Intuit stopped selling Desktop. Forced 20-year customers to subscription.
On September 30, 2024, Intuit officially discontinued the sale of QuickBooks Desktop perpetual licenses for Pro, Premier, and Mac editions. For over 20 years, small businesses could buy QuickBooks Desktop for approximately $250 one-time and own it outright. That option is gone. New customers can only subscribe to QuickBooks Online starting at $38/month ($456/year), or QuickBooks Desktop Plus subscription at $549-$689/year.
Existing Desktop users weren't spared either. Those on the Desktop Plus subscription have faced 49-54% annual price increases since 2020. Intuit's strategy is transparent: make the desktop product increasingly expensive and inconvenient until users capitulate to QuickBooks Online. Support for older perpetual license versions is being sunset, bank feeds are being cut off, and security updates are ending. The message is clear: subscribe or lose functionality.
This is the fourth major change Intuit has made to QuickBooks Desktop since 2020, each one pushing users closer to subscriptions. For a business that used to pay $250 once every 3-4 years, the new math is brutal: $689/year with annual increases means $2,067+ over three years — compared to $250 total under the old model. Intuit isn't selling software anymore. They're renting access to your own business data, and raising the rent every year.
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