Review of Free Online Money Management Tool: Thrive
A refreshing design and helpful tips gives Thrive an advantage that Mint does not offer, namely: Advice.
Rating: 
Pros:
- Auto imports (almost) all of your accounts
- Simple, user-friendly design
- Awesome customer service (This is a huge plus for a free tool!)
- Does a better job auto-updating accounts and accounting for multi-factor authentication than Mint
- Easy to use and remember categories of your expenses and income
- Credit Compass – estimates your credit score and gives you recommendations for improving it
- Budgeting tools and debt management tools that allows you to set specific goals for and calculates how much to save per month to reach that goal within a certain time period
- Once you have a few months of trending, it can predict how much you would need to live per year on your current expenses, as well as an interesting one of how many days you can survive without a job given your asset/liability and income/expense ratios
Cons:
- Does not yet import all of my credit union loan accounts (neither does any other site, so what do you do?)
- Does not allow you to manually enter any asset or liability accounts if they cannot find your online account
- It learns your categorizations, but I would prefer to also have an option to manually save re-categorized transactions for the future like Mint does
I’ve heard that many people are fleeing to Thrive or alternatives since the purchase of Mint by Intuit, and the speculative rumors that Mint may switch their back-end system from Yodlee. I would say that there are definitely some great alternatives to Mint out there, but there is no 1 answer that fits all needs. In fact, I’m think about using a combination of Mint and Thrive, as they both offer different perspectives that can help me organize and simplify my finances.
Update: In hearing back from Elisa at Thrive, I was made aware that the suggested products that Thrive offers are not based on affiliate commissions, but are truly intended to fit the needs of the user. They find matches for savings and loan products that are based on what is available in the marketplace, not on their commissions. To me, this is a very useful distinction from other companies.
Another Update: I have used this for a while now, and I do find the categorization difficult. Also, they give some real tough love advice. It may not be something you want to hear 
Thrive website: http://www.justthrive.com
View the tour at: http://www.justthrive.com/tour
