Starting today, Quicken Online (review) will be free for all customers. Quicken Online is the web-based financial software that replaces many of the features of the desktop versions of Quicken and competes with Mint (review), Geezeo, and several more emerging web applications.
Until now, customers who wished to use Quicken Online were required to pay a monthly fee. I mentioned in my initial review in December 2007, “For software I will likely not use often [because I prefer the full-featured desktop software], for me it will come down to price. $2.99 per month is actually a very competitive price for an online service, but the other offerings are currently free (though full of advertising).”
The fee elimination will allow Quicken Online to compete with other free web-based offerings. If you’d rather work with the desktop software, as I do, you can find discounts on the 2009 versions of Quicken here.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
All I can say is about time! The only thing I really didn’t like about Quicken was the monthly fee. Felt stupid to pay money to save money.
The Quicken Online thing makes me nervous. Sure they have security in place, but no online resource is every completely safe no matter how hard you try. I much prefer keeping my personal financial info on my desktop, and I say this as a software developer myself.
As far as free financial planning software is concerned, I prefer voyant (http://www.planwithvoyant.com). I wonder if Microsoft Money will follow Quicken’s lead and drop the fee (http://www.microsoft.com/money/order.aspx).
How much safer is your information on your personal desktop versus this online service assuming you have it connected to the internet? There is always some risk involved I agree.
I have to agree with Brian. If your desktop is connected to the Internet, perhaps downloading bank statements, stock updates, etc, that information is also quite at risk.
However, I will admit that the Quicken website is likely to be more of a target for identity/money thieves than a typical desktop.
Whatever happened to the online site that your desktop would load up to during an “update?” I had to uncheck it during my regular updates because it wasn’t connecting and I was getting error messages that the link wasn’t open. Did they close that?