How Monshare differs from all the well-known platforms and what we bring to the table that others don’t.
Would you agree that virtually every problem has some solution? Not necessarily a ‘perfect’ solution, but definitely some ‘workable’ one?
Like if you want a slice of a fresh crispy loaf of bread, you can cut it with a butter knife and get a slice. Yes, you will get crumbs all over, it will compress the fluffy structure into some dense mixture and you might drop a swear word or two on the way. But you can do it, you can solve the problem without any extra tools! Now… just because you could get away with a butter knife, does not mean you should. A proper bread knife will make your experience much more enjoyable! There is a reason most of us have a collection of knives at home (I have 8 and am definitely missing few).
The same goes for your fintech applications: we are a long way from a fintech-style ‘swiss army knife’ and until we get there, one will always work better for you than the other. While I don’t know which one solves your problem without ‘extra crumbs’ and ‘swear words’, I want to help you make this choice.
So problem we are trying to solve:
Managing joint expenses for a shared household with your partner or friends
Here come the solutions:
Probably best known expense sharing app in Europe.
It’s perfect for diligent couples who want full control over every transaction they manually enter. It is easy to use if you split everything 50:50 and all you want to know is ‘what is your fair share’ of your joint budget.
| What Splitwise does great: | What is better with Monshare: |
| ● Easy to get started ● Multi-currency support with subscription ● CSV Export | ● Automatically and securely syncs with your bank(s) ● Free and full currency flexibility ● Trends, Insights & Analytics |
Probably the closest thing to a ‘Swiss army knife’ on the market right now. It’s a bank, aggregator, payment provider and with a recently released ‘Group Bills’ feature it does expense sharing as well.
It’s perfect if you are an existing Revolut customer and are sharing expenses with another Revolut customer. The feature is so clunky and buggy at the moment, that you are unlikely to download it solely for expense sharing.
| What Revolut does great: | What is better with Monshare: |
| ● Integrated with UK banks only (?) ● Simplifies ‘settling’ the bill if that is your thing ● Easy to share with those on Revolut | ● Supports banks across 67 countries, which makes it ideal for expats ● Analytics on your joint spending ● Share with anyone independent of whether they are with Revolut or not |
Probably the closest one to getting it right, in our opinion. Their ‘Shared Tabs’ functionality has been on the market for a while and we keep hearing rave reviews about it. It does not work for us: my partner does not use Monzo and does not want to go through the trouble of getting yet another bank account.
It’s perfect for existing Monzo customers and 50/50 splits. It also supports ‘custom bills’ (or manual transactions as we call them), but only in GBP. Makes it complicated when you are abroad…
| What Monzo does great: | What is better with Monshare: |
| ● Easy to split Monzo transactions ● Ability to add ‘custom bills’ in GBP ● Quick and easy payments | ● Sync transactions from all banks, not just Monzo ● Share with anyone without Monzo account ● Multi-currency support throughout |
In all honesty I struggle finding what Spendee would be perfect for, but over 3 million people use it today, so I must be missing something. Majority of its features are behind a paywall, but it is feature-rich and supports bank integration, manual entry and budgeting.
| What Spendee does great: | What is better with Monshare: |
| ● Sharing cash expenses ● Budgeting and timeline analytics ● Regularly (?) has ‘lifetime subscription’ at a very affordable price | ● Sharing of both bank and cash expenses ● Group/wallet-analytics ● Free. |
This is not to say there aren’t other great applications out there. For objectivity sake, let me mention a few more that come up in conversations:
- Tricount– easy to use and supports payments via PayPal.
- Honeydue– closest thing to joint bank accounts. It’s available (on stores) in the UK, but does not let me invite anyone. If you manage to invite anyone, do let me know.
- Acasa– splits utility bills for flat shares with very basic manual expense management functionality
- Splid – came up a couple of times. The best thing I could find there are downloads of PDF and Excel files. Though in my opinion usability could use some work.
I hope this will help you choose ‘your kind of knife’ and the whole of Monshare team will be ecstatic if it happens to be Monshare:-)
Happy Sharing!
Yours,
Olga Stratoskaya
Monshare CEO
