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Has FreshBooks Forced Intuit to Make Quickbooks Free?
As online invoicing tools including FreshBooks continue to rise, are they putting pressure on Intuit’s (INTU) product lineup including Quickbooks and Quicken?
Quickbooks began offering "Quickbooks Simple Start" about three years ago and their 2008 version has just been released. Amazon sells the product for $79 which includes a plus pack (the plus is some stationary). Over the past couple of weeks, Intuit has begun to offer the product completely free as a download on the Web site. The Simple Start version is crippled compared to the $179 regular Quickbooks version but it’s enough for the small business owner to use for invoicing and basic record keeping.
The downloadable version matches identically what you can purchase and there are no ads or any notices to upgrade. If this is the case, why did Intuit offer it for free? It’s not a trial version either!
So please share your thoughts, could it be because of the growth of online invoicing and financial management tools?
Allen, I have to disagree though I really wish it were true. I still have had to use both Quickbooks and Freshbooks together. Freshbooks still does not do actual bookkeeping and manage multiple accounts like Quickbooks.
I’ve yet to find a decent web-based replacement for Quickbooks, but instead I still have to fire up Parallels on my Mac and run it.
From what I saw, the Simple Start product was much less features than the regular version. I’m inclined to think the objective was to introduce more small business Quickbooks and then up-sell them on the higher versions or more likely all the other services (including cc processing) they provide.