Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Quicken has generally been a decent product. The price was low enough that I would just not use the buggy features (many of which I wasn't interested in anyway). It is pretty effective at tracking expenses...but, garbage in, garbage out. If you don't take the time to put EVERYTHING in (which can be very time consuming), then you are still tracking some info in your head or on paper. Well....now they have introduced a subscription model. Worst. Idea. Ever. There is an entire Quicken user community that exists to help people figure out how to fix problems with their accounts on quicken. That community has come alive with activity following the release of each new version because of the number of bugs that make it through their internal troubleshooting processes. About a month after release, a patch is pushed that fixes most of these problems. Smart customers have waited for this flail to happen before installing the new version, thus minimizing the pain of the new-release bugs. With this new version, no one will be able to avoid the flail that comes with major updates. Quicken will just blast out an update that will break everyone's software and everyone will have dysfunctional software until the patch gets pushed. At least the old way, patient customers could stick with an older version that worked properly until the new version worked properly. I see this as Quicken taking the Microsoft approach to software development - "Send out any old thing and let the user community let us know what we screwed up on. They don't have any other options, so we can't possibly scare them off. And, let's charge them more in the process." I also used to buy Quicken upgrades when they were on sale....once every 3-5 years. With the new subscription approach, instead of paying $25-30 for three years worth of functionality (on sale), they want us to pay about that much for one year of functionality (also on sale). That is at least TRIPLE the price. I used to grudgingly buy updated software (because there was never any NEW useful functionality being added...I was only paying to be able to continue the automated downloading). Bottom line - the combination of the new subscription service and the fact that updates have never resulted in a smooth transition, except for those who choose not to implement the updates until after bugs have been worked out, make Quicken 2018 and beyond NOT worth the purchase. If they revert back to their previous approach, I may think about using it again......if I haven't gotten used to the product I eventually change to.