Intuit, the company behind the well-known Quicken suite of money management software that includes Quicken Online, can’t believe how well its competitor Mint is doing. In fact, they were so bewildered by Mint’s claims of gaining 3,000 new users a day and jumping from 600,000 to 850,000 users in a matter of months that they decided to send a threatening letter demanding an explanation for this apparently inconceivable feat.
We’ve obtained copies of both Intuit’s letter and Mint’s reply, which we’ve embedded below. From Intuit’s letter:
“While we do not wish to suggest that Mint.com is engaging in false advertising, the substantial difference in claimed user numbers over a short period time [from 600,000 to 800,000] is of some concern. As a result, we’re requesting that you provide us with the Substantiation and evidence that you rely upon to support the above reference claims… before February 6, 2009.”
Note that the letter says that Intuit doesn’t “wish to suggest that Mint is engaging in false advertising”, despite the fact that that was the entire purpose of the letter. Nice.
Aside from Mint’s remarkable growth rate, Intuit’s concerns focus on the startup’s definition of “users”. Mint’s reply states that the company considers anyone who has filled in an Email address, Zip code, and password to be a “user”, regardless of whether they’ve ever actually linked their bank account to their Mint user name. This figure obviously overstates the number of people who actually use Mint on a day-to-day basis, but it’s also a fairly standard way to define “users” for most web services. As an outside check, Comscore counts 416,000 monthly unique visitors worldwide, and growing rapidly (see chart below).
That said, Mint’s definition of “user” raised some concerns for me – I suspected that after entering their Email information and getting counted as a new member, many of them would jump ship when they realized they’d need to enter their bank account information. But CEO Aaron Patzer says that as of today around 680,000 of 934,000 registered users (over 70%) have linked at least one bank account to Mint, with most of them linking between 5-6 of their financial accounts. Frankly this number is far higher than I was expecting, and indicates that most people visit Mint with the full intention of entering their account information. Patzer also notes that while those users who haven’t linked their bank accounts to Mint will have access to less functionality, they still receive regular offers from Mint’s partners.
Could Mint have been more transparent with its user numbers? Probably, but their methodology for measuring user stats is par for the course here – certainly nothing worthy of Quicken’s demanding letter. The bottom line here is that Mint is growing so quickly (it will soon pass one million users—no doubt spurred by the bad economy and tax season), that its competitors literally can’t believe it. And for any startup, that’s not such a bad thing.
Update: Intuit spokesman Scott Gulbransen has offered the following response to this story:
We’d like to apologize to Mint.com if our letter came across as anything but a simple request to understand how they count their users. Businesses do this all the time and we appreciate their reply.
We are so pleased with the rapid growth of Quicken Online, we were just curious about how we’re doing. And now that we have a common yardstick by which to measure, we know we’re doing great based on an apples-to-apples comparison. Quicken Online now has more than 650,000 users and has been adding on average approximately 45,000 new users a week since Jan. 2009.
So now you know…customers are choosing Quicken Online more than ever before.
Thanks,
Scott
Here are the two letters:
I don’t understand why anyone would be mad at Intuit. I think it’s hilarious. I am sure they did not feel like they were bullying Mint – - based on their own anemic growth, they could not get their head around Mint’s claim. So, they boldly sent this letter that backfired and only further enhanced the promotion of Mint. I love it.
Guys, I just want to understand something.
What right has Intuit to ask (no.. demand) Mint for this information and why should Mint feel compelled to comply?
Intuit talks about advertising. The piece they point to is NOT an advertisement. And even it it were Intuit are still not in their rights to contact Mint directly for clarification.
If I were Mint id tell Intuit to go F-themselves.. deeply.
Can someone explain this to me?
“If I were in mint’s CEO position, I’d tell Intuut to f*@k off.”
He did: “Thanks for noticing Mint and our growth…”
I’m bothered that Mint lies about its security. Putting your bank passwords into another site is ALWAYS a risk.
But Mint says “you can’t move money on Mint so it’s safe” . Please don’t lie. A hacker will not move money with Mint, he will log in to your bank account and move the money there.
Yahoo does this to other advertising companies that are doing well. I know of several companies that got nasty letters trying to force them into a licensing agreement.
Intuit, Quicken and Quickbooks will soon get what they have coming to them, their tax table upgrades have been the ultimate small business scam. Go mint.
Just know that many of us here at Intuit are shaking our heads as well.
- Matt H
- Intuit Labs
I love Mint and use it all the time. It has been the perfect tool for my wife and I to use. It does have some drawbacks, but it’s great. We’ve recommended it to friends and are really trying to get people hooked on it too. It’s so important to know where your finances are going. Especially now.
http://www.iamhusband.com
Mint works awesome. I’ve got 3 checking accounts, 2 savings accounts and 2 credit cards on their. Tells me trends in spending, gives a budget. Best of all it allows you to check the balance of all your accounts without having to spend 45 minutes signing into every banks own website.
Plus, they even send you nice reminders when your credit car payments are due soon. “Bills are no fun … but late fees are worse!”
This is an OUTRAGE! I demand to know how Google is adding so many more users than me!
I demand Google tell me their secrets because “It ain’t fair”.
That’s it…I’m sending a letter to every successful website demanding to know how they establish so many users….lol
Interesting squabble between Mint.com and Quicken/Intuit. Accusing Mint of fudging the numbers and for what?
What could Quicken have possibly thought would be a good outcome from the letter. Even if there numbers were off, did they think that their 800,000 FREE users would care? …Nope. The only thing it would do would be to give more press to Mint and up their numbers even more.
I hope someone at Quicken is getting a slap upside the head for being an idiot.
I’ve been using Mint.com for a few months and I’m enjoying it. I don’t need a service to pay my bills, I have my online banking for that.
It’s an easy to use UI to drill down into my expenses.
As this economy worsens expect their user base to continue to expand!
It would have been tempting to tell Intuit where to go, but Mint was smart for responding politely. You can tell they did it in a hurry, though. The letter had grammatical errors and was signed by permission. That’s a little weird.
So many comments, yet I don’t see any mention TurboTax. Mint, while it is a good service, doesn’t streamline to a tax calculating service like TurboTax. Of course Quicken does (they’re both owned by Intuit), and until Mint does too, I don’t think Intuit should really be worried.
This is classic. All big companies respond to threats in basically four steps:
a) ignore it
b) ridicule it
c) threaten it
d) buy it
The last step is when all else fails you simply buy out the competition. Even better you ask the US Gov’t to give you money to help buy it out, because you’re too big to fail.
Incredibly smart move by mint.
I have all my accounts linked except my paypal account. Paypal freaked out when a ‘3rd party website’ tried to access my account and they suspended my access.
It took me 2 weeks to get paypal to un-suspend my account all because I tried linking it to mint.
It isn’t mint’s fault, but for those of you signing up I would think twice before linking your paypal account. Damn you paypal. Damn you.
Dear Intuit,
Thank you for your letter. We are now enjoying a steep jump in numbers of added users due to press attention to the letter.
Per your question our numbers are high because, well, our product doesn’t suck like yours.
Thank you for your interest and please do keep writing.
~Mint
Anyone who has used both Mint and QuickenOnline would know why the former is growing rapidly while the latter is languishing.
Two things:
1. You havn’t lived until a billion dollar comes after you. It is a sign that your company “matters.” This is a mark of achievement.
2. Why even both with a return answer? Just publish the idiotic letter in public (as has been done) and ignore them. Don’t say, “screw off” – just ignore them.
Make Intuit sweat. Make THEM flinch.
Mint, put your head down and work – don’t get side-tracked by this nonsense.
Intuit should have recognized that acting like a petty bully is a bad move. I agree with one of the previous commenters that instead of worrying about its young, thriving competitor and trying to step on it, it ought to focus on its own business—like delivering a useable Mac product to the market for Quickbooks Pro. For Intuit’s bad move, I’ll plug Mint to my friends now even more. Meanwhile, can anyone recommend a good alternative to QB Pro for the Mac platform?
Although it appears Mint may be playing a bit fast & loose with the numbers, this piece says much more about Intuit.
Intuit once had a great product on its hands with Quicken, but it has allowed its flagship product to languish by not investing in any addition feature development. I’m still running an ancient version which rivals the latest release in ease-of-use and reliability.
Even Intuit’s newest online version of Quicken suffers from a lightweight feature-set. Life in the cloud doesn’t necessarily relegate your product to vaporware, guys.
I’m going to check Mint out. If it’s a more compelling product, adios Intuit.
This is akin to Marcia Clark asking OJ to try on the glove w/o knowing the results.
Thanks Mint for taking the time to respond in the way you did. Stupid companies fail. Intuit is now a stupid company. Therefore…
I am a Mint user and have linked a ton of accounts. I tried Quicken Online and liked it, but won’t pay for it.
Quicken should realize Mint is beating them easily and rather than reacting, they need to be proactive.
Two things immediately come to mind:
1) Ron Shevlin called out the odd definition of users some time ago – interesting discussion. I’ve asked Thrive users before what they think is the best metric to use to help them understand our community; we’re still working on what the best answer is. http://marketin...5/math-by-mint/
2) The public back and forth reminds me of Mint posting on Geezeo and the subsequent calling out. http://www.cent...-goals-revealed
oh look, a thread about mint…HEY EVERYONE LOOK AT MY SITE CALLED THRIVE!!!
I demand Intuit come clean on why they need to charge ~$70 to do my taxes and e-file, when I just did it with TaxAct for around ~$12 as a returning customer.
Intuit charges you more each year because they have you on the hook with a flashy program that you have to almost relearn every year.
TaxAct charges a reasonable price for such a simple process.
BTW…. If I am not mistaken, I have seen some banners for TaxAct on Mint (which I love and have been using since very early on). Hopefully Intuit and TaxAct will team up and build a kick ass utility suite that will bring nightmares to Intuit.
Mint rocks, my wife is always say’n how MINT tracks our accounts and I love lookn at the graphs and charts!!! I hope people find MINT as refreshing as we do!
Does this qualify as Streisand effect?
Me thinks so.
I use excel.
I have been a loyal Quicken user for about 15 years. I upgraded to the last release, and the thing was a mess. Tabs everywhere, terrible interface, and frankly a lot of bugs.
I like Mint better. It is simple, and it does what I need. The offers they provide are actually useful and could save me money.
Plus it’s a great business model for Mint. They make money when you convert on an offer, which means you are probably getting value too. Compare that to Quicken which only makes money when they sell you their software.
My guess is that Quicken is trying to buy Mint (it looks like they’ve already copied their application on the online Quicken site, but with a lousy interface), and this is just lawyers posturing.
For all those folks out there that haven’t tried Mint – its pretty cool and worth checking out!
I haven’t tried Quicken’s.
I was a past user of Quicken and am a current user of Mint. If you knew both services, you’d understand that Mint is so far ahead of the competition that it’s natural for them to be succeeding. I never recommend websites to friends and I always recommend Mint. sounds like sour grapes from quicken. That said, I LOVE TurboTax and recommend that product to everyone I know. Maybe they could put peanut butter and chocolate back together?
The reply is genius, politely says “slap your own team.”
it’s not smart, they had to be nice because they knew they were going to send both the Intuit and their letter to Techcrunch for another PR stunt, which will result in more users signing up but never returning to use the service.
Intuit might be thinking to acquire them. Mint probably knows this so they didn’t want to send the appropriate message which would have been “fuck off.”
Pretty ironic since Mint really is NOT that big. You’d think a simple, free version of Quicken would have far more users by now.
What about people who tried it and never went back? I spent several hours customizing the site so it would put my transactions in the right categories, only to find out the next day all the customizations had disappeared. Tech. support had nothing to add.
Even if they fixed that bug, the spending analysis is pretty but worthless. It can’t even do what someone could put in a spreadsheet in five minutes.
If all you want to do is see your bank and checking accounts in one place I use Pageonce for that, and they even have an iPhone version.
Ummm mint has had an iphone version since December
You might want to go back and check it out.
for all the people asking when mint is going into *insert foreign country* here, that’s the wrong question to ask. the correct question is when Yodlee or other account aggregation services will be available in your country. Mint is simply an interface that uses Yodlee to get data (yes, a business model built on top of someone else’s business model, bad idea huh?)
Mint Rocks!
I am pleased to know Intuit has some competition as I have been looking for a good alternative to Quicken – for some reason after 15 years of loyal use I have gone right off them. Never happened to me with software before, but not I loathe the Intuit experience now. If this kind of bullying is true, it’s par for the course as far as I am concerned.
I have been a Mint user for quite a while now and that application rocks!!! I used Quicken before Mint and Quicken sucked in comparison; it was just to hard to maintain.
Based on my Mint experience I would say their growth is completely believable; in fact I am shocked more people are not using Mint.
I would suggest Intuit have a few of their quicken product managers get on mint for a few months… They will quickly realize their app misses the mark.
If you have ever used Mint.com, you will know exactly why they are growing and Intuit is afraid.
roger
I am tempted to use mint, but giving my banking info to a third party scares me for some reason, especially all of my banking info. Like putting all my eggs in one basket. I am fairly certain this is an irrational fear, but it’s there none the less
Scott from Intuit here…
We’d like to apologize to Mint.com if our letter came across as anything but a simple request to understand how they count their users. Businesses do this all the time and we appreciate their reply.
We are so pleased with the rapid growth of Quicken Online, we were just curious about how we’re doing. And now that we have a common yardstick by which to measure, we know we’re doing great based on an apples-to-apples comparison. Quicken Online now has more than 650,000 users and has been adding on average approximately 45,000 new users a week since Jan. 2009.
So now you know…customers are choosing Quicken Online more than ever before.
Thanks,
Scott
If this is the real Scott (and I’m sure it is, when I was an employee I read his blog and this sounds like him), this Scott is Scott Cook, founder of Intuit and Chairman of the Executive Board.
This is the same canned response written on several other blogs. Are these responses from Intuit even real? They sound spammy…
Hi @nmessick,
Chelsea from Quicken here. To clarify, the comment above is by Intuit’s Scott Gulbransen.
Mint is cute but my home banking service at B of A and 2 credit card accounts are very serviceable. Mint is solving a problem that is going away—as credit/debit cards continue to garner more transactions—the need for a 3rd party service like Mint goes away.
and by the way…Mint’s biz model of swapping credit cards is a broken model—–todays economy—there isnt any rev there except for AMEX Blue Card.
“…if our letter came across as anything but a simple request to understand how they count their users…”
The bottom of your letter says that you reserve all rights to pursue legal remedies, and the subject of the letter is ‘Advertising Claims.’ So with all due respect sir, that is bullshit. If you wanted to ask Mint how they counted their users, you should have done so without the thinly veiled threat at litigation.
I never participated in the Angel round.
The reason: Mint will lose money for many years to come.
It can be the most popular money management becuase its free, but it just means that all the investors are betting that some idiotic publicly traded company will be tempted to redeem these investors and then finance the losses of Mint for , again, many years to come.
Mint is a losing money machine, and scaling fast. Some VCs love it.
Years ago (like 15+) I worked for a law firm. One of our clients was a large, global ad agency. They were required by law to have written documentation supporting each and every one of their advertising claims. Honda can’t just say it’s #1, they have to show sales or market data. Toyota can request that Honda substantiate its claims.
It’s very common for this to happen… we got at least 1 request a week to prove our client’s advertising claims.
@some facts
Yeah except… Intuit is after them for a press release *coincidentally* about a partnership with a free tax product, not an advertisement.
Folks at Intuit aren’t so intuitive.. Perhaps the spike in Mint.com’s membership is because of the rapid downturn in the economy? Never mind that they don’t have the baggage of Quicken’s lousy reputation.