Thanks for the suggestions! I’ll pass ‘em on at our meeting on Monday, but here’s a quick response:
1) Good thought! We do provide a link to Splitwise in the reminder email, where that person can log in and view the full list of bills, but it could definitely be nice to see the list directly in the email.
2) You’re definitely not the first to ask for this, but there are a few reasons we haven’t done it. The first is selfish – requiring invites helps Splitwise to grow, which allows us to keep the service free rather than having to charge. The second reason is user confusion – you’d be surprised how often people email us wondering why they can’t see the bills their friend added, or why their copy of the app shows a different balance than their friend’s (usually because they email addresses they’re using don’t match). We’ve run limited tests allowing no email address, and it led to a pretty sharp jump in helpdesk emails. That’s painful for a tiny company like us!
There is one current workaround, though: if you create a group from our website, we do allow you to exclude email addresses there. We think that’s important for some less common but important use cases (like dividing bills with 20 people after a big party). You’re also welcome to provide fake email addresses if you want, like “firstname.lastname@example.com”.
Hope that helps!
Thanks for the suggestions! I’ll pass ‘em on at our meeting on Monday, but here’s a quick response:
1) Good thought! We do provide a link to Splitwise in the reminder email, where that person can log in and view the full list of bills, but it could definitely be nice to see the list directly in the email.
2) You’re definitely not the first to ask for this, but there are a few reasons we haven’t done it. The first is selfish – requiring invites helps Splitwise to grow, which allows us to keep the service free rather than having to charge. The second reason is user confusion – you’d be surprised how often people email us wondering why they can’t see the bills their friend added, or why their copy of the app shows a different balance than their friend’s (usually because they email addresses they’re using don’t…
Anmol Rajdev
