About a month ago I shared Moneta here after it had gone from around 140 downloads to over 1,000. (in almost 5 months)
A pretty big part of that growth came from this subreddit. (thanks a lot 😊) The day after my last post, almost 200 people downloaded it, which is by far the biggest day Moneta has ever had.
Since then I’ve been trying to answer a different question: can I turn one of those spikes into actual, consistent growth?
So far, absolutely not.
I've now passed around 1,800 downloads, but once the attention from a post dies down, I still end up at roughly 10 new downloads a day. (which isn’t bad but could be a lot better!)
In the meantime I’ve just shipped what is probably the biggest update I’ve made since launch.
A – Answer
Moneta is my personal finance tracker for iPhone and iPad.
It’s still built around manual tracking rather than requiring access to your bank, but I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to remove as much of the annoying manual part as possible.
The biggest addition is Voice Entry (v1): instead of filling everything out, you can just say what you bought and Moneta creates the transaction.
I’ve also added Bank Statement Import, so if you’ve fallen behind you can import a statement and catch up without connecting your bank.
B – Better
This is probably the hardest part for me to answer, because there are already a ridiculous number of finance apps.
What I’ve tried to do differently is make Moneta feel like a native iOS app first and a finance app second.
A lot of money trackers I’ve tried either look decent but are pretty limited, or can do a lot but feel like a spreadsheet with an app wrapped around it. I wanted my app to be powerful and beautiful without feeling complicated.
Your financial data isn’t being sent somewhere just to make the app work.
At the same time, I didn’t want “simple” to mean bare-bones. There’s receipt scanning, budgets, saving goals, recurring transactions, detailed statistics, widgets, a transaction map and a lot more, but I’ve tried to keep them out of the way until you actually need them.
That’s also the idea behind Voice Entry and Statement Import. I’m not trying to replace manual tracking; I’m trying to remove the parts of manual tracking that make people stop doing it.
The UI and how much Moneta can do without feeling cluttered are probably the two things users mention to me the most.
Which is why I’m starting to think my biggest problem isn’t the product anymore.
Maybe it’s how I’m explaining it.
Do I need better App Store screenshots? Better ASO? More content? A clearer niche?
Because right now I know I can create a spike. I don’t know how to make the spike stick.
C – Cost
Moneta is FREE to use, with no ads.
With this update I’ve also added Moneta Pro for €4.99 as a one-time purchase for some of the more power-user/customization features. There’s no subscription.
Anyone who was already using Moneta before October 10 gets Pro for free.
App Store: Moneta Link
My next target is 5,000 downloads, but I’d rather get there by figuring out something repeatable than by randomly hoping another Reddit post takes off.
So if you’ve grown an app organically before: what would you actually do next if this were yours?
And if you use finance apps yourself, I’m also curious: is there anything about Moneta that would actually make you switch from whatever you’re using now?
