Household bill service Onedox shuts after hitting subscription “roadblock”

"Even with a paid subscription model, it isn’t viable for us to keep providing Onedox."

After raising £500,000 on Crowdcube in 2017, household bill management Onedox announced its plans to shut down this week after struggling to find a viable business model.

“What we have found is that even with a paid subscription model, it isn’t viable for us to keep providing Onedox as a service, and so it must go,” CEO and Co-Founder David Sheridan wrote in a letter to customers this week.

The company offered customers the ability to manage all of their household bills one place, managed switching between providers and kept customers informed about payments and bill changes.

Onedox launched in 2015 and went on to be named a finalist for Best Newcomer at the British Banking Awards 2018, a regional finalist for The Spectator’s Economic Disruptor Award, and was selected to join Accenture’s Fintech Innovation Lab and NatWest’s Entrepreneur Fintech Accelerator.

In September Sheridan announced a shift for Onedox to become a paid service of £3 per month, as the business required “greater levels of investment than we have access to”.

Unfortunately, this change wasn’t enough to bolster the startup’s coffers, leading the CEO to announce that its service will shut down from 1 December.

“For those who have subscribed to the paid-for service: Thank you. We’re especially sorry not to be able to continue providing the Onedox service to you. You have not been charged and you will not be charged.”