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You can't go wrong with either BILL S&E or Ramp for virtual credit cards and expense management.
If you're a small business or have less cashflow, then BILL is your best bet as Ramp requires at-least 25K in your business bank (with your limit directly tied to this, so we really recommend you have $50–100K minimum in your account).
The most simple way to put it is, if you're a small business, use BILL S&E, if you're a startup with millions in the bank or mid-market, use Ramp.
We believe there are better options available in this category, read below to learn what this software does well, and what they could do better. ⤵
So you're looking for an expense management solution and you're deciding between BILL Spend & Expense (formerly Divvy) and Ramp. Well, we've used both and we're here to to tell you, they are both great options but there is a clear way to decide which one is right for you 👀
As a baseline, both Ramp and BILL offer virtual and physical corporate cards, that offer rewards, spend management tools, and have no annual fees. They both have card controls (budgets), spend tracking, and will allow you to spin up new employee cards within seconds (or cancel them just as quickly 😄). When integrated with Quickbooks Online, they will also both allow you to automatically reconcile your books.
The size of your business makes a difference in terms of which expense management platform you choose. While both Ramp and BILL are free to use, they have different minimum bank bank balances in order to get approved for an account.
BILL Spend & Expense Bank Minimum: $0
Ramp Bank Minimum: $25,000
So an easy decision can be made—do you currently have $50,000 in your bank account? If not, stop your research and opt for BILL Spend & Expense.
If it's not clear from the bank minimum requirements, Ramp is targeting slightly larger companies than BILL. If you're under 10-20 employees, BILL is likely more suited for you. If you're are larger team, or a start-up who just raised money looking to scale, Ramp is likely better for you.
This is where Ramp really shines. Ramp can send you data on duplicate spending and cost saving opportunities with different vendors. It can alert you if you have two people paying for the same service, for example. If you're a start-up, scaling company, or have many employees, Ramp would be best for you.
Ramp provides a straightforward 1.5% cash back on all purchases, while BILL offers up to 7x points on specific categories like restaurants and hotels. With BILL, the rewards are better if you pay your balance off weekly (vs semi-monthly or monthly), so we recommend doing that to optimize your cash back.
Quick story—about two years ago we introduced a small construction company (<10 person team) to BILL. The owner decided to use the cash back at the end of the year as a Christmas Bonus for his employees. This was "found money" that he wouldn't have otherwise had.
Years ago, one of our clients asked if he could pay an invoice through Divvy (now BILL Spend & Expense). Upon looking into it, we realized just how awesome the platform was and decided we needed to use it for ourselves. There was no bank minimum, it was totally free, and we got rewards on our spending, AKA It was a no-brainer.
Upon researching other similar solutions on the market, we came across Ramp, and with the $25K bank minimum ($75K bank minimum at the time, which they seem to be reducing), it was something that our business just didn't have at the time.
So the decision was made many years ago and we're still using BILL Spend & Expense today.
That said, as our business grew and we had $50–100K in our bank account, we decided to apply for a Ramp account, knowing we'd probably love it. And the truth is, we did 😬
They have a beautiful UI and friendly UX, and offer cool insights into your spending. But at this point, the switching costs for us would be ultimately too high to even consider swapping to Ramp.
So we'll leave you with this, if you can meet the minimum bank requirements, give Ramp a shot (it's probably what we'd do). If you can't, don't fret—BILL Spend & Expense is an awesome choice!
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BILL Spend & Expense (Formerly Divvy) The spend management platform for teams of all sizes (customizable virtual cards, budgeting, auto-reconciling, and expense reimbursement).
I'm sure you've heard of a business credit card? Divvy is a replacement for your typical corporate card. It's totally free to use (no annual fee), you get rewards and it has a much more comprehensive feature set, giving you the ability to create virtual credit cards for each vendor with spending limits. Further, Divvy is an expense management solution. Bought a new marketing software? Categorize it and when integrated with Quickbooks Online, it will automatically reconcile your books for you.
Simply put, if you are a business owner living in the United States, you are missing out if you're not using an expense management solution + a divvy business credit card. There are other players in the market, and we've used all of the core competitors (Ramp, Brex, Expensify, and Airbase), and we're here to tell you to look no further than Divvy (newly rebranded to BILL Spend & Expense). (Did we mention it's totally free? 👀)
Divvy gives us so much control when it comes to our spending. We can easily create a virtual credit card, set a budget and Quickbooks category within seconds for each different vendor. We simply set a budget for each credit card for the exact amount that we know will be charged. If a subscription service decides to increase their pricing and charge our card, it will decline. And we like that, because we want to be the one deciding if someone should charge us more or not. 💪
Because we're able to put virtual cards down with each vendor, Divvy's allowed us (and our vendor) to actually catch a person that committed fraud by stealing and using our credit card 🤯 Of course, the employee of our vendor was fired. Catching them would have been impossible to pin down if we had a generic credit card on file. We share this story in this 1 minute video.
Have multiple employees that need their own corporate card? Create a card for them and set a spending limit, that's all you need to do. You can change the spending limit for each employee, make it $50 or $500, Divvy cards allow you to be flexible. If they leave the company, simply freeze the card (you have total control—just think of what the process is like with a typically corporate card. Issuing a new card for an employee is an annoying process, as is cancelling it). Not to mention the positive affect it has on your employees, as they get to feel empowered and like a trusted part of the team.
The rewards are pretty standard with others in the business credit card space, getting somewhere around 1–1.5% on all categories, with a bit more in certain categories (higher % when making payments weekly—less if made bi-weekly or monthly).
One customer that we recommended Divvy to started using it and quickly saw his reward balance grow. He decided to use the reward funds as Christmas bonuses for his employees. He said, "it's money that's just sitting there, and if I can give them a little extra to take home at the end of the year, it's something cool I get to do."
Travel rewards are also a perk with Divvy as they are partnered with TravelPerk. While we haven't cashed in our travel rewards yet, it's a great option for our next company retreat!
Out of all the competitors, Divvy has the best UI/UX and does a fantastic job at natively integrating with QuickBooks Online (for automating your expense reconciling process), and handles team budgeting like a dream:
Divvy allows you to create a virtual credit card and map it to the respective category + set up an email forwarding filter within your email once, and every single time the card is charged, your QuickBooks Online is already reconciled and up-to-date with a PDF of the receipt.
The Divvy eligibility requirements are way more accessible than that of Ramp and Brex (who both make their account criteria unnecessarily high). Divvy is great for startups and teams of all sizes, even if you're just getting your business started.
Divvy is the best tool in the spend management, business credit cards, budgeting, and basic accounting automation suite for most businesses of all sizes.
The spend management platform for mid-size teams (customizable virtual cards, budgeting, auto-reconciling, and expense reimbursement).
Ramp is one of the clear leaders in the spend/expense management, budgeting space, and accounting automation space (Oh and it's totally free 👀)
They have a great UI/UX, tons of reporting/insights features, and a super clean and fast search functionality to find exactly what you're looking for:
You need to have $25K sitting in your business bank account at the time of applying in order to be approved. That said, your credit limit is going to be relative to how much is in your bank account, so we still recommend that businesses who are going to have $50–100K sitting in their business bank accounts at all times consider this based on the credit limit you'd get otherwise.
Ramp has the same virtual card functionality (and physical cards for employees). You'll want to spin up a virtual card for each company you use with Ramp, and you can even restrict (lock) these cards to a specific merchant.
The rewards are pretty standard with others in the space, getting around up-to 1.5% on most categories, with a bit more in certain categories (higher % when making payments weekly—less if made bi-weekly or monthly).
Ramp is more so for larger teams, think a distributed remote team with employees all over the world. But with more employees, comes more need for insights and data on spending. Ramp allows you to see your company's spend all in one place. Further, they have AI insights which will alert you of cost saving opportunities like duplicate subscriptions, sudden increases in spend, and possible lower pricing plans available. We think this is super cool, and is a big reason why we'd recommend Ramp for teams with 30-40+ employees.
One bit that I noticed when using Ramp is that they are a bit more focused on SMS interactions instead of having a fully-featured mobile app (unlike that of Divvy for example). Ramp only has an iOS app and it's mainly just for taking photos of receipts and matching transactions.
This might be a positive for those who have employees that aren't as tech-savvy, and you just need them to text a receipt in for it to tie to the expense management side of things (something that Divvy doesn't allow for).
All-in-all, they are focused a bit more broadly than that of BILL Spend & Expense (Divvy), moving more into the accounting automation side of things and integrating with a few more accounting tools natively. They really have an impressive suite of tools.
If you're a larger team, apply for Ramp using this link. Just remember, you need to have $25K in your bank account to get approved.
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