Is Quicken Canada really a subscription product? Buyer beware

Peculiar_Investor

Potential Quicken Canada subscribers need to do some advanced research before buying a subscription.

Let me explain why.

On the https://www.quicken.com/canada/compare page, the first Frequently Asked Question is:

Is Quicken a subscription product?

Yes, Quicken is now a subscription, called a Quicken membership. We’ve moved to this model to ensure that all of our customers are on the latest, greatest version of Quicken. Rather than wait for an annual upgrade to provide improvements and fixes, we now have regular releases throughout the membership term, creating a better experience for our customers.

Sadly this longtime Canadian Quicken user, since the MS-DOS days finds this notion a bit ridiculous and factually incorrect.

Since my last subscription renewal in June 2021 there have NO updates. The jury is still out on whether I'll get any updates this subscription year. Check out https://www.quicken.com/support/quicken-windows-release-notes#section-1, the last update shown is Release R33.7 (Canada Versions, May 2021).

As a Quicken Canada user it is increasing frustrating to see that Quicken US users can look forward to the promised regular releases throughout the membership term, it certainly seems like Quicken Canada users must wait for an annual update.

Please don't get me wrong, I'm a longtime user and big time fan of this product.

I just wish Quicken would live up to their end of the bargain with regards to regular releases throughout the membership term for Quicken Canada subscribers.

Chris_QPW

It isn't exactly "annual", but they have certainly dropped off on the updates to the Canadian version in the last year.  I might add though that a lot of the updates on the US side don't apply to the Canadian version like the changes for Schwab changing from Direct Connect to Express Web Connect +.  And there has been a LOT of pain for the US customers being pretty much "beta" and even "alpha" testers of some of these patches.  Lots of patches aren't always a good sign.  If you see patches coming out at a rate of more than one a month you can probably read that as trying to fix problems that the other patches caused.

With all that said, I agree that Quicken Inc should do a better job of keeping Quicken Windows Canadian up to date.

jacobs

@Chris_QPW The original poster said there have been no Quicken Canada releases since renewing their subscription 8 months ago in June 2021. This list you posted seems to confirm this: nothing since May 2021. That does seem like an incredibly long time between updates. 

I'm a Mac user, and on the Mac side, there isn't a separate product for Canada, just preference settings in the single Quicken Mac application — so Quicken Mac Canadian users get all the same updates as US users. 

Chris_QPW

jacobs said:

I'm a Mac user, and on the Mac side, there isn't a separate product for Canada, just preference settings in the single Quicken Mac application — so Quicken Mac Canadian users get all the same updates as US users. 

Yes, I think it was one of the biggest mistakes in the history of Quicken that they branched off the Quicken Windows Canadian version many years ago.  I hope the Quicken Mac developers learned the lesson from that mistake and won't repeat it for you guys.

I might add that this has have "extra penalties" that really shouldn't exist.  Quicken Windows US and Quicken Windows Canadian use different lists for what financial institutions they can download, pretty much separating them between the US and Canadian only (for the given product) financial institutions.

For years Intuit claimed this was because of Canadian laws, but clearly since Quicken Mac has them combined this isn't really the case.