Financielle is a women focused financial literacy app owned by sisters Laura Pomfret and Holly Holland. The app launched in 2020 and has received an enormous amount of praise and support on social media platforms such as TikTok.
Their marketing is genius and their content is both intriguing and entertaining.
After popping up on my for you page numerous times I decided to give the app a try.
You know I love a good finance app
Spoiler alert: I was disappointed
Let’s get into it.
Onboarding
I loved that the opening action for the app following sign up was focused on the users needs and goals. I was so excited to get into the nitty gritty of what I needed and to be informed about the ways that I could reach these goals.
I thought Financielle was here to save me from my mountains of student loan debt and would hand me a smart and efficient plan of action for paying it off. But then…
Subscription Aggression
The screen following the setting of my goals was immediately a subscription advertisement. Yikes! Asking me to commit to a product I haven’t gotten the chance to try yet is a lot of pressure. I skipped it, thinking let me give it a try first before I make my final decision. But then I realized…it kept appearing.
Every time I click on a button!
Which led me to realize…
You can’t use the app for its intended purpose without PAYING!!!!!
I closed out of the app and deleted it immediately after discovering this.
Wanna budget? Gotta pay
Wanna calculate your net worth? Gotta pay
Wanna track your subscriptions? Gotta pay.
The only point where I wasn’t stopped with a paywall was when I was consuming financial wellness content. While this is great, its the only aspect of the app that is free despite this being the one aspect of the app that is not advertised.
Everything that was advertised, that convinced me to download, is premium content. Unfortunately.
It was one of the most frustrating experiences I’ve had with a platform in a long time.
And its not about the money
I’ll gladly pay a creator their worth. How else are digital creators supposed to make money, DUH?
However, you cannot monetize 90% of the product and expect people to stick around.
You cannot monetize the sole purpose of the product and expect people to stick around without offering them a sneak peek that convinces them to pay.
The journey from initial introduction to the request for payment was too swift and introduced prior to offering value to the user thus turning me off from the app entirely.
Educational Content
Despite my disappointment with the product overall, I will give it props and a round of applause for the education content provided. I love when financial products provide content for all levels of financial literacy and Financielle does just that.
In Conclusion…
I’m so upset that I couldn’t love this app. The mission behind the product is amazing but the experience itself is overwhelming and not convincing. Its quite pushy and created a feeling of stress at almost point of its initial use. I’m sure the value is there though, AFTER you pay.
