The price of good design

I naturally gravitate towards things that are well designed. Always have. This ranges from furniture to digital apps. Today I want to write about two apps in particular that that I use frequently in my daily life: 1Password and You Need A Budget (YNAB). In fact, I’ve been using both for over 10 years now even though they changed their pricing model to subscriptions but that’s another story. I’m happy to pay because I get a lot of value out of them.

Still, over the years I’ve tried other apps that claimed to solve similar problems. Better in some ways, worse in others and sometimes cheaper overall. For example, a popular alternative to 1Password is the password manager Bitwarden. It’s cheaper and even open source which seems to matter to many of their users from what I understand.

In terms of budgeting apps, Actual Budget is often mentioned when it comes to a cheaper option. I discovered it after reading about many disgruntled YNAB users who had enough about yet another price increase and went looking elsewhere.

Now, both 1Password and YNAB are known for better design and user experience when compared to their competition. To some people this might not matter and they’d rather save money for a similar app. I get it. I almost went down that path. What made me reconsider is the fact that I’m no longer the only one in my household using these apps.

My partner wasn’t using a password manager before and wanted something that’s easy to set up and use without me acting as a human manual. It seems like Bitwarden has made some progress in terms of design since I last looked at it but back then there was no chance my partner would’ve used it, just based on the user interface alone.

YNAB is similar. While it’s really a glorified spreadsheet if you really think about it, budgeting is less painful thanks to good design. That’s the main reason my partner was able to quickly get the hang of it and use it without much hassle.

So, both of these apps are more expensive than most competitors and I’ve thought about not renewing a couple of times (looking at you YNAB). But if that’s the price to pay for my partner to also confidently use key apps for our household then I’m happy to fork over a premium for better design.