Quicken Mac (or PC) Alternatives

Posted by Adam Gomez

So you’re a Quicken addict (like me), you use a Mac, and now you’re worried about how to keep that addiction rolling when Mac OS X Lion kills Quicken 2007. What to do? We’ve already talked at length about running the windows version in a virtual machine, waiting for Intuit to (hopefully) update or even running 10.6 in a virtual machine (if it ends up being allowed).

But what if you want to just make a clean break? What are your options? Below, I’ve rounded up ten desktop alternatives as well as five online alternatives. Note that a number of these are also Windows-friendly, so if you’re a PC user and are looking to ditch Quicken, you might want to check out this list.

Not surprisingly, the various options have different feature sets and capabilities, and I haven’t had an opportunity to test them out myself. My current plan is to start with iBank to see if it’s a suitable Quicken replacement and, if necessary, move on from there. I will, of course, report back on my experiences in a future post.

Desktop software

First up… Desktop solutions. This is a mix of commercial, shareware, and open source options. I’ve listed them alphabetically to avoid any favoritism.

AceMoney (link) – Lite version for free, or $30.00 with 30 day trial
Buddi (link) – Free!
GnuCash (link) – Free!
iBank (link) – 30 day free trial, $59.99 to buy
MoneyDance (link) – Free trial (limited to 100 transactions), $49.99 to buy
Jumsoft Money (link) – 15 day free trial, $18.99 to buy
KMyMoney (link) – Free! (but complex to install)
Quicken Essentials for Mac (link) – No trial, $49.99 to buy ($39.99 on Amazon)
SEE Finance (link) – Free trial, $29.99 to buy
You Need a Budget (link) – Free seven day trial, $59.95 to buy

Wow. Ten options. I’m sure you could find even more with a bit of looking. As noted above, I’ll start my search for a replacement by testing out iBank. Hopefully that’s as far as I’ll have to go. The one thing I know for certain is that I won’t be using the overly-simplistic Quicken Essentials…

Update – Reader Suggestions:

Moneywell (link) – Free trial (limited to 200 transactions), $49.99 to buy
Checkbook (link) – Free trial, $14.95 to buy (or $19.95 for Pro version)

Online options

Next up… A handful of online options, most of which are free:

Buxfer (link) – Free!
Mint.com (link) – Free!
MoneyTrackin’ (link) – Free!
Mvelopes (link) – Free 14 day trial, starts at $39.60/quarter
Yodlee Money Center (link) – Free!

The primary downside with most of the online options is that you’ll lose your historical data. Mvelopes actually allows you to import your old Quicken data for archival purposes, and you can run reports and search it, but you can’t otherwise interact with the data.

Roll your own solution

And, of course, you could always roll your own solution using an Excel, OpenOffice, or Google spreadsheet. This isn’t particularly easy to do if you want any sort of complexity, but it offers maximal flexibility.

If you’ve tried any of these options, please share your thoughts in the comments. Likewise, if you have any other suggestions, please share them in the comments.