Spending money is always easy but keeping track of it requires some effort. With Savings 2 App, you will be able to get an overview of every penny that you have spent and it will also give you reminders on every pending bill payments. We had an interesting chat with the developer, who not only spoke about the App but also about certain challenges faced on the App Store.
1. How is Savings 2 different from the all the other financial Apps? Please tell us about the features.
Savings 2 is designed from the ground up to be a native Mac app. We love our Macs, and we think there should be a finance app that is as elegantly designed as software that Apple creates. That is why we created Savings.
Savings is intentionally minimalistic. We like to say we have 20% of the features you use 80% of the time. The app focuses on account tracking, charts and a simple budgeting system. We do those three things very well, and do not have any feature that is not essential to personal finance management. This is unlike the approach that our competitors such as Quicken and Banktivity takes.
2. When did you start building Apps and how long has your company been into this?
Savings started out as a web app. So if you track our history back to the web app days, it has been in development for almost ten years. However, Savings has evolved over time and the current version, Savings 2, was released in 2018.
3. How’s your experience been as a developer so far?
It’s a mixture of luck, frustration, dedication and reward. Savings is not a runaway success, however, we do have a core group of dedicated users who love Savings for its simplicity and careful design. The best reward comes from knowing that our customers love our product. Of course, it would be nice to be more financially rewarded as well.
4. What’s the current scenario for App Developers on App Store? What are some of the struggles faced?
We have two apps, Savings 2 for iPhone and Savings 2 for Mac. The scenario on the iOS App Store is for a category like finance app, which is a commonplace idea, it is almost impossible to compete. However, the Mac App Store is where real money can be made if you are a small developer. For example, whereas on the iOS App Store we have hundreds of competitors, on the Mac App Store there are only a handful.
One gripe I have as a developer is Apple is sometimes hard to deal with, with the limitations they place on developers. Also, being on the App Store, you are at the mercy of Apple’s ranking algorithm and editorial team when it comes to your app’s exposure. We are considering moving our sales onto our website in the long term.
5. Do you have any other App lined up for release?
Yes, I have just developed what I think is the best wallpaper discovery app out there. With one click, you can see a collection of the best wallpapers from the internet on your Mac’s menu bar, and with another click, set it as your desktop picture. It will be released on my personal developer site, ylin.co, in a few weeks.
6. Which App marketing tools do you use now? How do you track reviews and what do you think about ReviewsCollect?
I think ReviewsCollect is a great idea, we will definitely try it out. In fact, I have had the thought of creating something that does exactly the same thing, not knowing that it has already been done.