Actual Budget going open source
actualbudget.com/open-sourcePosted Apr 29, 2022, 3:46 PM UTC
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actualbudget.com
I read the whole thing and I'm quite sad for the developer. He struggled a lot for the average salary of a dev. I hope things turn out good for him.
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The business was earning 36K ARR, which is less than the average US salary. I agree he struggled a lot, but I am really unclear why he turned off subscriptions and open sourced the product at the same time.
Personally, if the option was available, I would subscribe today. I do not have time to stand up and trial a yet another new service, and would have liked having the service option.
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Last month I was really sick for an entire week. During that time, the syncing server went down twice. I forced myself to sit down and dig into it even though I felt like I was going to throw up. I got it working, but it really made me think about my mental health. I've put a lot of stuff on pause over the last couple years, and I need to find a better balance
Probably because of stuff like this. Server maintenance is a full time job, if your the only person performing that task your basically on call 24/7/365. It can be pretty stressful as not only do you need to fix the problem you have to deal with all of the angry customers mad about why there stuff isn't syncing.
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Yes, James talking about his illness was an especially tough section to read.
He also wrote about the services his business were deprecating, and my lack of clarity came from not knowing how coupled problems like the Syncing server to the services the business would no longer maintenance.
Server maintenance can not be a startup's full-time job at Actual's scale and size. He bet really wide when it came to building out iOS, Android and desktop apps. Especially considering what the revenue was: I wonder how impacted his clients would be if they lost those features as they were.
As things stand, he wants to rebuild some of those features again anyway, if only without added overhead of code-signing. So, why cut off a validated revenue stream?
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Yeah me saying server maintenance is a full time job is incorrect I really meant to say it requires someone available 24/7. If a server goes down you got to drop everything and go fix it. From experience servers only seem to go down when your very busy doing something else. :)
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As someone running 5 services for free ( donations only) if something goes down people have to wait, they want a proper service go somewhere and pay more. I make it clear these are hobby projects and if it goes down it goes down until i can be bothered to fix it
Luckily i followed mothers advice and have multiple sources of income (never put all your eggs in one basket)
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Well yeah because they are hobby projects and free, very different situations then what is being discussed. Once you start accepting money for goods and services you need to start delivering on the service. If the service goes down your on the hook to get it back up in the timely fashion. At least that is how I see it.
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Doesn’t he work at stripe? Pretty sure he’s doing alright
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Yeah but if you're doing a full-time project on the side of your full-time job, it really doesn't matter what your 'primary' income is, you should be paid double that.
I'm also trying to freelance next to my job, and it very often leads to me being too tired to work, which just isn't worth it unless you're making big bucks.
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I was just about to post this. I’ve been looking into FireFly III and now this is an option as well. Will have to see how the auto-import works in both. No docker image as of now, but looks promising. I remember giving it a go a while ago but stuck to Mint since their account connections are better than anything else out there.
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Using firefly III atm and works well. May give this a shot just to see how it compares.
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Does firefly auto import? Or do I need to upload manually?
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I haven't done any importing, but there seems to be some good ways to import using the tool they provide. Seems it should auto-import CSV files and other things.
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I could not get the importer working with CSV, although the app itself is really great, extremely well featured.
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Firefly III's biggest issues are the importing and poor UX. A quick look through Actual seems like it already has the UX on point.
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It's tempting trying to build a docker image for this
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Someone please build a docker image. As someone who lacks a lot of knowledge in building projects it would be great to get it running easily
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I'll try it tonight
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Any update on this? Just saw this post and was going to look into hosting it on unraid but don't know much about building a docker container. May look into building an image and what not if anyone else hasn't gotten around to it but somebody may have more knowledge than me at first taking less time.
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docker
noticed this post, haven't tried it
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There is a Dockerfile in the repo
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Oh nice! Then there it is!
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Hi there how can I use this with docker? I only know how to do it with docker composer and portainer stacks
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linuxserver has a beta version of their new budge app available to test out also. https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-budge. much easier to get up and running than firefly though firefly is obviously more full featured.
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It's doesn't have a mobile app right?
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I loved this app, actually was about to subscribe but... Well personal finance had to go by the wayside. Look forward to selfhosting it and maybe putting some time into the maintainence of it.
It's simple tracking, but nice powerful features.
Compared to firefly III which felt like it took ages up get up and the importer was a separate item and the server itself was 3+ docker images, no sqlite support really.
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Hi! I created Firefly III.
Firefly III is, in the standard configuration, 2 docker images (a database and Firefly III itself), and it's 100% compatible with SQLite. The import tool is indeed separate but optional.
Since there is very little demand for SQLite there are no instructions in the docs, but hit me up and I'll get you on your way.
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Hey bro, does firefly iii have the ability to view mode only? it means i just want to share the access to someone so that they could view it. No editing or creating data, just pure viewing.
Thanks
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Not yet, but this is on my list. Most of the necessary database changes are in place and I hope to add the rest any day now. Then, I can start working on it.
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Hi James!
Just to be clear, since I'm looking into setting Firefly III up with SQLite, your docs say you "strongly advice against" using SQLite - is this just because of performance, or for other data-integrity reasons?
Additionally, are the steps listed in the docs to be used when setting up a new instance, or just when migrating to different databases?
Thanks :)
- Abi
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Data integrity, but not the way you think. I just had too many users who inadvertently delete their SQLite database or overwrite it when migrating and blame me.
The steps listed are for a new SQLite database. I have no experience with people migrating from another DB system to SQLite.
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That is not the thing I was thinking of, no, haha
Thanks for the answers :)
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Unfortunately, the mobile apps are going to be deprecated
Why not open-source these as well? Maybe someone will want to take over maintaining the apps.
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That is what I am wondering as well, same with the desktop application.
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They are. The `actual` repo is a monorepo and the `mobile` has the mobile app: https://github.com/actualbudget/actual/tree/master/packages/mobile
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Someone will still have to build and publish them on the appstore and play store.
Edit: had a brain fart. This is exactly what you meant with "someone will want to take over"
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wow shame i read the enire post and I can only wish him the best this project looks super fun I would be very interested in hosting this even has the mobile app for ios being opensourced it can be easily sideloaded which is cool. all we need is a docker image
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I’m not sure if I should be excited that this is open source or sad to hear the project is essentially being abandoned.
I am a YNAB user now, I have no desire to be a YNAB user for life- but I really like the “envelope style” of allocating cash / budgeting. I’d love a selfhosted solution that works well, but cash flow management is too important to me to die on the hill for FOSS / selfhosted. YNAB simply works better than any selfhosted I’ve found so far. Firefly III seems like it’s well polished but it isn’t “envelope style” - which is the style that works best for me.
I might have to try out this project- but I’m not sure if I should given it may not be supported.
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I'm perplexed. Why did he stop taking subscriptions? I'd never heard of this software before now, but I'm way more likely to pay for open software than closed.
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but I'm way more likely to pay for open software than closed.
you'd be the exception then. My open source software which is regularly cited in here has 0 paying customer from this community despite more than 6k stars on github and more than 4 millions download on docker hub. The only reason I keep it 100% oriented around selfhosting is because of my belief system and I've been selfhosting for many years
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Nice project, I'd never heard of it. Fair play for keeping at it.
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He isn’t going to work on it any more
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I’ll give it a look
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Looks like a great app, sorry it didn’t work out for the dev.. hopefully the open source approach works out. I’ll definitely be trying this!
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First time I’ve heard of this I’ll have to give it a try
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Im surprised he never offered a one-time price. Would have done well in comparison to most other alternatives being subscription.
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One time pricing for a hosted service is not maintainable. Costs go up as more users are added, but revenue goes down if growth is not maintained. It's basically a pyramid scheme.
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I see a lot of services offer limited lifetime deals to get a userbase and then cut off lifetime to get other people interested in the subscription. AppSumo as a website has a lot of services like that. Works well in getting your name out there and you get a few years of payment in advance. They usually charge 100+ for lifetime and add more cost for any special tiers higher. Would have been worth a shot I think. Think the budget-related programs definitely don't have too much competition and can get your name out there with some good branding. YNAB itself started as a pay once model.
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YNAB is one of many examples where a company suffers negative PR for ending their lifetime pricing.
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But they're also one of the biggest budgeting platforms and charge whatever they want so... Kinda worked out for them I think.
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I am using firefly for some time. I am at the point where i cant live without personal finance manager. Is it better than firefly? I would give it a shot but i just dont have the time right now with small baby and a lot of work in the office. So if there is someone with experience on both projects i will appreciate some comments. Thanks!
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As a Firefly user that's consistently (very slightly) frustrated with some of its peculiarities, I'm very excited to try Actual. When I looked around a few months back there weren't many FOSS self hosted finance managers supporting envelope/zero-sum budgeting and this does exactly that. Haven't tried Actual as this news was just announced yesterday, but it looks really slick.
Personally I think zero-sum budgeting sounds like the best way to do it, but I'd have to try and see first. I just hope import is a slam dunk, I don't want to spend forever mapping accounts and categories.
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I was waiting for someone to mention in it here!
Now let's see how I can bypass CGNAT and still use this in my daily basis.
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Take a look at ZeroTier, it makes small VPNs stupid easy.
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Oh yeah, I use that and Tailscale as well, but I meant a way to expose Actual without VPNs.
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https://di-marco.net/blog/it/2022-01-01-lte_and_starlink_isp-access_to_your_lan_from_outside/
This is what I do to access my services outside of my home network. I add have a VPS, or a network bridge with a static IP. Reverse SSH into the VPS and then I have access!
I am going to be adding NGINX to the VPS with a domain so I could just have actual.captainmoronisserver.com to access actual from anywhere.
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If you're lucky enough to be on ipv6 you don't have to worry about it that much.
Otherwise it's vps+wireguard or cloudflare tunnel.
Good luck!
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How? IPV6 seems useless to me. I can only access it from places that support IPV6 which would be my sisters house besides mine where it is being hosted. Cell, work,hotels hell most places all v4 still.
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Well I guess it's supposed that it's covered by my comment, if you're on ipv6. With the implied that all client devices are as well. In the US, ipv6 for cell phones was at like ~80% adoption in 2020 according to some articles. Anywhere with advanced 4g or 5g will definitely be switched over etc.
If you don't the others I mentioned are your options when it comes to cgnat.
A possibility is ipv4 to VPN with ipv6 which would give you that connection and then connect to your system but... Unsure if that will work.
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The GitHub says you can use NPM to install it but doesn't mention the package name. Is it also actual-server?
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Here's a quick overview how to deploy it on a plan old server and what Actual actually looks like:
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This is the right way to handle the shutting down of a cloud service.