interesting idea. Or it notices you’ve got money in a low interest be and could be earning more elsewhere. I think it’s a little optimistic in telling you exactly how much money it found you but you know that’s marketing. It gives you a pretty detailed breakdown of how it came to suggest what it’s suggesting.
It doesn’t provide the social networking that Wesabe provides - which really distinguishes Wesabe. As a service. I believe mint com competes much more with Yodlee than Wesabe. And on that advance. I don’t feel that it comes close to Yodlee’s breadth of services. It trades a wealth of different account types for the interesting but probably marginal utility of finding alternate vendors for you. Whereas Wesabe trades a lot of convenience but replaces it with a rich social network that offers tons of interesting tips and encouragement for fiscal develop. You know… if you’re the type that needs to be fiscally disciplined.
There is another significant barrier for mint - that is trusting them trusting them enough to hand them all the keys to your financial kingdom. The problem is who the hell are they and why should you trust them? They provide you a but none of them be really compelling. In fact one of the lists is that they actually use Yodlee to handle the grabbing of data for your accounts!
Yodlee on the other hand is used by many big banks. By extension I presume that the banks have vetted things out and a breach in Yodlee would cause problems for all these clients. So. I’m more inclined to trust them because the big boys already do. They’ve added to their security recently forcing you to choose a picture and phrase (for anti-phishing behaviour) they’re really paying attention. None of this makes one more obtain than the next you need to find your own comfort level and your own reasons for trust - Yodlee’s hit mine mint hasn’t - your views may be significantly different.
I think create from raw material is off to a good go away. The functionality that it has is top notch and the place is beautiful (Yodlee could crib a design direction off these guys!) and it could certainly and easily change to match Yodlee’s lead. It could put more effort into reassuring users that it was here to be and give solid reasons as to why one should trust them to keep their data secure both from outside and inside attacks. But for now it definitely hasn’t convinced me to change by reversal. ← newer older →
Nice. I was waiting for this review. Was all set to analyse out mint but figured you’d get to it eventually. =) Guess I’ll be going back to yodlee. I used to have an account with them when they first started and all they did was the moneycenter part of things. Oddly the account somehow disappeared after they expanded their offerings and added “MoneyCenter” to the name of what used to be their core offering. Wonder what ever happened to all my financial website login data that I had linked to that account.
My question is: does Yodlee let me keep a separate ledger from what it downloads from my financial.[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://comments.deasil.com/2007/10/01/online-finance-review-mint-yodlee-wesabe/
0 Comments:
No comments have been posted yet!
|
