Melio

A free to start bill pay and accounts payable tool that lets small firms pay vendors by bank transfer or card and syncs back to their accounting books.

Melio is not a general ledger, and it does not pretend to be. It is a payments layer that sits beside your accounting software: you pay vendors by free ACH or by card, get paid through payment links and invoices, and sync the activity back to QuickBooks or Xero. The free Go plan covers a handful of ACH payments a month at no subscription cost, which makes it an easy add to a small firm that wants to pay bills online and earn card rewards on expenses that normally take a check. Paid tiers raise the free ACH allowance, add approval workflows and unlock unlimited transfers. The catch is scope and cost mechanics. There are no books here, card payments carry a 2.9 percent fee, and extra ACH transfers beyond your plan allowance cost $0.50 each, so heavy payers should price the tiers carefully.

In its favour

Held against it

Easy payments and a free start, narrow by design.

Melio scores well on ease of use and value for a free to start payments tool, and it integrates cleanly with the major books. Features and depth are the soft spot by design: it handles paying and getting paid, not bookkeeping, so it is a companion to accounting software rather than a replacement.

Scored against the same five weighted criteria we use across accounting. See the rubric →

a small business that already keeps books elsewhere and wants a simple, low cost way to pay vendors online and earn card rewards.

you need actual accounting: a general ledger, reporting, inventory or payroll, in which case pair Melio with a full platform instead.

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