[HN Gopher] Show HN: I built uFincs - a privacy-first, encrypted...
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Show HN: I built uFincs - a privacy-first, encrypted personal
finance app
Author : devinsit
Score : 32 points
Date : 2021-05-11 14:02 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ufincs.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ufincs.com)
| patrickmn wrote:
| Hahah this gif https://ufincs.com/assets/images/features-
| autocomplete-5B771...
|
| Looks very, very nice for a solo project!
| jedimastert wrote:
| I really appreciate the "Get out your credit card" call to
| action. Just the right kind of humor for a personal finance site.
|
| 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.
| devinsit wrote:
| Yeah, deciding to go straight-shooter with some of copy was
| definitely a risk, but thanks for letting me know that you
| appreciate it :)
|
| And yeah, the pricing section could definitely be made clearer
| on that. Thanks for the feedback.
| likecarter wrote:
| Looks nice! What language is this written in?
| devinsit wrote:
| Thanks! The app itself is all React + Redux + TypeScript.
| Backend API is Node + Feathers + TypeScript. So certainly
| nothing fancy.
| mritchie712 wrote:
| tailwind too, right?
| devinsit wrote:
| The marketing site (https://ufincs.com) uses React + NextJS
| + Tailwind. The app itself (https://app.ufincs.com) uses a
| design system that I built completely custom (with plain
| old Sass).
| devinsit wrote:
| Hey HN! I'm excited to (officially) show off the project I've
| been working on (for far too long): uFincs, a privacy-first
| personal finance app! https://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 deja 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!
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Ah, I really like how clean the UI feels and also the e2ee. I'd
| love if this also could have a mobile app, as I then could
| document transactions on the go more easily.
|
| Any plans for a mobile app?
| devinsit wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback on the UI! Definitely put some time
| into trying to get that right.
|
| And yep, we have plans for dedicated mobile/desktop apps for
| sometime this year. Android will almost certainly come before
| iOS though.
| huhtenberg wrote:
| Privacy-first finance app should really have a self-hosted
| option front and center. That's not even negotiable.
|
| 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!
| devinsit wrote:
| Yep, I agree. If you want perfect security and a 100% trust-
| less solution, then uFincs certainly isn't it.
|
| 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).
| huhtenberg wrote:
| Well, the thing is that if you say "privacy-first", you are
| pitching to people who care about this sort of thing. For
| these people the fact that uFincs is not self-hosted is an
| instant no-go. And for people who don't see it as a
| problem, the privacy angle doesn't matter much either. See
| the disconnect? You have a good product, for sure, but the
| pitch needs a revision.
| devinsit wrote:
| Oh I'm well aware of the disconnect. I just disagree that
| there are _only_ people who care about privacy to the
| degree that they have to self-host everything. I believe
| there 's room to ride the line between being 'privacy-
| first' (in that we care about privacy, first and
| foremost) and offering convenience (i.e. providing a web
| app).
|
| 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.
| qshaman wrote:
| https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-
| selfhosted#mon.... A bunch of self hosted alternatives, some
| of them with nice UI as well.
| devinsit wrote:
| Firefly III (https://www.firefly-iii.org/) in particular is
| a pretty good self-hosted solution.
| agentdrtran wrote:
| Any plans for Plaid/etc integration for transaction syncing?
| devinsit wrote:
| Absolutely none at all! uFincs is all about manual entry
| (although CSV import + recurring transactions makes things a
| bit easier).
|
| I made a deliberate choice to not support any bank
| integrations for privacy reasons (although simplicity is also
| a big factor).
| ahnick wrote:
| Not having integrations is a deal breaker for me. All of my
| financial information lives in other systems that I need to
| be able to import it into a single view that I can manage.
| There is no way I'm going back and manually entering all of
| that info. A privacy centric solution would store
| credentials for systems like plaid, bank accounts, etc. in
| the client on the OS keychain and open source that part of
| the code to be audited. The data then would be stored
| preferably on a self-hosted server or your cloud provider
| of choice. There is some sweet spot here at the
| intersection of the personal cloud server movement and
| local client credential storage that none of the current
| finance apps have yet addressed. Once someone does I think
| they may have a real hit on their hands.
| devinsit wrote:
| I totally understand that. And I knew, when making the
| decision to not do any integrations, that there's a ton
| of people just like you that value automating everything
| as much as possible.
|
| 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!
| qshaman wrote:
| privacy in what sense? the bank owns your data already, if
| you don't store any user data in the cloud, then is private
| by design, right? I was looking for something like this,
| but I do need auto import my transaction data, across all
| banks and brokers, etc. Offline first and only, ala
| Personal Capital, but secure and safe. Paying 20 bucks a
| month for the privilege of manual data entry is a bit much.
| There is a bunch of open source alternatives(GNU Cash,
| etc...), that let you manually enter your data. That said,
| this is my particular use case. I do wish you the best, and
| the app does look pretty.
| devinsit wrote:
| Privacy in the sense that, while the bank may own your
| data already, third-parties like Plaid do not. And at
| least up in here Canada, we're a bit weaker on the whole
| 'bank API' system, so it generally turns into a wonderful
| game of "hand over your bank account credentials".
|
| 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 :)
| falcolas wrote:
| I know this is probably useless feedback, but here's how I read
| the product name:
|
| You Finks!
|
| For what it's worth.
| p2detar wrote:
| The problem I've always had with these type of apps is keeping
| them in sync with what I've spent using my CC or bank transfers.
| After a while it gets truly annoying to import or god forbid type
| in all weekly transactions.
|
| 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.
|
| [1] https://budgetbakers.com
| devinsit wrote:
| I can definitely see where you're coming from regarding the
| whole syncing thing. Personally, I've gotten into a habit of
| recording my transactions right after they happen (or at worst,
| at the end of the day), but somehow I get the feeling that I'm
| particularly crazy for doing that.
|
| 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!
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(page generated 2021-05-11 23:02 UTC)