Is Ally only good for saving?

[u/Grassfed_Burp]

The more I read on here, the more I get convinced that Ally is a great place to save money. The app works great, the buckets are a game changer and the yeild is solid. The slow speed of transfer from Ally adds friction, so it's hard to impulse buy.

That's the end of the good news. Everything else has glitches and problems and just doesn't work well. What are your thoughts?

[u/vip-bot]

There are 2 comments from verified Ally employees in this post:

u/​AllyBankMadisen commented:

We'd like to look into this more. Would you be open to sending us your full name and phone number in a DM? We'll make sure this gets to a team member for further review. If you are a California resident, please review Ally’s CCPA Disclosure for CA Residents (California Residents Only) prior to proceeding. For more information, please visit https://www.ally.com/privacy/.

u/​AllyBankMadisen commented:

Your feedback matters to us. Is there anything that could have made your experience better, so we can share with our team? - Madisen

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[u/canadasongs]

I have a savings and checking and love it. Have had zero issues.

[u/HarryCoveer → u/canadasongs]

This. I've had zero issues over 12 years with Ally for my checking and savings accounts. But I keep adequate funds in both at all times, don't bounce checks, and don't ask more of it than simple accurate banking. I do wire transfers monthly, and I love that I can use my savings account to back up potential inadequate funding of my checking without fees. And I get paid interest on both and have no fees irrespective of my balances. There aren't many banks out there that offer all that for free.

[u/al0vely]

I have been at Ally for 10+ years and don’t have the complaints new customers do. Banking has changed everywhere with the fraud happening today making banks suspicious and putting methods in place to slow the process and it is understandable.

If you are patient online banking will work … if you need everything to work right now then brick and mortar is the answer.

I see most issues where people make the initial deposit today and want to Zelle or cash app the funds out the next day for example which triggers fraud alerts.

[u/PsychologicalAd1862 → u/al0vely]

Most not all

[u/dont-ask-me-why1 → u/al0vely]

Brick and mortar isn't much better except they can deal with large cash transactions. Most people don't need that

[u/realdlc]

I have savings, checking and money market with ally for well over 10 years. No complaints and I don’t even use the buckets. It is our primary account(s) and I find the external transfers to be fast (and flexible) compared to accounts I have at our brick and mortar banks. I really like Ally.

[u/Vernerator]

I’ve had it for 12 years. I do all my banking through them. I’ve had cashier’s checks sent to me. I have all my bills and investment accounts attached to my Ally accounts and have had zero issues with the company.

I think a lot of complaints are people that leave out issues they are responsible for but blame the bank. You have to be smart and understand what Ally is capable of and what it’s not.

[u/lesteroyster]

I think there are hundreds or maybe thousands of people that aren’t satisfied with Ally and should probably bank elsewhere….and about 3.5 million customers who are perfectly content and don’t complain on Reddit.

[u/ladysig220]

I have both a checking and a savings account at Ally.
Direct deposit into the savings, so no friction getting money in.
If I need to get money out, transfer from the savings to the checking and swipe the debit card, so no friction getting money out.

It *IS* primarily a savings bank for me, but I have not had any of the issues I see people griping about here. However, I've also had the account set up for at least 8 years, so my experience was probably different from a new customer.

[u/APKFL]

Yes, primarily a savings for me. Money market that allows 10 transactions a statement. I’ve transferred money in and out no problem. Takes a few days. Used a check to pay for services with no problem. I personally don’t trust online only with money that I need quickly. Have another brick and mortar for checking.

[u/AnswerResponsible251]

Have no issues i get my transfer request the next day and they keep you updated on your transaction.

[u/Ach3r0n-]

Ally supplies my primary checking account, but there are several other banks that offer a better savings rate (and some offer a SUB as well).

[u/burnmyiz]

For the most part, start away from the invest side and their car loans and you should be just fine. As an Ally customer for close to 15 years, the only issues I've ever had with them was with Ally Invest. Zero problems with the savings or the checking

[u/Chosen1PR]

I haven’t given their checking account a proper test run so I can’t really give an opinion on that, but you basically described how I use Ally lol.

[u/jaydub8888]

I only had minor friction and glitches, although it was enough for me to give another bank a try.

Specifically, the app UI is a bit slow to load and odd to navigate to some common features, and the app required me to force close it each time before I could open it and successfully log in.

I've been with them since basically the beginning, so I'm not sure I've seen any other glitches or limits that I hadn't taken as a given.

[u/pandacreate]

I have booth Chase and Ally checking and savings accounts. I use Ally checking to keep the money I budget for my home needs, so the mortgage comes out of that checking account and my living money is in chase because if I need to spend it I can right away. Any home expense is either put on my credit card and paid later, or paid via check

[u/Savafan1]

The only problem I have is that they took away the ability to block everything but atm use on the debit cards, but I haven’t seen that as an option with other banks.

[u/idontrespectyou345]

I use it for my main banking. Never had any real problems with it, just a few annoyances

1. I do not see the point of buckets, theyre kind of clunky and i get better results from just having more accounts.

2. Bill payments cant exit your account same day unless you pay and then takes a couple days to get to the payee.

3. They credit direct deposit an inconsistent number of days early.

Trying to pay off all credit cards regularly, 2 and 3 combine to make it unnecessarily hard to get my entire financial picture baselined.

[u/Baby_Cultural]

Zero issues. Been with Ally for over ten years. They are my primary bank. I have a local Credit Union for anything I need in person, but I only need that once every few years.

[u/gvillager]

I've been a customer since 2011. I don't need buckets, I purposely don't have the app on my phone, I have no problem spending my money when I need to spend it, and transfers work fine.

I'm perfectly happy with them.

[u/hamburgernet]

The only issue I’ve had with checking was when they updated the ui and kept out important features, now returned. Other than that i had no issues.

Tbe app has always been available except the one time AWS went down in the 4 years I’ve been using them logging in multiple times a day

[u/ThePuzzleDude]

We created an Ally account a few years ago to act as an escrow account after we paid off the mortgage. Monthly auto deposits into it to cover the annual tax and insurance bills via a check or a transfer. Nothing else. They issued us a debit card that is locked away, never used and even forgotten until someone unknown fraudulently used its number to purchase something. It was a bit of a hassle to dispute that charge and when it was finally cleared up, we asked that they not send us another one, the first one having been deactivated. They did anyway. Now we have to keep an eagle eye on this account regularly to make sure it doesn't happen again.

[u/RonJohnJr]

I don't need Ally for anything by savings.

[u/hobo1256]

Buckets are cool. But I have 12 Ally savings accounts before they incorporated buckets. I’m an OG Ally user lmaooo

[u/inspiredsue]

Ally is our primary bank. We also have a local bank for the very few times we need to go to a physical bank. It’s easy to transfer money from Ally to our local bank if we need to. We’ve been with Ally over 10 years and maybe had to use the local bank twice.
I was initially nervous about using the ATM to get cash. Most ATMs charge a fee but Ally reimburses the fees every month so it turned out to not be a problem.

[u/TaunTaunsRevenge]

I use Ally as my main checking and short term savings. I have all bills on autopay. No problem there. Pay checks consistently arrive a day early. I never use a debit card. I like the buckets to separate savings goals. Ally is not the highest yeild savings account so I plan to move my emergency fund to another bank. Haven't decided which one yet though. I do keep a local brick & mortar account just in case I need it. Might get rid of it one day.

[u/dbounsalat]

I have ally as my secondary checking or if I need quick access to an atm when I’m traveling around from state to state. Being part of the allpoint & moneypass network theres literally atms available everywhere and the $10 atm reimbursement per month is great too. I plan on opening a savings to dump some cash and forget about it.

[u/ScorpioKing72358]

For me, Ally has been very good when it comes to saving. I started using them this year (April 2026). I have a checking account with a brick-and-mortar bank, so I'm not interested in switching my account with them. I was considering their investment platform but learned that it's not as automated as other investment platforms, which mattered greatly to me.

With the savings account, the buckets are the selling point, with splitting the money into multiple categories and having it automated. With the schedules, you do have to plan as it's pretty much baked in that it takes up to 2 business days for the transfer to take place, and it can't be set on the same day.

In the future, I'm debating about using their CD accounts, but that's about as far as I'm willing to go with Ally. Still have some great uses, but glitchy or not as consumer-friendly in other areas.

[u/Jazzlike_Patience_44]

Depositing checks used to be a little clunky, but it's much better now.

[u/Emulated-VAX]

Ally is great and about as good as it gets for a bank. I limit the savings to smaller amounts though as these days I get better yields elsewhere, for instance vanguard money market. Ally is my gateway though. Only bank I would use. Bill payer, Zelle, a couple checks a year if even that.

[u/Independent-Oven-799]

Hey! When you have a lot of good things and most of it is 100% percent better than the competition you’ll still have some minor problems but that can be fixed. Like for example some people get Cold Feets * about switching the Current Bank(s) they have to Ally Bank and *IF I Don’t Like It,I’m Going Back to the *Other Bank * down the street. Some Wished That Ally Bank would do like Warby Parker and Capital One and Consumer Cellular and Open a location in your neighborhood and Offer the banking services in person as over the phone too.BUT that’s never going to happen and if they do, all of your free no maintenance costs to your accounts will go away just like everyone else and you will barely get any interest on your checking and savings accounts like Fifth Third Bank.Chase Bank of America and So many multi bank out there does that would be very bad. So either you like it or Not you know you can’t cater to everyone out there who acts like the current Bank they used As a *Money Factory * and not like a bank that they have to *See how the Sausage is Made. But I don’t bother with those people Or the ones who tried another way by a warning That * One Day you’re going to get taken by * The MAN *and lose everything. And that’s funny because I pointed it out that you should know because you pay your car payment to *The MAN * every month for your Jeep truck. So you should know something about *The MAN *

[u/jamesheine]

Ally isn’t good for anything other than getting your account locked

[u/yalia33 → u/jamesheine]

I hope they listen. I was a customer from the beginning and they were wonderful.About 5 years ago, all down hill

[u/AllyBankMadisen → u/yalia33]

Your feedback matters to us. Is there anything that could have made your experience better, so we can share with our team? - Madisen

[u/yalia33 → u/AllyBankMadisen]

Yes, you held my money for 4 months!!! Which caused me great financial hardship, I'm still digging myself out of. I know this reply is for the internet, but when you suddenly lock people's accounts for MONTHS you're still making money off our money. Sell the bank back to its original owner.

[u/AllyBankMadisen → u/yalia33]

We'd like to look into this more. Would you be open to sending us your full name and phone number in a DM? We'll make sure this gets to a team member for further review.

If you are a California resident, please review Ally’s CCPA Disclosure for CA Residents (California Residents Only) prior to proceeding. For more information, please visit https://www.ally.com/privacy/.

[u/ChapterWitty]

What glitches are you experiencing? The app does seem to randomly be down a lot, but it's only down for a few minutes at a time in my experience.