Alternatives to MileTracker?
 

I wanted very much to like MileTracker. When it works, it's helpful.

But I think it's time for something else. FF programs go for months and months without current balances being able to be fetched in the program. Too often the program is buggy and too many people report losing all their FF data and having to re-build. The ad-spawning is annoying. Requests for a paid version that had no ads and actually worked consistently don't even get responded to. I've currently got five programs that don't work, and at least one of those has been reported as non-working for at least five months now.

Those interested can wade through this thread.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=724274

So I'm ready for something else -- if there is something else.

InsideFlyer ran an article 5 years ago http://www.insideflyer.com/articles/...e.php?key=1276
but its recommendations are out of date (maybe there's a recent update that I missed?)

The thing I DO like about MileTracker is the ability to track family and friends' accounts. That's a drawback, imo, to the HOM's own Mileage Manager (plus the fact that it only updates once a week), although the other features of the program sound excellent.

I can't find Yodlee anymore on their site, and some of the ones that the Inside Flyer article mentions are dead.

I still use Yodlee, and really like it (the front page has now been redesigned - just clink on "Yodlee Money Center Login"). There are occasional data blips in their coverage, but never for more than a week. I use it for US, UA, AA, and DL (as well as some hotels and TYP).

I've been using my own spreadsheet to track airline miles (including some manual additions for credit card miles for my UA and DL memberships). I'm thinking about adding hotel info to it on my next MR, but that's all TBD at this point.

So far, I've had good luck with accuracy and ease of tracking.

You could also try Bank of America's Portfolio. I don't really use it anymore, but it seemed pretty effective. However, I don't remember it tracking elite qualifications, etc.

I had a similar question just a few days ago when I overhauled my spreadsheet. I have to use a spreadsheet mostly due to the complexity of UA's benefits and lack of EQM transparency.

If this helps here are my column headers. If anyone has any improvements or suggestions - please let me know.

Someone on a plane once mentioned milagemanager.com, but I didn't pursue it for two reasons. 1. It is a pay service as best I could tell, and 2. It stored all of the data on their end. I would much rather have a program to locally manage and back up. On the plus side, it supposedly tracked expiration dates, which would be huge for me since I have a lot of little amounts spread around.

I use USA today mileage tracker, but I agree, some programs die and never come back. Currently important ones such as TYP and Amex don't work, as well as many others. I use Yodlee for my money management, and have some FFP in there, but they are missing some things I would like, such as cash back sites, and for some reason it adds another 0 to my AA balance.

I certainly look forward to other suggestions, or if there are some programmers in the group, maybe we can create an open-source one of our own. If it was a standard framework, it would be easy to allow others to write plugin modules for any site they wanted.

Awardwallet.com has an online tracking program that will display current balances of miles, hotel pts., and some other programs for free. It is fairly easy to set up your accounts.
If you want more detailed info. such as recent activity , ytd segments & eqm, upgrade balances, etc. , there is a fee involved. It seems to perform the basic mileage balance updates well enough.
I was using miletracker for a long time but it got so buggy that it became useless and I had to delete it.

That's an excellent point. I use yodlee to track my and my family members' bulk mileage earning, but I use a google docs spreadsheet for my UA EQMs and credit card spending. The cc spending for each of the family's mileage cards is on its own sheet, and is pretty straightforward - it's just to see when we hit the requisite spend targets. The UA EQM spreadsheet is a little more complicated. This is pretty involved, so I'm not sure if anyone really cares about all of the details, but here they are anyway! :D The headings are fairly similar to boggs'.

I put all of my UA MP earnings on the one page, but color code them by type, where black = flights, green = stores/hotels/cars, purple = credit card. For each flight, I list COS bonus or route bonus miles on a separate line.

I do maintain a separate spreadsheet for my husband's and daughter's US EQMs, but I don't really need to do so - US is actually pretty good about listing all of the extra miles in the regular internet display.

Amex has been working just fine for me.

Check out Pageonce.com - have the same functionality

I see you're the founder and CEO of pageonce, but...
 

although it does seemingly have the same functionality, miletracker keeps my passwords on MY computer--isn't that the real difference?

Placely has a free service which will pull your miles from most of the US airlines. Plus, in addition to miles, it will also pull your reservation data from all of those airlines.

I use Fidelity for my investments/financials, and you need an acccount to have access, but their "Full View" service is free and awesome... plus it lets me see everything in the same place as my other assets. If you use Fidelity, definitely give it a try before looking elsewhere.

I used to use Mile Tracker, but I didn't like that it installed with a icon on the lower right corner of the screen, thus using up memory. I also didn't like that it loaded and ran by itself on computer boot up. I'd rather it just ran when I clicked on it.

I had some conflicts with it and other programs as well. Sometimes when shutting down the computer, I'd have to do an "END NOW" on it.

I also had trouble with some airlines (esp. Frontier) where it took months before it would start fetching the data again.

What was a good program turned into more trouble than it was worth when they added advertising. Also, too many other features were added, such as white pages.

I vote awardwallet,once you set it up its really easy to use!

MileTracker released an update! Most of my failing programs now work...^