Nav is designed to help small business owners build business credit and improve their business health over time.
But is that the case?
We take a comprehensive look at each of Nav’s key offerings to understand the benefits and drawbacks of each.
Nav’s Free Product
Nav’s free account offers credit monitoring for personal and business credit. It also provides you with access to the Cash Flow Health tool and the personalized marketplace.
Nav Free Product Advantages
The Nav free account allows you to get a better idea of what Nav has to offer before you pay. This is a useful feature to offer to help small business owners gauge their level of interest and understanding of whether a platform is right for them before they commit.
They offer enough features that give you insights and financial and credit support immediately. Free business and personal credit monitoring comes with features like credit change alerts. While you receive limited access to your reports, you receive enough to know where you stand.
This is the primary goal of a free business credit check.
This is important if you’re not sure what your business credit score is. It’s also worth noting that they help you check and monitor your personal credit score, which can be helpful as a small business owner.
Nav’s additional features are added benefits that any free user will appreciate. Basic cash flow insights and personalized picks for financial products or services you might be interested in are useful.
With that in mind, it’s important to remember this is a free version. There are some downsides to signing up for the most basic plan, even if it’s to conduct your own Nav review.
Nav Free Product Disadvantages
While the Nav free account doesn’t cost you anything, you receive the most basic level of support.
This means that you’re actively missing out on features, whether you’re only receiving the bare-bones version or missing out on specific features that aren’t available to free users at all.
Continuing with the above, using only a free account would mean:
- Receiving a basic, condensed overview of your credit that only provides you with a summary. These services don’t actively help you build your credit nor provide you with a comprehensive look into your reports. You just get a credit report sample. You’ll have to pay to track your credit score and credit reports as well as receive full support.
- Getting a tool that consolidates transactions in one place but doesn’t offer much more. Only a paid subscription will provide you with the useful Cash Flow Health features.
- Tapping into personalized financial recommendations but missing out on support like business credit coaching. There’s nothing wrong with free financial recommendations. However, they won’t take you nearly as far as personalized coaching.
With the above in mind, what does upgrading to the Nav Prime membership offer?
Nav Prime
Nav Prime, formerly Nav Business Boost, helps businesses build business credit. Nav Prime is designed to help businesses track and build their credit, expanding their business over time. It offers more robust versions of the services mentioned above.
Nav Prime Advantages
Nav Prime offers a wealth of tools designed to bolster small businesses. These features for your small business include:
- The ability to track up to six business credit scores and personal FICO credit scores. You get a better look at your business credit reports and scores from each credit bureau with the paid version than with the free one. Personal credit reports and scores may play a role in your funding strategy, which is why they’re here too.
- Access to a dedicated Nav business credit coach. This pairs well with their free business banking services and cash flow management tools.
- Ample learning resources to help you level up as a business owner. Learn more about credit, business finance, and other topics.
Arguably the biggest advantage of signing up for Nav Prime is receiving tradelines. When you sign up for Nav Prime, they report your tradeline to all the major business credit bureaus. This includes D&B, Equifax, and Experian.
If you use the Nav Prime Card, you receive an additional tradeline. We’ll cover this in the next section.
Nav Prime Disadvantages
Being a subscription service, you have to pay more to tap into all the features of Nav Prime membership.
Nav Prime starts at just $39.99 a month. However, if you sign up for this service, you only receive tracking support. You receive more robust business credit monitoring for the major credit bureaus. All tiers offer tradeline reporting.
If you want more features, you need to sign up for the build option. This sits at $49.99 a month or $39.99 quarterly. It adds the Nav Prime Charge Card, the Nav business checking account through Thread Bank, and bookkeeping tools.
The most comprehensive plan is the Expand plan. This costs $79.99 a month or $59.99 quarterly. It adds the business credit coach and the FICO SBSS score.
Put simply, you have to pay to make the most out of your Nav Prime membership. This is to be expected. However, it isn’t ideal to have to use a tiered subscription system to get services. Many business owners would rather pay a flat rate and get all the support they need at once.
Beyond high subscription pricing, you don’t have to dig too far to see a host of other issues being reported by previous customers. Nav Prime users report issues such as:
- Lackluster customer service that leaves customers without answers or support. We feel the need to especially highlight poor customer service as this is a common complaint.
- Randomly losing access to services they previously had.
- Being recommended financial products that businesses are apparently a good match for, only to get rejected.
- No refunds, checking account funds not being sent to business owners after random cancellations, and spending money to get rejected for Nav solutions shortly after.
- Technical website issues that make it difficult or impossible for customers to use their services.
- Slow updates, bank transfers, and reporting.
Nav’s customer review page can be quite telling about the level of service and value they provide. Take care to read through these before signing up for their services.
Nav Prime Card
The Nav Prime Card is Nav’s business credit builder charge card. It gives small businesses the ability to build credit and access financing if they’re having trouble getting support from traditional financial institutions.
Nav Prime Card Advantages
The Nav Prime Card is a relatively straightforward offering. While you aren’t going to get a ton of features, it does offer the following.
- You can use your Nav Prime Card to pay for anything, even breakfast. Whatever your business needs, you can get it with your new card. This makes financing your business easy without all the extra restrictions.
- Autopay features ensure you don’t miss out on any payments.
- Nav Prime is easy to qualify for. Other financing options, like a business credit card, often demand that you meet certain eligibility requirements. You don’t need to undergo a personal credit check or sign a personal guarantee. You don’t need a security deposit. Additionally, there is no minimum annual revenue or time in business requirements.
- There’s room to grow with the Nav Prime Card. If your linked repayment account becomes more active and has more funds over time, Nav will increase your credit limit to reflect that. How much you’re able to fund your business depends on performance.
- The Nav Prime Card reports to Experian and the Small Business Financial Exchange (SBFE) so that each transaction helps you build your business credit.
The Nav Prime Card does seem like the ideal credit-building solution. That is, until you get to the repayment aspect of the card.
Nav Prime Card Disadvantages
We’ve established that the Nav Prime Card is a charge card. Having a charge card typically isn’t a problem. Many corporate charge cards help you build credit.
The only difference between charge cards and business credit cards is that you have to pay them off in full each month instead of carrying a balance.
However, that’s not the case with the Nav Prime Card. This is something you might not see referenced in other Nav reviews. No matter where your business is in terms of its credit journey, the Nav Prime Card needs to be repaid daily.
This presents a number of potential issues for a business. Accidental overspending is certainly a possibility when you pull out your card and use it for business expenses. This can affect smaller businesses that are just getting started on their credit journey.
While there are no late fees, no annual fees, or other fees associated with the Nav Prime Card, you could be on the hook for any collection costs should you miss a payment.
The daily repayment element of this card makes it challenging to maximize its use. It can help you build credit so you can approach a better lender in the United States and get funded. However, there are more effective ways to build credit, such as using Credit Suite.
Build Business Credit and Look to the Future With Credit Suite
Credit Suite helps small businesses like yours build credit with our Fundability System.
The Fundability System guides you through the most efficient approach to credit building.
We help you identify your current financial health, determine the next steps needed to make your business more fundable and match you with vendors, lenders, and credit issuers from our comprehensive database who are the best fit.
Whereas other credit solutions provide you with tools that help you build credit, we focus on guiding you through every step of the process to ensure you’re building credit effectively and gradually accessing better funding opportunities.
Unlock better business credit and funding with Credit Suite’s Fundability System.
