Quicken Classic longevity

WisdomAndExperience

In a now closed thread, there was a lot of discussion about what that recent renaming of the desktop version of Quicken to Quicken Classic, including speculation about Quicken Classic entering a (as yet undetermined) "end of life" spiral.

Having used desktop software since PC's first came out, Quicken Classic, like all desktop products (WordPerfect for DOS anyone?), once the revenue stream becomes less than the cost to maintain it, Quicken Classic will be "sunsetted" (love how the marketing folks come up with synonyms for discontinued). That might happen in a year or ten years. Rest assured the moderator of this forum is being truthful about not know about when Quicken Classic will become unsupported. For me it's not a matter of if, but when Quicken Classic will become unsupported. That being said, I'm not going to lose sleep about it.

I've used Quicken since 1992 and have never reduced the size of my QDF file. I can run reports as far back as 1992 without a second thought. A large SSD, 16GB of RAM, and 8 cores of i7 CPU helps quite a bit.

As for the replacement, which may or may not be Quicken Simplify, as long as I can port my QDF file to the cloud (or whatever replaces Quicken Classic) and not lose anything (data and functionality), I'll consider it.

Chris_QPW

Someday Quicken Classic may be "sunsetted", but that days isn't anywhere near now. Being a private company we can't know for sure the percentage of users in each, but my guess would be that Quicken Simplifi is less than 1/3 of their revenue.

As the CEO said the development groups for it are larger than ever, and I'm betting larger by far than the Quicken Simplifi group. Simplifi just hasn't turned out to be any kind of replacement for Quicken. It is a completely different market.

BTW did anyone notice that the CEO said that he expects to be using Quicken (desktop/classic) until he dies. Either he thinks he is going to die soon, or he has no plans to get rid of it.

badagliacca

From a maintenance standpoint, desktop Quicken, however it is named, has long been difficult to support for a very long time. This is the nature of modestly complex software. I am not enthusiastic to convert to online software that requires that the QDF file containing the most intimate details of my financial life to be online. If its online, it can be hacked. Unfortunately, I can find no adequate online alternatives to desktop Quicken. I suppose I will continue to live with relatively constant, sometimes long-to-repair, sometimes never repaired hiccups .

Chris_QPW

And that is the basic problem in a nutshell, both for the users and for Quicken Inc.

Even Quicken Inc doesn't have anything else (cloud based or otherwise) close in feature set to what is in Quicken Windows (and second place goes to Quicken Mac). This isn't "by accident". Quicken Mac's rewrite is a perfect example of what creating a program with such a large feature set. We are talking many years of development, and for a market that may not be worth it.

Megel

I'm fairly certain that renaming it to 'Classic' isn't a positive development. Why has Quicken been labeled as 'Quicken Classic' now? Are there intentions to scale back Quicken and introduce a 'Quicken Pro' version with additional features at a different subscription price?

MHSwizzleStick

In my opinion, Quicken had two products: Quicken and Simplify. They wanted people to be aware that Simplify was a Quicken product, so they renamed it Quicken Simplify. This might have caused confusion with the name of the desktop product, so they renamed it Quicken Classic. I don't see any reason to read more into it than that.

Fred Fauth

I'm a little late to the party and of course do not work for Quicken. However, since I have done some product management in the past… If you asked me why they changed Quicken → Quicken Classic, it is to be able to use the "Quicken" name for a new product. They may be setting up for rebranding Simplifi to "Quicken Online" and then ultimately creating a path for those who want to to move from QC→QO available. Then, whether classic stays around really depends on how many people move over.

The reality is maintaining two products that have so much overlapping functionality isn't great for the community, feature-wise, or for Quicken, profit-wise. It would be better to have all the subscription dollars fueling the same code base. Ultimately, it all has to move online (In my opinion, at least) to stay competitive and to allow for more efficient upgrades and cross platform compatibility.

Chris_QPW

@Fred Fauth said:

It would be better to have all the subscription dollars fueling the same code base. Ultimately, it all has to move online (In my opinion, at least) to stay competitive and to allow for more efficient upgrades and cross platform compatibility.

In my opinion and from what I have seen that can't happen because the two different products have two very different use cases.

One of the things what surprised me about the Simpilfi product was it came out as a simple product, and whereas I thought they would then quickly add more advanced features they have not. And then something hit me recently. Two of the things would think (as a Quicken user) would be fundamental, reports and printing don't make that much sense for a person that is doing all their finances on their phone (no printer in the first place, and no real reason to save a snapshot of what they have to a file).

What would be high priority for a Quicken users, is a useless feature to someone that only uses a phone.

I can't see how these two will ever merge.

jacobs

I agree with @Chris_QPW: the products are different and aim for different users. There are many Quicken Classic users who would never agree to have all their data in the cloud; many Quicken Simplifi users expect to have all their data in the cloud and accessible on any device at any time. Simplifi was designed to reach new users and expand their user base and revenues. There is currently no path to migrate data from Quicken Classic to Quicken Simplifi, and many longtime Quicken Classic users wouldn't be satisfied with all the functionality they would lose if they moved to Simplifi.

Obviously we don't know the company's long-term plans, but from my seat as a Quicken Mac user, I believe that they are fully invested in continuing to develop the desktop program for the foreseeable future. Over 10 or more years, will desktop users decline, and will Quicken add features to Simplifi to make it usable for longtime desktop users? It's possible, but if that ever happens, it's a long way off. One example: right now, the Quicken Mac team is building the first-ever Business & Personal version for the Mac; they wouldn't be sinking time and resources into that if they believed the desktop products had a short lifespan.