End of an era. I’m sure many people here started their personal finance tracking with Mint. I certainly did, and I was using it all the way up until switching to YNAB early this year.

The CEO of a competitor, Monarch Money, posted a great article about the shutdown (different from the OP link). The article ends in a plug for Monarch, but he makes a great point about subscription-based services. I’ll copy-paste a snippet here.

[…] After 25 years in the technology industry, I’ve seen firsthand how a company eventually becomes its business model. Google is no longer a search company, but an advertising company. Facebook is no longer a social network, but an advertising company. Similarly, Mint and Credit Karma are no longer personal finance companies, but advertising companies.

If you’re an existing Mint user and wondering how you should best manage your finances going forward, I would strongly encourage you to consider a subscription-based personal finance app instead of a free one.

A subscription-based app:

• Aligns company interests with your interests. It’s hard to overstate the importance of this. When you are paying for the service, you are the customer. You call the shots, and the company builds what you want and need. If it doesn’t, you cancel your subscription. This aligns incentives and ultimately leads to a much better user experience. The opposite is true in a free service, where ultimately the advertiser is the customer as they are the ones paying the bills. […]

(As well as a few other bullets that follow). Worth the read too.