Step aside, Mint. Pageonce just launched a major update to its iPhone application, and it blows you out of the water. Pageonce’s v3 update is absolutely fantastic, and Mint’s app pales in comparison. Pageonce’s premium app, A Personal Assistant Premium, allows you to connect all of your online accounts to one login (and one application). What do we mean by all accounts? We mean damn near everything: from Facebook and Twitter to American Express to AT&T Wireless, Pageonce allows you to connect with pretty much every account that you have online.
Quick disclosure: Pageonce recently provided refreshments at a CrunchGear meetup. I wasn’t at this event, though, and didn’t know about it until after I wrote this article.
Unlike Mint, which only focuses on financial accounts, Pageonce pulls information from six different types of accounts: Travel (i.e. frequent flyer programs), Finance (bank accounts), Social, Utilities (bills), Email and Shopping (Amazon or eBay). It is amazing how many different accounts they fit into those six buckets. Netflix? Check. Starbucks card? Check. LinkedIn? Check. YouTube? StumbleUpon? DirecTV? Allstate? Gmail? Check, Check, Check, Check and… Check. There’s no point in getting individual apps for each account anymore. As soon as Pageonce adds a few more features (more on that below) and allows you to wholly interface with each of these accounts from their site/app, it will serve as the primary hub to your various online identities.
The interface is clean and easy to navigate. It displays the most relevant information from your accounts, and doesn’t bother you with stuff you don’t need. For example, I could quickly browse my most recent credit card transactions and the outstanding balance on my bank account. Then, with one tap, I moved over to checking the time of my upcoming flight from DC to San Francisco. Two more taps and I was browsing the subject lines of my Gmail account. It was extremely intuitive to find what I was looking for, and the information was fairly up-to-date (though there were some things that were not up-to-the-minute). I even did a field test to compare its timeliness to Mint. I found 2 major transactions that were posted to my bank account in the last 24 hours that appeared on Pageonce but not on Mint (yes, even after I hit the refresh button and Mint claimed it was updated). That pretty much sealed it for me.
Though, honestly, I was sold from the beginning. Setup was a breeze. I just logged into Pageonce on my laptop and punched in my account information for everything I could remember off-hand. It even provided suggestions in each of the aforementioned categories of accounts, so I didn’t forget much. But, for the account or two I did forget to add, I could easily add the information from the iPhone app directly. There were a few hiccups, though. Facebook and a few of my bank accounts required additional steps to verify that I wasn’t some hacker trying to post nude pictures on my Facebook account.
And though you can’t directly post pictures on your Facebook account from Pageonce, one of the best parts of this app is that if you do want to dive deeper into a specific account, you can. For example, if you want to send a quick tweet out after looking over your finances, you can log into Twitter from within the app, without having to remember your ID and password. It was easy enough: a few taps on the screen and I was typing an update to my Twitter account. However, I don’t think it will replace TweetDeck (my favorite iPhone twitter app) just yet. It just doesn’t have all of the features you would want like an easy way to reply to a tweet or post a re-tweet.
Also, due to the fact that Pageonce aggregates all of your accounts, there were some limits in functionality. For example, though I could see a “summary” of my finances (the individual balances on my credit cards and bank accounts), Pageonce did not add them up to me to show me what my cash flow was like nor did it provide me with an estimate of my net worth. Honestly, though, that is just a matter of time, and I expect Pageonce to provide the financial tools that Mint does very soon.
Pageonce effectively combines all your accounts into one, and has created an accompanying iPhone app that will truly transform the way you interact with your online user accounts. Nobody wants to log into 15 different websites every time they are at a computer (or on their iPhone), and Pageonce has solved that problem wonderfully. If you have an iPhone and more than 3 online accounts (so, everybody who has an iPhone), buy Pageonce’s Personal Assistant for $6.99. You can thank me later.
What we like:
- The Value Proposition. Sometimes a company makes a product that just plain provides value. Pageonce has done that, and I can’t imagine the value proposition to the user being much better.
- Ease of Use. The UI is simple and clean. It gives you everything you want, when you want it, and nothing you don’t.
- Access to everything. I was extremely hard-pressed to find an online account that Pageonce doesn’t allow you to access. Pageonce even reminded me of accounts that I didn’t even remember I had.
What we didn’t like:
- Some missing functionality. Frankly, I don’t feel right making this complaint, but I will anyways: tweeting was a bit hard and I couldn’t write great e-mails from within the app.
- A summary of my financials. Again, I’m just nitpicking, but I didn’t get a full picture of my net worth or the ability to balance my budgets like I can with Mint.
Looks pretty good to me. Still a bit iffy about giving all my account data to a single company though.
I completely agree. I don’t think a lot of people even trust having the same password for all their accounts. I don’t even keep all my account information in one file anywhere, why would I give it to a single company not even responsible for any of the stuff.
True. That is the only damn thing that should worry the user. Giving all your account to one company which not even part of any of the accounts… but otherwise the apps in super-cool. I love every bit of the UI and as Gagan, I’m already sold. Still, considering the fact regarding the security of your accounts and the few hiccups the user experiences, I would say that this is best only to login and check the most important things of your accounts, instead of using PageOnce to update/do fruitful things..
Why? People can buy all your personal information for only $20 already.
Kevin, what sites do it for $20 bucks?
Carders (crooks) are selling YOUR personal info for $20 almost for sure. They’ve got it from the hacked online store made by Bangalore ‘developers’ and other ’secure’ online services.
nobody can buy the user id and password to my online banking account.
Great, clean interface and the website is terrific too (except for the blog which has too many frames).
Also interesting: the price differential between iPhone ($6.99) and Blackberry ($4.99mo / $9.99/yr)
ten bucks a year? damn, son!
More people have iphones so it equals more money.
It seems like a great service, one that I would like to have to simplify my life. However!, thats allot of information to have in one place and in the hands of a third party.
What do they have in the way of security for the information as it is transmitted as well as all those login credentials? Not only that, but I see no way that even if they encrypt the data in transit that they (pageonce staff) can be prevented from accessing it at their end.
I’m certainly not opposed to these types of services, but it seems that security is too often overlooked (either in the review or the service itself)!
Maybe I’m wrong … I hope!
+1
We all know where the hackers will be hitting now….
If they get hacked the amount of identify fraud that could be conducted is huge. Are your username/password’s stored in the iphone or on Pageonce’s servers?
That aside, looks like an awesome product.
I was once in their beta service and Paypal blocked my account because of weird activity because of them :S I really hoped they solved this since and I’m not sure I want to risk my chances1
Honestly, can you trust these sites with all this information? It’s not that I don’t trust the operators, per se, but these sites can get hacked and then you’re in trouble.
I almost tried Mint, but when it wanted to know what the login questions were for each acct, I gave up, cause I really have no idea.
Nice article – I have been a fan of both Mint and Pageonce for some time now. However, comparing Pageonce to Mint seems like a huge reach – they have completely different business models. While future upgrades to Pageonce may calculate your net Worth or cashflow, something tells me that Pageonce isn’t going to try and develop algorithms that determine the category of your transaction, for example. Likewise, something tells me that Mint is really interested in aggregating data from your social network. So what was the point of this comparison?
So I don’t have any insider information about their future product plans, but I think Pageonce will try to develop algorithms that determine the category of your transaction. At least, I hope they develop more robust tools for each of their account types (travel, finance in particular).
Also, ultimately, they are similar services: they aggregate data from your various online accounts and provide you with the ability to access them all from one site. Mint is betting on your financial accounts, while Pageonce is betting on all: but I don’t see many people wanting to use both. That, to me, makes them competitors (even if they aren’t perfect competitors).
im with everyone else here, too much info in one place!
It’s actually on SALE for 6.99. 30% off limited time only.
Own a prior version of their iPhone ap. Never got it to work with a Bank of America checking account. Their support was primarily automated responses – followed by a message that support was being escalated. That’s the last I heard. Removed the ap from my phone.
Sounds like a great service, one I’d definitely use on my desktop, but I’d be pretty wary of having all that on something as easily lost/stolen as a cell phone. This coming from someone who uses Mint extensively.
yehforgames and power leveling
“Though, honestly, I was sold from the beginning. Setup was a breeze. I just logged into Pageonce on my laptop and punched in my account information for everything I could remember off-hand. It even provided suggestions in each of the aforementioned categories of accounts, so I didn’t forget much. ”
You should do an infomercial
Looked into security concerns on their site , see the attached webpage:
http://pageonce.com/iphone_security.html
Shows how data is encrypted as well as protected and what happens if iphone is lost or stolen.
What a ridiculous amount of screen-scraping that must be going on here. Impressive. The flight info is really useful, but I don’t see a reason to add my Gmail or bank accounts since I already have good apps for those.
By refreshments, do you mean blow and hookers ?
Personally I’m reaching “aggregator fatigue.” Of course, I’m still WinMo.. but on my desktop, I use Mint extensively, and I also use Digsby. I am not about to go setting up new aggregators every 2 months when some snarky college kid thinks up a different way to aggregate my data. Sorry, I don’t have time.
If it sticks around for a year, get back to me.
I know …. right? Those snarky college kids … and all that “making your life easier” nonsense. Takes a lot of nerve….
Umm… Pageonce was founded in May 2007 and has more than 100,000 users. I guess its time to get back to you?
I really can’t imagine wanting one tool for my social media AND my banking. Ewww.
Pretty breathless prose, Gagan. Relax.
I’m not sure I get why it’s so awesome to have all your accounts in one application. There’s not much of a logical relationship between these things.
Unless it’s providing some extra super magic happy synergies like, oh, I dunno, showing you the hidden correlations between your spending activity and your tweeting activity, there’s not much reason to have them bundled into one application.
I agree. As users, we cannot easily see any connection between our social networking accounts and our bank accounts. Though both are important, we do not readily give information about bank accounts, as we do with our other accounts. And true, bundling them together sounds little odd.
Like a few others have said, aggregators are not always a good thing. I also don’t feel like this app is very fluid or well designed. But maybe as an aggregator, this is as good as it gets. I dunno, but overall I’m not a fan.
I feel like its clunky feel overall stands in stark contrast to better designed apps.
Maybe worth it to some, but I’d rather spend $7 dollars elsewhere.
I would be more conscious about the security features while combining all online account into one place.
Great app we are using it for our company and we love it.
One interface is nice, but it’s so quick and easy to switch between apps on an iPhone that I don’t think that “only having to use one app” is that big of an advantage. I prefer to use the best individual apps for all my various tasks, as the user interface looks better, cleaner and performs quicker.
Tweetie for Twitter.
Birdhouse for Twitter.
Ego for Google #’s
Etc…..
Nice app. I will try it for my non financial accounts for sure.
For my accounts back home (though these days I’m not sure if that’s Aus or the UK) I use eWise.com.au as an aggregator and it’s a great service (the logon details are encrypted and held on my machine not in the cloud).
Here in the US I’ve been using Mint and Rudder but I’ve also had a quick look at PageOnce.
I’m not sure I see the need to connect my social apps to banking, though (for instance) being able to see what “value” I’m getting for my Netflix subscription as a click through from the banking line item would be neat.
The problem with all of these agregators though is they are too passive. Where is the smart reminders my credit card is due and how much I need to pay (with a one-click “just deal with it” option that transfers money from the optimal account to pay it), where’s the smart analysis of my spending/saving profile to help me move more money to an interest paying account but remind me far enough in advance when I’m likely to need to move it out again (of course understanding the timelines, maximum number of transfers/month, fees etc)
Couple that with searching for better credit card, insurance and mortgage and monitoring your credit score and then these apps really start to offer more than the convenience of one password to get to your data…
Gave it a go. Interface is a big improvement – great for updated info on finance and utilities.
However, social media – as others suspected – is a waste. It’s basically only good for read-only. I would expect only the most limited functionality (like a no-frills status update only). But really you don’t even get that.
If you want to select a link (status update, your network), it takes you to the website (from within Pageonce). The screenshot above of Twitter is just their mobile-optimized website – not Pageonce interface. Facebook took me to their full site from within Pageonce.
It’s much easier to get out of Pageonce and into your dedicated app (facebook, Tweetie, or whatever) to actually do something.
PLUS, the links in the social media sections are *tiny*, making it even more useless.
I actually like this for finance and utilities. But again, stay away if even tempted for social media aggregation unless you just like to read others’ updates.
Does it really connect to EVERY site? What about bodybuilders’ forum in Sweden? Can I get to my account there from this service?
Doesn’t it offer reduced functionality compared to the original site(s)?
bodybuilders’ forum in Sweden?
Link please.