We wanted to share with you a roundup of ClearCheckbook during 2011 and a sneak peak into what we have in store for 2012. Getting right to it, 2011 was a great year for ClearCheckbook. We had a total of 44,563 new user signups (which comes to about 122 signups per day). All of our stats were up across the board from 2010. The screenshot below shows 2011 (blue) compared to 2010 (orange) for total visits to the site.



In 2011 we had 2,085,159 visits (374,202 unique) to the site which racked up an impressive 12,646,329 pageviews. The average person visits 6 pages each time they come to the site and spends an average of 7:30 on the site. As we said above, all of these stats are up from 2010.

During the year we weren't just sitting around twiddling our thumbs either. In 2011 we released two completely new tools, the Bill Tracker and the Debt Snowball tool. We also released 3 new large features to existing tools: Checking for Duplicate Transactions on import, Saved Searches and Saved Custom Reports, and the Premium Groups feature. In addition to the new tools and features, we also completely overhauled several existing functions of the site such as the Import tool, Estimating Future Balances, Reports, Currency Conversions, Bill Tracker and our entire database. On top of all that we still managed over 100 bug fixes and minor updates.

So with all of that covered, what's in store for 2012? The first half of the year is going to focus on digging through our backlog of requests and suggestions and working on introducing any that we feel will benefit the majority of our members. We're also going to completely scrap the existing iPhone app and build something that actually works the way it was supposed to from the start. Along those same lines, the mobile optimized website will be getting a complete overhaul to make it more usable and give it access to some of the newer tools and features.

We'd also like to thank everyone who sends us email with testimonials and praise and those of you who spread the word of the site to your friends and family! You're the reason we do what we do.

We're calling upon you, our ClearCheckbook users, to help us create some walkthroughs/tutorials on how to switch from other financial applications (like Quicken, Microsoft Money, Mint, etc) to ClearCheckbook. Our goal is to have some nice documentation to provide for new users who are looking to switch from another application but aren't quite sure how things match up.

Ideally each tutorial would cover some basic terminology comparisons, how to properly export data from the old financial app so it can easily be imported into CCB and any other helpful information that a new user switching to our site might need. Screenshots to go along with the documentation are always welcome.

Anyone who writes a comprehensive tutorial for us will get a free year's worth of premium membership added to their account.

If you're interested, just contact us via the link at the bottom right side of the page and let us know what app you're interested in writing a switching tutorial for.

Thanks! We hope to hear from you soon.

The nominations were tallied and ClearCheckbook ended up being one of the top 5 (out of 75) online personal finance software for About.com's 2011 Reader's Choice Awards.

You can now go vote for us through March 8th. There are no prizes or rewards associated with winning, simply bragging rights.

If you love ClearCheckbook.com, show your support!

Best Online Personal Finance Software Category:
http://financialsoft.about.com/b/2011/02/11/best-online-personal-finance-software-rca2011.htm

Best Mobile Personal Finance Software Category:
http://financialsoft.about.com/b/2011/02/11/best-mobile-personal-finance-app-rca2011.htm

Thanks to everyone who sent in their nominations earlier last month!

-Brandon

Due to a series of events explained below, we were forced to suddenly move our live server to another hosting facility. If things had gone as expected, the transition would have been flawless with no site downtime. Everything is back to normal now and we will not be experiencing any more unexpected downtime.

Here's what actually happened:
1. On December 30, 2010, the company that's hosting our server said they would be shutting down their data center in Los Angeles an moving everything to Dallas. We didn't want our server moved to Dallas, because our server guru lives in LA.

2. We weighed our options and decided to purchase an additional server and host it at a new facility. We could transfer everything to the new server and have it running while we took our existing one down, then move the existing server to the new facility.

3. We purchased our new server and set up a contract with the new hosting company. Then, on January 9th, 2011, our existing host decided to route all network traffic through its Dallas datacenter. This caused several hours of outage for the site. The issues were resolved and we continued to wait for our new server to arrive.

4. Our new server finally arrived on January 15, 2011 and we made an appointment to install the new server at the new hosting facility for today, January 21, 2011.

5. At around 9:30am PST, our existing host had a major network malfunction, causing the site to go down. We weighed our options and decided we've had enough and if the outage continued, we would take our live server and move it today as well. That's what happened so we moved the server.

Where we stand now:
We are currently up and running at the new hosting facility on our main server. Over the next few days we will be getting the additional server installed in conjunction with it, to provide an even faster experience for the site.

The downtime is over and all the headaches are done. We're in a much more solid facility now and happy to be rid of the old hosting company.

Again, I'm truly sorry for the issues and any problems it may have caused.

Brandon O'Brien
CEO and Founder
ClearCheckbook.com

I was just sent an email from about.com telling us we could have our users nominate ClearCheckbook for the 2011 About.com Reader's Choice Awards in the Personal Finance category.

You can visit the following link and nominate ClearCheckbook for "Best Online Personal Finance Software" and "Best Mobile Personal Finance Software":
http://financialsoft.about.com/library/bl-readers-choice-awards-2011.htm

Voting takes place through February 11th, 2011. There are no prizes or awards, simply bragging rights. It would be great to see how we stack up against the competition though.

The article is a little outdated (as it's about 2.5 years old), but you can read About.com's writeup on ClearCheckbook here:
http://financialsoft.about.com/od/onlinesoftware/p/ClearCheckbook.htm.