New Quicken.com website feedback

Chris_QPW

If their idea of how to sell your products is to give the customer, the least number of details on what features it has (and of the various levels of "editions") then I think they have nailed this time.

Tom Young

Boy, that web site is about as confusing and non-informative as possible. At first blush there's not even a business product available for "classic" Quicken that's mentioned on the first page, only Deluxe and Premier are presented.

Clearly Quicken (the company) is promoting Simplifi over Quicken (the program). A name change for the company can't be far behind.

splasher

If this is an in-house job, so be it, if they paid someone else to do it, they got ripped off.
The one positive thing I can say about it is we see the people's faces rather than the back of their heads.

jacobs

Boy, that web site is about as confusing and non-informative as possible. At first blush there's not even a business product available for "classic" Quicken that's mentioned on the first page, only Deluxe and Premier are presented.

Well, at least you see Deluxe and Premier. How about the dropdown menu for "Plans & Pricing" which just assumes — without saying — that Deluxe and Premier and Business & Personal are Windows products, and then, oh yeah, there's "For Mac"…

Just "For Mac", with no clue there are also Deluxe, Premier, or Business & Personal (coming soon) levels?! Someone in Quicken's marketing department apparently still thinks it's 20 years ago when Mac users were a small fraction of their user base.

And they apparently think Apple's M1 chip is the latest innovation, based on this prominent headline:

Umm, the M1 chip is now three years old, and the M2 chip came out last year. How about "M1 & M2 processors" or "M-series processors"?

I also am amazed that they seem to not have someone proofread their web pages before posting them, resulting in gems like this on the Business & Personal page:

NotACPA

They're REALLY pushing Simplifi … I wonder why?

Jon

They're REALLY pushing Simplifi … I wonder why?

Bigger potential customer base. Not everyone has a PC or Mac but everyone has a smart phone, especially in the US which is their primary market.

Lower development costs. Quicken has 5 different versions: PC, Mac, iPhone, Android, and Web; Simplifi has only three.

You have fewer syncing issues since the data is all in the cloud. There's no data file to move around, convert, upgrade, get corrupted, or get out of sync with the cloud. All versions of Simplifi are front ends for the same cloud data.

Potentially greater customer satisfaction. With Quicken you have substantially different experiences on the Mac vs PC vs Web/mobile, and you can't easily move between different computers (especially across the PC/Mac boundary). All versions of Simplifi are just front ends for the same cloud service and have (AFAIK) the same functionality.

Personally I still prefer Quicken but I can see why the folks at Quicken would like everyone to move to Simplifi, it would definitely make their lives easier.

Ps56k2

The world is moving away from having a desktop "computer" and more to mobile handheld devices….. smartphones & tablets -
Look at how many folks don't even have a "computer" any more….
I only use my laptop for Quicken, email archiving, TTax, photo editing, and a couple of other minor things….

I ALWAYS prefer to use my iPhone and an APP vs the "website" for the same things…. some don't even exist except as an APP -

Schwab, Chase, Vanguard, Fidelity, Walmart, Jewel, Apple News, FB, X, ESPN, webcams, smart thermostat,
Alexa, Kindle, eBay, AirBnB, Zoom, FlightAware, Flightradar24, Uber, …

I think I tried a free trial of Simplifi when it first came out - but didn't stick with it…. maybe another test ?
Also tried YNAB as our son was looking for a simple online financial planning program - ahhh… that's why I tried Simplifi & YNAB -

Lastly - I'm more focused on the Investments and tracking all my stocks and mutual funds….
I look at the Tax Planner, but mostly my Home Page of my investments and use OSU to keep the quotes up to date.
I use the Calendar to track when to pay bills - used to use the Chase Bill Pay link - but now have to do that manually.
Now just the Quicken Manual Bill Pay Reminders along with the Quicken Calendar - guessing Simplifi has none of this stuff -

I DON'T use any of the "budgeting" and "spending" stuff - but do review reports - Banking / Spending / Itemized Category -
SO…. if your target is the Budget, Spending, etc - then Simplifi and YNAB (as name implies) are your target products & audience.
If not - then Quicken Classic is your dashboard…. for now -

Chris_QPW

@Tom Young said:

Clearly Quicken (the company) is promoting Simplifi over Quicken (the program). A name change for the company can't be far behind.

Here is something that surprised me on the website:

The last I heard the Quicken trademark was owned by Intuit, I guess they decided to sell it and Quicken Inc either wouldn't pay them enough or wasn't interested in enough. Why Rocket Mortgage would want it is another mystery.

Chris_QPW

@Ps56k2 said:

I think I tried a free trial of Simplifi when it first came out - but didn't stick with it…. maybe another test ?

One thing that I find extremely strange about the Simplifi development that I can see (as a non-customer) is that basically they put out this simple product and "stopped". I see no major changes in since the day they introduced it.

Of, course I could be missing something because another thing they have never done is actually create a website that shows all of its features. It has always been just like this new website. Hit only the very top features like "Has budget." and no other details about it. Click on the Simpifi "plan" and see how much you can really tell about the product or its FAQs.

jacobs

@Chris_QPW Rocket Mortgage had the trademark on the Quicken name because Rocket Mortgage used to be… Quicken Loans. That name change took place in 2021. That company was originally founded as Rock Financial, a private company founded in the 1980s which became a public company, and was then purchased by Intuit at the turn of the century and renamed Quicken Loans. A short three years later, the founder of the company bought it back from Intuit. [EDIT: Removed incorrect sentence about history.] (Rocket Mortgage now has 26,000 employees and $5.5 billion in annual revenues; Quicken, Inc. has about 200 employees and about $40 million in annual revenue!)

(Editing to add one more nugget of info I just came across while checking my facts on what I posted above: When Intuit bought Rock Financial from founder Dan Gilbert, Intuit paid $532 million for the company. When Gilbert led a small group of investors to buy the company back from Intuit, they bought it for $64 million. Oops! Another case of Intuit mismanaging a company it operated. Gilbert is estimated to have a personal net worth of $17 billion, and owns the Cleveland Cavaliers, the team's home at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse, several minor league sports teams, and dozens of other companies; he is still the majority owner of Rocket Mortgage.)

Chris_QPW

@jacobs That isn't exactly how I understood the history of the trademark. As I understood it, Intuit only licensed the trademark to Rocket Mortgage, they retained control of it. Up until seeing this on the Quicken.com website it has always been Intuit as the trademark holder, with Quicken Inc and Rocket Morgage using it under a license.

I guess what really surprised me about this is that Rocket Mortgage would want the trademark because I thought they were dropping the "Quicken Loans", but I just checked and guess they are still using that in advertising, so it makes sense when given the chance they would take control of it.

Rocket J Squirrel

If memory serves (ha), for a while it said Quicken was registered to Intuit. Intuit probably didn't want it any more and decided to sell it to Rocket and make a few bucks off the sale. It's said Rocket on the site (including at the bottom of this page) for quite a while now.

jacobs

I guess what really surprised me about this is that Rocket Mortgage would want the trademark because I thought they were dropping the "Quicken Loans"

The company was run as Quicken Loans from 2000 when Intuit bought it until 2003 when it became independent, and on until 2021 when it changed its name to Rocket Loans. But I'm sure many people still know it or think of it as Quicken Loans.

But you're correct that Intuit still held the Quicken name and licensed it to Rocket Mortgage (d/b/a Quicken Loans) until late May 2022. I just did a web archive search of the Quicken Loans website, and the footnote "'Quicken Loans' is a registered service mark of Intuit Inc., used under license" was there as of May 23, 2022, and had changed to "Quicken Loans is a registered service mark of Rocket Mortgage, LLC" as of May 29, 2022. In a legal filing when Rocket Mortgage became a public company again in 2020, it was noted: "Quicken Loans continues to license the Quicken name and trademark from Intuit under a perpetual 'royalty-bearing' agreement." So maybe they were just tired of paying Intuit, and since Intuit had divested itself of Quicken, they agreed to sell the trademark to Rocket Mortgage. Quicken Inc's website changed the footnote about the ownership of the trademark around the same time.

Chris_QPW

Sort of on the same subject. I'm sure anyone that actually knows isn't talking, but it would be really interesting to see what the breakdown of renew is between Quicken and Simplifi.

jacobs

I can't remember exactly what I saw a little while back, but I'm sure someone from Quicken said somewhere that the majority of revenue still comes from the desktop products. I don't know if that's 60/40 or 70/30 or 80/20. But it makes sense — Simplifi is only a few years old, and lacks the depth of features in the desktop products. How the features and the revenues may shift in the future is something we'll see over time.

That said, I wouldn't expect to see the company change names; they've just done the rebranding to put Quicken Simplifi and Quicken Classic on somewhat equal terms. And the rebranding makes it easier for them to launch additional add-on or complimentary products using the Quicken name over time to broaden their revenue base.