Review contents
Tide is a super popular business account – with over 10% of all small and medium sized businesses in the UK with accounts. It’s an easy to use and straightforward account that is free to open. The app itself is great, and although it’s easy to use, it’s packed with features to help you manage your business finances.
Ready for business? Tide certainly are. They’re ready to help you and your business get up and running with a business account – whether you’re a freelancer, a small business or a growing business with thousands of customers.
It’s all very modern, there’s no high street branch, but in the 21st century who cares? It’s all managed through an app on your phone or through their website.
There’s tonnes of great features, some you’d expect from a bank, and some you’d only expect from a modern company such as integrating with your accounting software.
Tide's app is pretty great with outstanding ratings on the App Store and Google Play. It's safe to say their customers love them.
In fact, we actually use Tide here at Nuts About Money – and if you think Tide is for you, get up to £175, £75 when you open a business account (deposit £100) and £100 when you open a saver account (deposit £5,000). Get started with Tide here¹.
What a revelation, you can now manage your business finances from your phone! View up-to-date transactions, check your balance, make and send invoices and payments, and even chat to the support team. It’s super easy to use, and a fair bit better than your high street bank app (which are typically hard to use and slow).
It’s not just a simple app for sending and receiving money. There’s lots of handy features, like tagging your transactions into categories automatically, so you can better manage where your money is coming and going over time, and customise these categories to suit your business, and help manage your tax better too.
You can create and send invoices too. It’s easy and super quick, and with your company branding and payment terms – which then matches with your payments so you can keep track of which invoices have been paid, and which haven’t, all in one place.
And another very handy feature, you can upload receipts directly into the app by just taking a photo on your phone and matching it with a transaction – your accountant will love this one.
If doing everything within an app is making you a bit uncomfortable, fear not! They have an easy to use website that allows you to access your account on a computer too.
Use accounting software for your business? Well you’re in luck, you can integrate your banking seamlessly – all your transactions will simply appear in whichever accounting system you are using – Quickbooks, Xero and Sage just to name a few, and it only takes a few minutes to set up.
£75 with a business account (deposit £100) and £100 with a saver account (deposit £5,000).
Tide has 4 different types of accounts, each for your stage of business. The free account for those just getting started, the Plus account for those for growing businesses, Pro if you're making many transactions and the Cashback account for those spending big. Here’s a breakdown of each one:
If you’re just getting started, this is the account for you. It’s got everything you need, there’s just no bells and whistles – well, it is free after all.
There’s also some small charges when you use basic features, such as 20p to transfer money in and out (not to use the card) – which is actually a lot less than traditional banks who charge up to 65p per transfer, even when you pay a monthly fee.
The Plus account is the more ‘standard’ option, it’s what most businesses go for, and comes in at £9.99 per month (plus VAT). You’ll get a free expenses card if you need one, and 20 free bank transfers per month.
However, the main benefit is the extra customer support you get, with priority in-app support, and able to use phone support.
Tide's Pro account (£18.99 per month (plus VAT)) is pretty similar to the Plus account although you get unlimited transfers in and out. Our recommendation is to stick with the Plus account unless you're spending a lot on transaction fees.
Oh, you also get a second free expense card for your team.
Big spender? With this account you can get 0.5% back in cash on all your purchases with your card. Result. It comes at a cost of £49.99 (plus VAT), so designed for slightly bigger businesses.
It also comes with a dedicated account manager to handle all of your support questions and help to fully utilise the account and features.
The support is quite simply, great. It’s mostly all handled through the messaging feature on the app, where you can chat to their support team to help you with any queries you have.
The paid plans get priority support when using the live chat support, but the main benefit is the ability to speak on the phone 24/7.
On the more expensive plan, (£49.99), you even get a dedicated account manager – that’s someone who acts like old school bank managers did, there for whatever you need. You can speak to them all through the app too and reply when it’s convenient for you.
A pretty cool feature and idea, Tide will set up a limited company for you all for free! A limited company makes your business official in the eyes of the law and more legitimate to customers and partners.
For comparison it can normally cost £100s to have someone else do this for you, so it’s a fairly good saving. Although you can do it yourself for a small registration fee of £12 too.
Business card: the main business card (debit card) is free on all plans.
Expense cards: if you’re on the free plan, you’ll have to pay £5 per month for an expense card. On the paid for plans, you’ll get free expense cards (only 1 on the standard paid plan).
Replacement cards: keep losing your card? Get a replacement for free.
ATM withdrawals: withdrawals aren’t free, they cost a cool £1 each time (on all plans).
Read access: if you want to share the account with someone but only want them to view it, you can do that. It’s a pretty great feature.
Multiple business accounts: you can have up to 5 accounts for different businesses, for free, across any plan.
Quick registration: it only takes a few minutes to get your account set up, all you need is an ID to verify who you are and you’re all set.
CSV exports: bit of a dab hand at spreadsheets? You can export all your transactions as a CSV file and do with it whatever you like.
Pay in cash: you can pay in cash at any Post Office (£2.50 fee), or PayPoint location (3% fee).
Carbon footprint calculator: estimate your business' carbon footprint.
Let’s run through the pros and cons of a Tide business account.
Tide has over 11,600 reviews from customers on the review site Trustpilot, which gives them a score of 4.0 out of 5 and a rating ‘Great’.
However, we’d expect more customer-focused businesses like Tide to have a score higher than this. Why? Banking tends to get lower scores overall as the strict regulation that governs how they manage customer accounts – to protect customers from fraud and prevent money laundering.
Which means that sometimes legitimate businesses can sometimes be reviewed, and when this happens the customer doesn’t always get the best experience and give them a poor rating.
This is common for most banks – and in comparison, Santander, has a score of just 1.7 out of 5, and Barclays has the same score (1.7 out of 5).
We think it’s that good, that we actually use Tide for our own banking. The app is great to use, has everything you’d want from a business bank account, plus more such as invoice management, expense cards, accounting integrations, admin tools and more.
It’s great value for money, and you can even start on the free plan if you’re just starting out. It’s a solid 5 stars from us.
Yes! We’ve got an awesome deal for you too – Get £175 free – £75 with a business account (deposit £100) and £100 with a saver account (deposit £5,000). Sign up to Tide here¹ and use the code NUTSABOUTMONEY.
Full disclosure, we’ll also get a small fee too, which helps us keep the lights on here at Nuts About Money.
£75 with a business account (deposit £100) and £100 with a saver account (deposit £5,000).
£75 with a business account (deposit £100) and £100 with a saver account (deposit £5,000).
£75 with a business account (deposit £100) and £100 with a saver account (deposit £5,000).
Christopher Dowling combines a communications degree with over 10 years experience in the financial services industry in London – with focus on educating people on a wide range of money topics in an easy to understand way. He writes about savings, investing, pensions, mortgages, insurance, banking, loans, business finance and other money topics.
This article was written, reviewed and fact checked by the expert team at Nuts About Money. You’re in safe hands. Learn more.
We're experts in all things money, with years of combined experience working in the finance industry and writing about money. We understand the ins and outs, how to get the best deals, save money, and how to communicate money in an easy to understand way (we hope you agree).
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£75 with a business account (deposit £100) and £100 with a saver account (deposit £5,000).
