Researching the best online calculators for your business? Searching for an alternative to Dinkytown? If you’re reading this, you’ve no doubt landed on two of the biggest names in calculators in financial services space: Chimney and Dinkytown. Like a lot of marketers out there, you’re wondering how the two are different, how they compare, and which choice is right for you.
Selecting a partner is a challenge and can be a hassle to navigate without considering direct comparisons, but there’s no hiding it -Chimney is often compared to Dinkytown, the two options are not equal, and we want to help you understand the benefits of each option as you make your decision.
Dinkytown is the grandfather of online financial calculators and solved a big need in the marketplace 15 years ago. As more banks and credit unions embraced digital solutions, countless clients turned to Dinkytown as the default option to get calculators stood up on their websites. However the design, functionality, and progress has not kept pace with a fast developing market – this has resulted in Dinkytown calculators being outdated, off-brand, and difficult for people to use. Chimney is a digital native, born in the era of the customer experience where design and usability is paramount. Chimney was founded out of frustration with the lack of easy-to-use financial calculators on the internet. We started by evaluating the UX/UI of design-first companies like Uber, Airbnb, and Apple. We talked to product designers, attended conferences, researched user behavior, and held interviews to understand what makes best-in-class tools so beautiful, innovative, and easy to use. Once the designs were finalized, we found the best engineering talent to build these tools in the simplest, cleanest interface possible. The result of this process are calculators that people love to use, period
Dinkytown – Deploying a DinkyTown calculator requires heavy lifting from a technical perspective. Several different files and code languages and usually means IT and web dev needs to get involved. It could take weeks or months to make small updates to your calculators in order to stay up to date.
Chimney – Pre-built code is easy and can happen in minutes, not days or weeks. Our Live by Friday on-boarding process allows us to work with you to quickly customize each calculator. Our standard SLA is 72 hours to deploy, QA, and launch up to 10 calculators so your calculators can be Live by Friday.
Calculator Library
Dinkytown – A massive library of calculators that can be deployed on your websites. Dinkytown has the widest selection of calculators in the market – 400+ to meet every possible calculator need and support a wide variety of use cases and needs.
Chimney – A more select library of calculators – We believe that no bank or credit union needs 400+ calculators. Pareto’s Law is true in calculators as it is in life, our research shows that 80% of your in-market consumers are going to convert from the top 20% of your calculators. We’ve listened to our clients and optimized the top-performing calculators, releasing only the best. We test and release 5 new calculators at the start of each quarter which can be deployed immediately.
Dinkytown – When the massive library of Dinkytown calculators was built the focus was on function, not on the customer. Today, however, the customer has the power. Banks and credit unions are no longer competing with each other for customers, they’re competing with consumer expectations and the likes of Bankrate and Nerdwallet. The technical debt required to retrofit a facelift for 500+ calculators requires a huge time and resource investment – its a massive undertaking that would take even the most talented team of designers and engineers over a year.
Chimney – Chimney was founded out of frustration with the lack of easy-to-use calculators on the internet. We started by evaluating the UX/UI of design-first companies like Uber, Airbnb, and Apple. We talked to product designers, attended conferences, researched user behavior, and held interviews to understand what makes best-in-class tools so beautiful, innovative, and easy to use. Once the designs were finalized, we found the best engineering talent to build these tools in the simplest, cleanest interface possible. The result of this process are calculators that people love to use, period.
Dinkytown – In order to make updates to Dinkytown calculators, marketers need a deep understanding of JavaScript and CSS to make even basic updates. If you do not have the skills to make these code updates on your own, the Javascript deployment requires a technical resource and is bulky for each update on each calculator – ticketing requests to internal IT teams are often met with delays due to “limited resources”.
Chimney – Chimney enables marketers to manage and update all of your calculators, without IT requests or learning how to code. Our flexible Calculator Editor makes it easy for marketers to make updates, edits, and changes to their calculators — all from a single platform.
Dinkytown – Typically requires an Application Administrator or an IT project owner who is responsible for the initial install, coding updates, consistently testing for bugs, and then fixing any bugs. This Admin is also responsible for finding any calculators that are broken or not functioning properly – sometimes this can take weeks or months before you realize a calculator has been down.
Chimney – Chimney handles the admin and updating responsibility as part of any partnership. We consistently QA test all live calculators for our clients proactively, identify any issues, and get them fixed with standard SLAs free of charge.
Dinkytown – Dinkytown provide a series of support FAQ documents on their website: General, Features, Deployment, and Customization). They combine these FAQs with a phone number and support email on their website.
Chimney – Chimney schedules a quarterly check-in call with each client proactively to review progress, usage, and analytics reports. At the start of each partnership, we select dates throughout the year for these quarterly conversations. Chimney also automatically delivers monthly reports to the program owner to ensure transparency and performance. These regularly scheduled touchpoints are in addition to a customer support hub and standard SLAs on response times.
Both – Chimney and Dinkytown have built their calculators to meet the needs of complex financial institutions. All the calculators feature responsive design for phones, tablets, and desktops. Both companies also meet the needs of ADA Compliance with WCAG 2.0 Level AA.
Dinkytown – All DinkyTown calculators have duplicate copy, which hurts your website’s SEO performance. So essentially when using their calculators you have no way of standing out from the crowd. Your site is sharing the exact same copy and definitions as thousands of other websites out there. DinkyTown doesn’t give you a chance to stand out from the crowd with exceptional, optimized and on-brand copy.
Chimney – Chimney calculators are optimized for search because we use JavaScript that is readable by the search engines. Additionally, through our SEO addon, we’ll provide you with unique SEO-optimized copy that will help your calculators stand out from the crowd and drive more traffic to your site.
Dinkytown – Dinkytown does not provide any analytics to clients.
Chimney – Chimney designed real-time analytics dashboards for each calculator. Conversion rates, Click-through CTAs, and Pageviews so you know exactly how these interactive calculators are driving action through your funnel.
Dinkytown – Upfront cost with a 30-day money-back guarantee and free support for up to six months, with the option to extend maintenance for 18 months for 20% of the purchase price.
Chimney – With Chimney, you only pay for the calculators you use and have full flexibility to swap calculators anytime. You choose from a bundle of 10, 20, or 40 calculators that you can publish on as many website pages as you want. The data is clear, you don't need 100+ calculators to be successful, we recommend you focus on the top 10-20 highest performing calculators across your business instead of publishing 100+ across your website just because you can.
Dinkytown – If you’re on an extremely tight budget and like to DIY because you need to check the box of having calculators on your website, Dinkytown is a solid decision that will meet your needs.
Chimney – If you are prioritizing the customer experience and looking to increase conversions with a partner who will allow you to remain hands-off, Chimney is a smart choice.
Upgrade your customer experience with professionally designed calculators for answering your customer’s financial questions. Edit your custom theme with our Calculator Editor using key inputs to update these calculators to your brand.
As a marketer – Your job as a marketer is made simpler with easy to use calculator templates designed to help you increase conversions, faster. Adding and updating calculators is a breeze with the ability to easily edit the copy, font, colors, calls-to-action – all in one place.
As an account holder – Reach in-market account holders up for success with easy to use tools that are professionally designed, have fewer inputs to increase completion, more accurate assumptions, faster loading times, and provide an overall better buying experience.
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