Some history

As I wrote several times, in November we released the first version of our money management application. It was relatively poor, it included expense tracking, monitoring account balance, defining custom categories.

We invited  newsletter subscribers for the tests. The application was not available to the public, because we wanted to improve it as much as possible and collect opinions and suggestions at a very early stage.

For this purpose, we even created a dedicated  Facebook group, where we shared our comments and ideas.

The group is still working, so I strongly encourage you to join:

I think that this formula works very well. Users reported a lot of really valuable comments and suggestions.

We managed to implement  a lot of them and remove many bugs. Ideas are still being reported. Their number is growing fast, so  I can not keep up with their implementation 😉

After several months of testing and releasing new features, the application has become usefull enough  to make it available to anyone interested.

Licensing rules and pricelist

I have been wondering for a long time how to release application for public. As you probably know, all data is stored in Google Cloud. This is for several reasons. One of them is data security, which in this case is guaranteed by Google. The second, easy scalability of application performance, regardless of the number of users.

There are many advantages, but there is also one very important drawback – the price. Unfortunately, Google’s servers cost quite a lot, so the application can not be completely free.

We decided to have a mixed solution – we provided a free version, which, however, is quite limited. In our opinion it is still sufficient for people who are just beginning their adventure with taking care of personal finances.

The full version is available in the PREMIUM package, which can be purchased on a monthly basis (then the price is $2,99 per month), or on an annual basis ($29,99 per year).

Full price list, with the version comparison can be found here:

https://www.familyfinancetracker.com/hestia/en/pricing/

We have been wondering a lot about prices.

We wanted the app to be quite cheap, because it is used by people who care about personal finances and minimize expenses.

But on the other hand, we wanted it to be expensive enough to let us pay for  the server costs and some advertising.

I hope that the price has been set at an appropriate level, and that you will find the app worth the money.

We also use it on our own. Thanks to Family Finance Tracker we were able to save a lot more money than the licence cost.

How it’s working

After logging to the  application, a 45-day trial period begins. It is longer than in competing applications. In our opinion, you should use it for  minimum a month, and then have some additional time to analyze the results.

After 45 days, the application will automatically switch from a trial license to a free license.

At any time during the trial period, or in the free plan, you can switch to the paid version. To do this, click on the “Go to PREMIUM version” button in the “Settings” menu and select the appropriate plan (annual or monthly).

After choosing a plan, you will be redirected to the payment provider, which in our case is Paddle.

Payment methods

We decided on Paddle for several reasons.

First of all, thanks to them we can legally sell our application  all over the world without any tax issues.

Second, they provide automatic subscription renewal support.

It is very convenient both for us as sellers and for Users. You do not have to manually re-pay for the next period. Payments are automatically collected from the User’s  card or PayPal account, just like in services such as Netflix or Spotify. Of course, you can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the “Cancel subscription” link in the “Settings” menu.

Another very big advantage to the use of Paddle is that the Family Finance Tracker does not need to  collect any user data.

We do not store any personal data of Users (we only store e-mail for login purposes). This is very important because many people have asked us in private messages how we protect their data. The best way to protect it is not to collect it 🙂

Paddle, however, has one drawback – a limited number of payment methods. Currently you can pay by credit card or PayPal account.

However, I hope that a large number of advantages  will compensate this disadvantage.

Summary

If you have not tested FamilyFinanceTracker yet, I encourage you to try. You can use the full version for free for 45 days. After this time, you can use the free version without any restrictions. If you only want to track expenses, it may be quite sufficient. We, of course, encourage you to buy the PREMIUM version, which will help you to fully control your finances and reduce unnecessary expenses. In our opinion, you will be able to save significantly more than the cost of the license. If you think, however, that the application is not for you, write us a message, or leave a comment. Thanks to your suggestions, we hope, we will be able to make FamilyFinanceTracker the best money management application.