Quicken's New Subscription Model - Your Quicken Data Will Be Read-Only If You Don't Pay Up

Time for me to post this list of 'alternatives' that I maintain for potential future use....

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AceMoney

GnuCash platform portability (Windows, Linux, and OS X) open source (build and patch if necessary) price (free) jGnash

KMyMoney

platform portability (Windows, Linux, and OS X) open source (build and patch if necessary) price (free) Mint

MoneyDance

MoneySpire 2017 is supposedly much better, although import problems still exist MoneyWiz

PocketMoney

NetStock:

Not a Quicken alternative. The program may be used to replace or supplement Quicken quote fetching functionality.

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Not what I said at all. I said I now have a choice. If it changed to subscription only and the price wasn't commensurate with my level of use. I'd find something else. I only use Quicken for checking and credit cards. I have no need of other services like wealth tracking or portfolio management, so it's value to me is less than to someone who uses those features.

Doesn'tyour brokerage account do the for you? I can log onto mine and see everything for today on one pafe and summary of current account status on another. Two clicks and done.

Same here. I have downloaded hundreds of transactions a week for more than 10 years. Other that the occasional FI connection issue and duplicate transactions, I've never had a significant problems. Would hate to do that manually.

Yes, definitely agree to that. I download daily from 15 accounts split between Banks, Credit Cards and Investing. It would be impossible to do that manually.

Office Depot is advertising a 2-year subscription for Quicken 2018 Premier for $119.99.

I only find Quicken 2017 listed on Office Depot.

Premier for $119.99.

Same with Amazon, but they have a book on Quicken 2018: "Quicken 2018 for Windows: The Official Guide."

What a douchebag you sound like.

On Sunday, February 12, 2017 at 2:53:52 PM UTC-5, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote :

is for 1 year and the price point appears to be approximately 2.5 times wh at the current year versions sell for.

read-only if you fail to renew the subscription.

f Quicken 2017 and, if nothing changes between now and the roll out of Quic ken 2018, it will likely be the model for US versions of Quicken.

er Questions here:

pens if your subscription expires:

, and export all of your financial data. You will never be blocked from acc essing your financial history. However, Quicken will switch to a reduced fu nctionality mode. In this mode, some features may be limited or unavailabl e. For example: ?You can open existing data files and see all your existing data

uding attachments.

stock quotes, online bill pay, bill linking, credit score, or mobile sync.

uld reverse its decision to change to a subscription that makes the user's data read-only if they stop paying, with a lengthy discussion on the topic. That discussion has been closed to further comments, but you can still vot e for the suggestion. Note - you will need to register for the forum to vot e.

ontact Quicken Inc CEO Eric Dunn, you can find the corporate headquarters a ddress and phone number here:

I have not been very enthusiastic about Quicken 2017, however I have looked at alternatives and there is really nothing out there that works as well a s Quicken. I have been a user since 1991. As to what price will Quicken 201

8 will be, I believe we will just have to wait and see. You guys can argue until the cows come home. I would like a model that offers support if I nee d it, but to be completely trueful, alot of their inovations they have adde d over the years I ignore. I use Quicken in a way I feels gives me most con trol over my monthly expenses. I hope they stay in business and come up wit h a business model that will keep them in business. The guys that run Quick en now are the ones that ran Quicken before all the problems came the last few years, so maybe there is hope.

I've been with Quicken, then MS Money, then back to Quicken, for at least 1

0 years, probably 15. I'm recently retired, and I receive requests from the companies whose perpetual software packages I used to update as needed for monthly/annual subscriptions. There's Adobe, $600 a year; or Adobe Lightro om for $120 a year; plus MS Office for $100 a year; and now Quicken for $50 - $100 a year; plus miscellaneous items like backup software, antivirus, a ntimalware, etc. I simply can't afford the equivalent of one month's SS inc ome out of each year to pay for these subscriptions. I rolled back my Adobe CC Creative Suite to the last perpetual copy I had (CS5.5) and I now live within the parameters of what that software can do; I'm sticking with my pe rpetual license of Office 2015; I'm transitioning my photo collection from Lightroom to ACDSee Ultimate (though they're now testing a subscription mod el as an option). I thought the previous model of a perpetual license that lost the abil ity for online updates after two years was fair. But the Quicken pricing fo r my current Business version is as much as the entire Microsoft Office Sui te that includes Word, Excel, Access, Publisher, Outlook, 1TB of storage, a nd for 5 individuals. So Quicken's price for one product is way overpriced by comparison. I suppose it's in line with Adobe pricing, for anyone who do esn't think their pricing is predatory. So I think my plan will be to stick with Quicken 2015 and enter my tra nsactions manually (or download from each site using whatever file formats they offer). If Quicken 2017 still offers 2 years' of data I might try to g et a copy of that and extend Quicken's lifetime another two years before go ing the manual entry route or going to another solution (Excel, etc.). Perhaps the younger generation doesn't mind having a long list of mont hly subscription fees for software, but that kind of nickel-and-diming (dol laring-and-hundred-dollaring) just smacks to me of more corporate monopolie s running amok. I can't afford the cost of admission of any longer, so for my expected 20-year additional lifespan all these companies have lost a cus tomer. But of course that's legitimately their choice and legitimately my c hoice. I suspect this new subscription model is the better way of going out of business than offering perpetual software, but time will tell. (Anyone else remember when software hadn't invented the tag perpetual because ALL of it was perpetual? It's a Brave New World, folks.)

I have noticed two main themes in this thread.

The first concerned the "fairness" of a subscription model. While I agree with the people that say this is a free market issue, part of the free-mark et equation is whether or not customers are treated fairly. I reject the n otion that all economic transaction should be based on getting the most ben eficial financial outcome. As a consultant, I was not determining my price on what would maximize income but was a reasonable amount, for both me and my clients. That may or may not be a good long-term business model, but r egardless, for me it is a better business model (and if you cannot make mon ey that way, find another business).

I reject the notion of "renting" software. Whether we are talking software or widgets, you make a product and I buy it. If it is a product where I n o longer need your services to use the product, we are done. It is not fai r to force me to "marry" you to continue to use that product.

The second theme mentioned is the lack of alternatives to Quicken. It is n ot true there are none. Gnucash is very comparable. It is different and t ook me a number of months to get used to. It is better in some ways and wo rse in others. The major disadvantage is it is far more difficult and limit ed in its ability to download transactions. But i am very glad I switched t o it.

The younger generation uses "free" solutions like Mint.

Me, I will stick with Quicken, provided my financial data stays private (unlike Mint). Yes the price went way up this year but Quicken still works for me.

But I am not of the younger generation. My priorities are different.

I also have a strong preference for buying softare vs renting. It seems to me that Quicken 2018 is not quite a rental. For all versions except Starter, you can keep using the software after your subscription expires, minus the online features. I am upgrading this week, and I will try to confirm this after I install.

Gnucash is also my second choice after Quicken. If Quicken does something really nasty, such as vacuuming up my financial data, then I too will make the switch. But downloading is a very major problem. My best defense against electronic theft is my habit of downloading transactions from all of my banks, brokerages, etc. every 24 hours. I am not going to stop. When I retire, perhaps I will be willing to do that chore manually. But not now.

The problem for the creator of said product is that there is a very real cost to providing bug fixes and reacting to changes in the operating environment (ie OS updates). Building "forever support" into the up front price isn't economically viable.

Note that I'm not talking feature updates. The problem is that with a mature product like Quicken, you can't come up with enough reasonable feature updates to provide enough sales revenue to keep the business going.

Then throw in the fact that people who use a desktop/laptop computer for financial management are rapidly evaporating, and you are really stuck. I'm hopeful that the new Quicken company will survive, but I'm not optimistic.

Guess I'd best dig up my last copy of Managing Your Money. Now where did that 5

1/4 inch floppy go?

Quicken is now RANSOMEWARE, PAY OR LOSE FUNCTIONALITY! On top of that their current wait times are 21 minutes for chat, 41 minutes for phone = PAY OR NOT, POOR SUPPORT! Just hoping there will soon be a viable competitor to break this monopoly.

NEVER!

#resist

a user is supposed to pay for bug fixes? They already paid for what was supposed to be a bug free product.

On Sunday, February 12, 2017 at 1:53:52 PM UTC-6, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote :

is for 1 year and the price point appears to be approximately 2.5 times wh at the current year versions sell for.

read-only if you fail to renew the subscription.

f Quicken 2017 and, if nothing changes between now and the roll out of Quic ken 2018, it will likely be the model for US versions of Quicken.

er Questions here:

pens if your subscription expires:

, and export all of your financial data. You will never be blocked from acc essing your financial history. However, Quicken will switch to a reduced fu nctionality mode. In this mode, some features may be limited or unavailabl e. For example: ?You can open existing data files and see all your existing data

uding attachments.

stock quotes, online bill pay, bill linking, credit score, or mobile sync.

uld reverse its decision to change to a subscription that makes the user's data read-only if they stop paying, with a lengthy discussion on the topic. That discussion has been closed to further comments, but you can still vot e for the suggestion. Note - you will need to register for the forum to vot e.

ontact Quicken Inc CEO Eric Dunn, you can find the corporate headquarters a ddress and phone number here:

I have been a user of quicken for the last 26 years. But to have my arm twisted to pay more every year weather I want to or not this is really bad customer services. I admit that I use a limited features of quicken where I only sync with my banks and credit cards to view future bills. Not worth commiting $69 annual ly. I will have to depend on my bank "Profile" service to aggregate data for ot her institution. Many people have survived without quicken and I will have to do that and abandon quicken. I will not be a vendor hostage.