Show HN: I built uFincs – a privacy-first, encrypted personal finance app
ufincs.com
ufincs.com
Yes, it's another personal finance app. Yes, there sure are a lot of them. But when I got tired of using GnuCash a couple years ago, I figured I should try something a little different and throw my hat in the ring.
The result? No banks, no budgets, no data collecting. Just a clean UI, a privacy-first attitude, and good old double-entry accounting.
The main thing that makes us so 'privacy-first' is the fact that we do client-side encryption: all of the financial data that you enter is encrypted before it leaves your browser and hits our servers. That way, you maintain sole ownership of your data. Want more of the juicy technical details? Check out our security overview: https://ufincs.com/policies/security
If you want to skip past all of the marketing fluff, feel free to drop into using the app right away: https://ufincs.com/noaccount. Since uFincs is offline-first and a PWA, we can offer the ability to use the app completely without an account, for free! Of course, if you want to easily access your data on all your devices, that's where a paid account comes in handy :)
And if you're getting some mad déjà vu from all this, it's because I commented about uFincs a couple weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26970716
Finally, since I know some people were hesitant about the pricing, I decided to throw together a special coupon just for you guys: "HN15". It's 15% off, forever, on any of the plans, for the first 100 new sign-ups.
If you have any questions, feel free to check out out the FAQ (https://ufincs.com/faq), but I'll be here all day to respond to any comments!
That's because otherwise the privacy property of the app hinges on a trust in vendor and the assumption that they won't serve some funny JS on the next page reload. The one and only way to address this is to provide a self-hosted, completely self-contained version. There's really no way around this. It's not a matter of encrypting things or storing them locally, it's a matter of divorcing yourself as a developer from users' data. Right now, it's a packaged deal.
PS. Looks very nice though. Clearly lots of thought went into the design and UX elements. This part is really well done!
But I like to think that, at least when put in contrast with other products on the market, choosing to do these privacy/security related things is better than not.
I elaborate on this further in our security doc (https://ufincs.com/policies/security#the-catch) and the FAQ (https://ufincs.com/faq#is-a-ufincs-a-trustless-system).
I'm sure my customers who signed up with ProtonMail and Fastmail addresses can attest to that fact.
And for those who do fall all the way to the self-hosting side, well, there's plenty of other options on the market! Of course, there's nothing stopping us from being one of those options, it's just not our priority at this very moment.
I don't know enough about browsers or js to know if its difficult or not.
Any plans for a mobile app?
And yep, we have plans for dedicated mobile/desktop apps for sometime this year. Android will almost certainly come before iOS though.
I made a deliberate choice to not support any bank integrations for privacy reasons (although simplicity is also a big factor).
But I also made the bet that there would be people just like me who value entering things manually. Certainly far fewer people, but hopefully still people.
In any case, I also hope that the app you described eventually gets built; certainly never hurts to have more privacy-friendly options available!
Anyways, I definitely understand where you're coming from. Plenty of other products that do have bank integrations though, so at least of there's lots of options for you!
And thanks for the design feedback :)
I see that CSV import is supported. For people like me it will be truly useful to outline, with examples, how and what exactly can be automated using CSV or other methods.
In my family we use Wallet [1], which allows for shared family accounts, budgets and bank account sync. The app definitely has some issues, like because of the PSD2 requirements, sync sometimes fails for some banks. It lacks a solid algorithm that recognizes/remembers the type of synced expenses. It also lacks some features like investment type of accounts that support stocks or crypto with real-time updates.
That being said, it still provides an immediate look over our current finances and monthly balance with as little need for account management as possible.
I hope this feedback helps.
In any case, I agree that we could do better as far as showing examples/features altogether, but I figured (at least for the time being), just letting people use the app without an account (https://ufincs.com/noaccount) is as good a demo as any.
Definitely useful feedback, thanks!
Super tiny nit: I might put the per-month cost next to the annual price (and maybe how many months/years next to the lifetime cost). It was not immediately apparent to me that the annual price is 50% cheaper, which is fairly substantial.
And yeah, the pricing section could definitely be made clearer on that. Thanks for the feedback.
Looks very, very nice for a solo project!
The product isn’t for me at all, personally, because of wanting integrations/automation. But the app and sales pages look beautiful. I feel motivated enough to get off iPad and hacker news and get going on a side React project now.
You Finks!
For what it's worth.