Striven Review 2025 – NerdWallet

Full Review

Not a fit? Consider these competitors

Striven plan pricing and features

Striven lets you test drive its software for seven days before committing. Its plans come with the same combination of accounting features, in addition to tools for inventory tracking, customer relationship management, human resources and project management.

All plans come with vendor, customer and job applicant portals that each support up to 100 participants. If you’d like to accept up to 500 participants instead, each portal costs an extra $99 per month. If you need portals to accept an unlimited number of participants, they each cost $499 per month.

What users say about Striven

NerdWallet checked online forums like Reddit and reviews from sites like G2 to gauge how users feel about Striven. We used an AI tool to help analyze this feedback. Here are the major trends we spotted.

👎 Limited online chatter

We didn’t find as many reviews or online mentions for Striven as we did for its competitors. Our AI tool located just four Reddit threads that mention the software. (Zoho Books, another all-in-one business platform, had 617 references, for comparison.) In addition, as of this writing, the most recent reviews from G2 and Capterra were published back in 2023.

That level of silence is uncommon. But it’s unclear what significance it has, if any. It does color our analysis, though. It’s hard to determine whether current users still feel the same way toward Striven as they did in 2023. It’s possible the software has changed since then as well.

Still, the available info helps provide some context. We also confirmed specific product feedback via testing when possible. But we’d encourage taking advantage of Striven’s seven-day free trial. That way, you can get a firsthand sense of the tool and whether it meets your needs.

👍 Customer support

Overall, users seem to be satisfied with Striven’s customer service, despite the fact that phone support is limited to callbacks. They say it’s easy to get in touch with representatives, and they appreciate the quality of the support.

It also sounds like Striven’s support might be more personalized than some of its competitors’. For example, a reviewer said they didn’t receive “robotic” responses from the support team. We tested this out using the site’s live chat module and were put in touch with a human who very quickly answered our question. Plus, we didn’t have to interact with an AI chatbot to get there.

In addition to 24/5 live chat support, Striven has an in-depth user guide to help you get set up and learn how to use all of the software’s tools. If you need more assistance, webinars are also available.

👍 All-in-one business software solution

Striven offers more than just accounting tools. Its users value the fact that they can manage their books, CRM operations and inventory management within a singular program. They say it helps make daily routines more seamless. This seems like an especially popular sentiment among businesses with complex inventory and supply chain management needs.

👎 Learning curve

Striven’s advanced functionality comes with a tradeoff, according to reviewers. They say the learning curve can be tough at first, and that it’s sometimes difficult to find what you’re looking for.

If you already dislike navigating online sites and programs, Striven may not be the best fit. Alternatively, if you have the resources, you might hire someone to manage your finances in-house. That way, they can take their time learning how to get the most out of Striven.

Our experience testing Striven

👋 I’m Hillary Crawford, a lead writer and content strategist for NerdWallet. I’ve been covering small-business accounting software since 2021 and am QuickBooks certified. I did the testing for Striven.

To do that, I test drove Striven’s core business edition and evaluated the demo account’s key components in May 2025. Here’s what stood out.

Dashboard navigability and layout

My take: There’s a lot going on.

I see why users say navigating Striven can be a challenge. The dashboard has a slightly outdated appearance, and I wasn’t immediately sure how the icons on the top right of the page differ from the tabs on the top left. Understanding where to start would certainly take some time to get used to.

Invoicing

My take: Not as intuitive as the competition, but very detailed.

I like that you can select from a list of previously saved invoice items to save time. This is especially nice for businesses that sell a lot of the same product or service.

There are also fields where you can input additional data points, like unit price, shipping and handling and class. In this demo, Striven uses class to identify different departments and locations.

From what I can tell, you can’t customize the invoice template itself from this screen. Instead, you have to click “company” and visit the settings page. Competitors, like QuickBooks Online, typically let you customize invoice templates and create new invoices from the same page.

Running reports

My take: Lots of filtering options.

Striven’s reporting module makes it easy to drill down into the details. To evaluate customization options and readability, I ran the profit and loss report. In addition to the basic date filters, you can sort by class, customer or vendor. I appreciate the different display options, too. You can view the results in a table or as a bar graph.

Bank reconciliation

My take:  Less automated than competitors.

The demo account’s reconciliation page didn’t include many mock transactions, so I relied on the company’s YouTube tutorial instead.

Basically, you choose the account you’d like to reconcile, pull up your bank statement in a separate tab and check off each Striven transaction when you find its match in the bank statement. Striven separates the transactions into two columns: checks and payments, and deposits.

The process is very manual. For example, it doesn’t seem like the system suggests matches for unreconciled transactions. Plus, there’s no column that lets you quickly see how each transaction has been categorized.

Striven’s reconciliation process might be more time consuming than the competition’s. That’s another reason I’d recommend it for businesses that already have a financial manager or in-house accountant.

Project tracking

My take: A helpful approach for larger teams.

Striven lets you set “milestones” for each project, so that you can track when your team checks off important tasks. And in the dashboard, you can sort milestones by the person assigned to them. This can help you track your team members’ performance over time and set clear expectations and timelines.

Requesting support

My take: Very attentive.

I had low expectations when I found out that Striven’s phone number leads you straight to an automated voicemail. If it’s an emergency, they say you’ll get directed to a representative. Otherwise, the system asks you to leave a message and expect a response the next business day.

However, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I don’t have to go through an AI chatbot to get in touch with a human via live chat. Additionally, a representative emailed me the same day I signed up for Striven’s demo. They included a link to their calendar, so that I could set up a one-on-one meeting to get started.

I clicked the “schedule support” option in the demo account as well, just to see where it would take me. It asked me to provide my email address, so that I can set up a 15-minute screenshare with a representative. I definitely appreciate that personalized approach.

How we evaluated Striven

NerdWallet independently reviews accounting software products, like Striven, across 10 categories and more than 30 subcategories. We collected the data from Striven’s public-facing website and from company representatives.

Our accounting software ratings range from one to five stars overall. But we also score individual features to help business owners understand a product’s strengths and weaknesses. Here’s how Striven stacks up:

We also took user sentiment into account to gauge what small-business owners think about Striven. This involved looking through individual reviews and feedback on sites like G2 and Reddit. Then, we used AI tools to help spot larger trends within those comments. We don’t incorporate these user reviews in our star ratings, because we can’t verify every user’s individual experience.