Kublax, a winner of Seedcamp 2007 and effectively a European competitor to Mint and Gazeo in the US, has now launched officially.
Using Bank level security, Kublax automatically pulls together usage of all bank and building society accounts, credit cards and puts each line of income and expenditure into flexible categories. This is then displays visually to make it easier to see how your money is working – or not. Calendar and Alert features can be used to trigger events. But the killer feature is showing users where they are paying over the odds relative to fellow users who match their profile. More features are planned along these lines.
In February it won a further round of undisclosed angel investment from Digitalents Capital, Five Ventures, Omnis Mundi Invest AG and The Accelerator Group (TAG) in February.
Although technically a competitor to Mint, a TechCrunch 40 winner last year, Kublax’s business is relatively safe since banking is so regional across the planet.
Kublax is not a Mint-like start up. It’s much better than that and finally Brits are making me proud. As an American living in the UK I just love Kublax as it is and promises to be much better than Mint. With Kublax you can not only view your finances in the same place but you can do so in multiple currencies. They’ll enable a “compare me” feature which we are all eagerly awaiting. So congratulations to this UK start up!
Well done Kublax! It worked in a jiffy and finally I consolidated all my accounts into one clear overview. Just this service is great! Kublax is going to be a big success…
I am a big skeptic of all those web 2.0 start ups and very prompt to shout “it’s a joke!” when I read articles about such start ups. For example, have you seen the winner of TC50? Yammer. It is a real joke. But I must admit that Kublax is not. It’s got a market. There is a real need. It’s got a business model. It could actually work and do really well…A breath of fresh air really.
@patriley: Totally agree regarding Yammer. What a joke! I almost considered attending TechCrunch 50 but I am so happy I didn’t. To see a Twitter lite win the top spot is a wake up call to us Europeans. We can do better than that. And Kublax is a step in the right direction. This has a real shot at greatness especially in those troubled times. Now if only funding was so easy to raise in Europe as it is in the US. At TC50 some companies presenting had raised $10M!!!!
I don’t have time to check all my accounts and barely know my balance until the overdraft letter arrives. I definitely look forward to setting up alerts with Kublax to avoid those nasty charges. And Kublax is free so…I really wonder why no one has done this before.
Another start up trying to help lazy people. I have a live excel sheet up in which I enter all my expenses weekly. [Full disclosure: I am an accountant] Every member of my family knows what he is spending and when. People are just lazy and don’t want to make the efforts to take control of their lives.
Accountant: there are some people (like you) who will spend their precious leisure time crunching numbers onto excel to take control. And for the rest of us, now there is Kublax!
Hey isn’t it what technology is all about? Making our lives easier. If the service is free, then it’s a no brainer. I am signing up for Kublax.
It’s so funny that all these comments are coming from the same IP address…
Kublax seems like a serious company. Not one of those fickle start ups. I’ll check it out
Great shout Mike it all looked very suspicious to me……….talkabout ramping it up especially all coming from the same ip address…………….so sad,so sad.
Kublax your reputation is already in tatters=deadpool
Shameful spam Kublax. Seriously seriousy awful – specifically for that reason, I am not signing up with you idiots. You can’t be trusted.
I’ve come back for more Kublax because frankly you’ve got yourself your number one hater here. I am DISGUSTED in the above level of spam in promoting your product and will work to ensure that no one uses it. The fact that you would stoop so low to get people to sign up and then expect them to hand over account statements & private details is an insult on our intelligence.
You are honestly the first startup I have come across where I actually hope & will commit to ensuring you fail. You are absolutely pathetic.
Mike, how soon after you wrote this post did those comments come through?
Ignoring the shameful comments at the top I tried the service but it didn’t work for me, the site timed out when adding an account.
Did anyone else have any success?
The spam is hilarious, if you are going to spam blogs skip this one
I like the idea, but it’s far from new. Egg, Yodlee and Citibank all offered this as far back as 2001. Maybe just waiting for someone in Europe to make it work …
To Jas, Zee and anyone else who thinks we’ve been spamming – we at Kublax had absolutely nothing to do with the above posts. We have been way too busy with sign-ups and the launch timetable to post on Techcrunch unless it’s necessary, and of course would never do anything so silly as what we are being accused of!
This doesn’t say anything about Kublax other than there are some well wishers out there who are very eager to see us succeed. Whilst that is really nice, we ask that they stop posting anything other than genuine comments and give everyone a chance to try Kublax. If anyone wants to talk further about this or indeed Kublax in general, feel free to email me at sridhar@kublax.com. – Sridhar Sethuraman, founder and CEO of Kublax
Before everyone gets too hot under the collar, I didn’t say the astro-turf comments where coming from Kublax. I said they were just coming from the same IP address. Whether that IP address is connected in some way to Kublax or not it’s probably impossible to definitively say. However, it seems unlikely
a) because the comments are so ham-fisted (”Well done Kublax! It worked in a jiffy” – I mean, come on!)
b) because professional astro-turfers would cover their tracks better and maybe write better too
and c) because Sridhar has come in and denied any knowledge of it all. Frankly I just think those comments were just funny. They came in one after the other in quick succession, suggesting they were all from the same person. An over-enthusiastic employee? Who knows. Whoever they were, they came across like a total idiot.
So, show’s over. Let’s move on. I’m off to try out Kublax properly for myself.
Yeah i think if it could an employee of Kublax i think that Sridhar should launch an internal investigation to find who it is and then show them the door because they have damaged their reputation…………….big time !
@ArthurGuy
I had a similar problem:”Can’t connect to your bank. Please try later.”
I’d love to give kublax a go, but I’ve tried entering my account three times today, and it’s still not playing.
is that a bank or site to make bank online security related?
@Arthurguy and Chris: I tried it and it works great. I made a mistake logging in and it gave the same “can’t connect” message. But I re-entered and it worked fine.
Sorry, I should have come back to say that I eventually got in.
Kublax is interesting, and for an overview of my current status it’s great, but it feels a little shallow at the moment. But that’s what betas are for, I guess. Features can come later.
Although I’d have made to do a bit more fit and finish work before opening the beta. Fewer spelling mistakes for a start (’lisense’ and ‘dinning’). And what on earth are the transaction categories like ‘moditlo’, ‘Kates wages’, ‘Starberry payments’ and ‘my new cat’ doing in the default budget list?
update: those categories have now been fixed. Quick work, and at the weekend too.
After using the beta Kublax I must say I’m not comfortable with handing over my bank details. Even though this is just a beta, being a financial aggregator, I believe the security should never be beta-grade. Unfortunately the site currently gives me this feeling.
I was surprised to see the main login screen is http and not https. You have to manually type https prefix in the address bar to access the secure version of the site. When a bank account is deleted from your profile, it comes back after you log back in, with your bank login credentials still saved on their server. This is rather worrying. The documentation is a bit wishy-washy, especially the section regarding security — doesn’t sound convincing at all.
like accountant i currently do this manually, the updside being its proactive and makes you think alot more about things, the downside is: a major drag, 30-60mins a week where id rather be doing something better, id rather my banks offered a secure feed into my spreadsheet rss or something similar this way the data would never leave me (carried on an encrypted pen on encrypted sheet) but it would take the hassle out of multiple account logons and cross checks. As a business model would make more sense for these guys to get banks to implement the software on there server, given how little there is between most of the major banks the one that gave me the best money management tools (ie. how made me better off rather then them richer) would get my account and possibly a fee for running such a service.
For those saying Kublax is for lazy people, why use Excel? Why not use pencil and paper? Its software like Kublax the main difference is you enter the figures into Excel and have a higher risk of making a mistake. You still have to check Kublax and make the right decisions as regards your finances.
Am sure some people said the same things when bicycles came on the scene, and cars, and computers and Kublax… move into the 21st century!!!