I've also been blocked on my home network (CO, USA). Any insight into how your block system is working?
Show HN: An iOS budget app I've been maintaining since 2011
51–60 of 61 posts
Re: Show HN: An iOS budget app I've been maintaining since 2011
#52Just some constructive feedback. Your site needs a little bit of work on design and copy. "test your personal user account one month free for." and other (translation?) mistakes. Your use of capitalisation and spelling is not consistent throughout each page. FAQ page is empty? Quick Manual page is empty? iOS download link doesn't work. Your security posture boils down to "we're German, trust us"?
Indeed. The capitalization and punctuation inconsistencies are a huge turn off. My instinct was that people behind the software don’t have attention to detail.
Re: Show HN: An iOS budget app I've been maintaining since 2011
#53I have been paying my bills by computer since the early 80s. The key feature I wanted was check printing. These days I only write about 3 or 4 checks a month. For the past few years I have been using Banktivity but they have gone to a subscription model so I expect soon my copy will no longer run. I use it mostly for cash flow planning. Mac based so I would have to gin up something in Numbers to track expenses. Not looking forward to getting Numbers to print checks. Are you aware of any open source budget app that might give me a head start? If Apple ever gets around to running iOS apps on my MBP I would certainly consider your utility.
Re: Show HN: An iOS budget app I've been maintaining since 2011
#54Just some constructive feedback. Your site needs a little bit of work on design and copy. "test your personal user account one month free for." and other (translation?) mistakes. Your use of capitalisation and spelling is not consistent throughout each page. FAQ page is empty? Quick Manual page is empty? iOS download link doesn't work. Your security posture boils down to "we're German, trust us"?
That was also my first impression when I saw the site. The color scheme in general looked more like "boring b2b SaaS" and not a personal budgeting app and not really something where I'd look forward to spending a lot of time in (Which ideally you should in a budgeting app).
I think it could benefit from a personal, playful kind of touch to appeal to more mainstream users.
Re: Show HN: An iOS budget app I've been maintaining since 2011
#55I think there's something wrong with whatever bot/abuse detection you're using.
I got an error about "preventing attacks" the first time I tried to load your site.. and then again (I assume) in German when I clicked somewhere else. One time out of 10 I got a real page (I think) but it was also in German.
Re: Show HN: An iOS budget app I've been maintaining since 2011
#56Other than the fact youve been preserveering (or even thriving) for so long - which is way more that can be said of many solopreneurs or startups - what do you think makes your app/biz so resilient in finding/keeping such long term customers?
Re: Show HN: An iOS budget app I've been maintaining since 2011
#57I had a remarkably similar journey. I started with a small shareware app around 2004, an FTP client for Windows that had moderate success. There was a guy named Steve Pavlina who ran a blog where he explained his shareware business extremely well. He was very inspiring to me and ultimately convinced me to abandon the corporate programming job and become an independent software developer.
After much effort, I was earning enough from the FTP client to make a living, so I wanted to develop another app to diversify my risk. That one was a failure. I persisted and developed a third app around 2012: an email automation tool for Windows, something I actually needed myself. This one was also a success.
Finally, around 2020, I decided to focus exclusively on the email automation tool and develop a browser-based version of it. I've found that if you want to build something worthwhile, it's better to focus—even at the cost of more risk. That decision turned out to be the right one.
Re: Show HN: An iOS budget app I've been maintaining since 2011
#58Nice project! I built a CLI budgeting project a long time ago, and what made me stop using my own project was the lack of automated integration with my bank accounts. At that point I had many credit cards, multiple bank accounts, in different currencies, and integrating all expenses was just too much manual work. I wish financial institutions were better at automated exports of your financial data, given the right pe…
I have been pondering on this issue as well. Budgeting apps which have integration seem to have access to too much data.
Why do we need such a detailed breakdown for personal finance. I am pondering on this idea of using under or over type prompts to capture daily expense. The app send a notification asking me did you spend $100 or less in the day. Eventual goal of all budgeting apps is to reduce spending. this simple prompt can capture immense information without needing to break it down. breaking it down to categories can be a step if there is a problem detected in the savings pattern. For that banks are already adding the feature
keen to hear thoughts on this
Re: Show HN: An iOS budget app I've been maintaining since 2011
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
This was true, but today I would much rather have an llm categorize my expenses. Me doing it manually will never happen.
That’s fair — and I agree if enough context exists. The key limitation is that a raw bank transaction usually contains very little semantic information: amount, merchant name, date. From that alone, an LLM can only guess based on patterns or prior behavior, not actually know what the expense was for. “$100 at a supermarket” could be groceries, pet food, a household item, or something work-related. An LLM can infer pr…
Why not build a receipt scanner then?
Re: Show HN: An iOS budget app I've been maintaining since 2011
#60My personal bias is that anytime I see on a software company's website footer that they're a GmbH, I know it will be selling high quality, durable, reliable software ;) Congrats on your continued success!
Thanks! That’s funny, because while it’s technically a GmbH, it’s really just me — a one-person company. I originally set it up mainly for risk separation. Before the apps, I was developing backup software, and having a legal structure felt like the responsible thing to do. It also looked more professional at the time. Whether I’d do it again today, I’m honestly not sure. That said, keeping personal and business fina…
Smart move. Germany has the highest rate of lawsuits per capita. You need to be able to cover yourself.