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It's a massive price hike for people like me that are frugal with software purchases. I just checked and I paid $171 CAD for QuickBooks Desktop Pro 2018 becaus
by donmcronald 5y ago
It's a massive price hike for people like me that are frugal with software purchases. I just checked and I paid $171 CAD for QuickBooks Desktop Pro 2018 because I bought it on sale. The same subscription version is $199, which I assume is USD, so ~$250 CAD per year.
Now I don't have a PHD in math or anything, but $1250 over 5 years vs $171 for a perpetual license that I estimate should last me to the 5 year mark is a bit of a difference.
There won't be any more sales and everyone knows what happens next. They'll start charging addon pricing for features or charging "per something" for things where they can and before you know it the cost of your bookkeeping software will be getting married to your revenue in some way. They'll push until they're getting a cut of all your revenue.
I work with a lot of small businesses. They're not dumb. They know they're getting completely screwed by stuff like this, but there's nothing they can do about it. It's abusive, anti-competitive behavior and Intuit should be on the list of companies that needs to be scrutinized by the government.
Edit: Re-reading the fine print, it's $199 for the first year then it jumps to $299, so it's actually ~$1770 CAD over 5 year. That's a 10x price increase for me. TEN TIMES!!
- brighton36 5y agoSwitch to plaintextaccounting.org. See my other comment on this. I highly doubt you need Quickbooks.
- ilamont 5y agoOh, and they will probably jack up your subscription price, too, if my experience with Quickbooks Online in the states is anything to go by. Here's the message I received after paying US$425/year for a few years: Your QuickBooks Online Plus subscription will increase to $755 per year, plus tax where applicable on your next billing date on or after December 1, 2019 That's a 78% increase in the annual subscription price. After getting this message and consulting with my accountant, I decided to DOWNGRADE the account to QBO Essentials, which is about US$310/year. I would dump Intuit and its software permanently if I could. They are parasites on small businesses and individuals who get tricked into paying for their tax software.
- wolverine876 5y ago> It's abusive, anti-competitive behavior I think it's abusive, but I don't see how it's illegal or anti-competitive. Why can't businesses switch to someone else? I know migration is not easy, but that's true of almost any application.
- donmcronald 5y agoYou're right. I worded it poorly. What I really meant is that it's the kind of behavior you can get away with when there's no competition. IE: A monopoly. I've seen lots of the alternatives mentioned here, but Intuit has entrenched themselves so deeply in the accounting industry that no one else can compete reasonably. If someone does manage to start competing it'll end up being more of a duopoly / oligopoly than real competition. No one with the means to compete will forgo the super fat profit margins that Intuit's establishing here.
- jhawk28 5y agoHigher prices are not anti-competitive. If anything, it encourages competition because it is an incentive for someone else to come in.
- travisporter 5y ago"IE: A monopoly" has two meanings! Is this similar to the Word/Excel monopoly? There are many open source alternatives that do 90-95%, but still very high demand for it