Quicken Online only became free (used to be $3/m) when Mint came into picture so I'm worried that they might start charging. Mint is great but they have TONS of issues to fix before I'd consider paying for it.

Hmm... I mean, if they leave it the same as it stands then so be it...

My guess? They'll start charging for it, and everyone will promptly flee to the next best service.

As long as they don't break it to a point of people not wanting to use it anymore, then I'm for it. They can deploy their resources into adding more banks/ financial institutions and keep making it desirable for more people to use.

Two fail too big?

I always had a funny feeling about giving mint access to my financial life. Maybe now that it's part of Intuit..... naw. I think I'll just stick with dealing directly with my banks and credit unions.

Blerg. I love Mint but I don't want to have to pay for it. My favorite feature is just being able to see all my finances at once and see exactly how much money I have minus debts. While less convenient, I'd use a calculator for that before paying an online service for it.

Intuit Will Buy Mint.com For Small Mint

There, fixed it for ya...

Intuit also makes TurboTax, so I wonder if that will be integrated as well.

Wesabe.com

@Laura Northrup: I dunno. Quicken Online - the free version at least, if there is any other - does not integrate to TT to the best of my knowledge.

Unlikely that Mint would get it before QO.

@Oranges w/ Cheese with a BRAND NEW CAR!: Buxfer.com

Not gonna pay for it...if they do, I'm out.

Say good-bye to your privacy.

I use mint.com because it's free and shiny, I wouldn't pay for it since a spreadsheet accomplishes the same thing and it's more secure. I see very little value added to my "financial life" because of mint.com.

Intuit is a terrible company, with a lot of marketshare. I have no doubt mint.com will crumble.

If the users arent smart enough to bail just by the announcement, they will leave the *minute* they start to mess with mint.com. it works so well because its /not/ ran like they run things.

I was just looking at alternatives to Quicken today, because I can't stand dealing with Intuit any more. I'm glad I didn't invest any time yet in setting up an account at mint.com.

Terrible news. I won't pay a dime for Mint.com, and Intuit turns everything it touches to crap.

@Laura Northrup: If so, and if it does it well, that's the part I'd consider paying for. Mint is great as a free service, but not if Intuit buys it and decides to start charging.

@georgi55: I'm cool so long as it stays free. And maybe they'll finally get around to adding my credit union.

Ugh. This is a sad day. Mint has made my personal finances infinitely more organized.

The only question is which will happen first: will Quicken screw up the product, or start charging for it?

I've not even logged into my Mint account in a long time. Since ING has been giving mint so much grief it's just not that useful to me.

I guess I'll go back to using GNUcash.

Mint.com, you were great while you lasted :( I'll be removing my account now. Intuit, blech!

I am not cool with this. Buying up your competitor doesn't lead to better products. This is competition killing. Instead of offering something better, they're purchasing the competition so you have less to choose from. I don't care if they keep the same names! This shit kills the market. Should Oracle have bought Sun? No. Should Microsoft buy Citrix? No.

Quit buying up the competition and compete! If you can afford to buy the competition, you can afford to improve your product and services. YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!

moneycenter.yodlee.com

I've been using them for a long time (before Mint.com). Maybe not as pretty as Mint, but not going to be owned by Intuit...

They are the service provider for Mint, MoneyStrand, Thrive, several large banks and financial institutions. Bank of America's My Portfolio service is powered by Yodlee.

hmm... I love mint, but this is not good news. Congrats to the founders though who will now have made a mint (pun intended) with their acquisition.

@TheDude06:
Agreed that Intuit is a terrible company. Their Mac product is woefully out of date: they're selling the equivalent of Quicken '95 for PC as Quicken '08 for Mac, *and* the Mac version sells for a premium! They have huge Mac market share -- in Mac-land there was until recently no real competitor like MS Money -- and they exhibit classic monopolist behavior.

[They've been working on a revamped Mac product for 2+ years, but the ship date keeps slipping and slipping and slipping. If memory serves, what was late '08 is now somewhere in 2010.]

Only a matter of time before Intuit ruins Mint too.

Both Mint and Quicken Online will remain as a free service. Mint's CEO Aaron Patzer will be the new General Manager of the Consumer division at Intuit. Here's the full press release here: [bit.ly]

@bostonmike:
If you're a Mac user, iBank isn't a bad alternative to Quicken.

I hope they don't start charging!

No. I'm not cool with this at all. But what can I do? I've used Mint since its earliest days - all these great ever-evolving features and free. A revenue model based on my use of their recommendations - which is something I never did, since I'd done most previous (not because I wanted to spite them). So they need to make money and they made a great profit. I certainly can't blame them; I'd have done the same.

But certainly it does not bode well for the future - at least not 100% well (maybe some things will get resolved faster but fees must be coming somewhere, somehow).

@Persistence: Well said!

@PhilFR:

You forgot the third (and most likely) option:

How about they screw up the product AND start charging for it?

@MostlyHarmless: I'm actually pretty sure it does. I was able to pretty seamlessly set up my online version to go from TT to Quicken Online.

And... While I realize the Quicken desktop software ain't so great, I've really enjoyed using the free online version. I think it works pretty well.

@Tamar Weinberg: I don't see why Quicken would start charging if they already have a free product that does a very, very similar service.

Intuit was bought out several years ago. What was primarily purchased was their huge user base. Since changing accounting software is such a pain, users have been held hostage to a series of abuses including frequent mandatory upgrades, annual updated tax tables at exorbitant cost, and annoying non-optional popup screens shilling their own and third party products. Intuit apparently has a very cozy relationship with the information technology press since their products continue to get glowing reviews without any mention of the above information. If you are a current user of Mint, I would get out immediately.

@josquin021: Maybe Intuit assumes that most artists don't have enough money to justify tracking it with a program? :-D

@bostonmike: If Microsoft Money or the Linux solution (which I forget the name of and I'm sure someone will follow up with the name) doesn't work for you, I'm pretty fond of Moneydance. It's not expensive and it's cross-platform.

@chiieddy: Linux platform = GNUCash. Someone mentioned it below. *sigh*

Personally, I'm sick of the Intuit juggernaut. I have a business and use Quickbooks. I don't like the idea of being forced into their upgrade cycle without needing any of their newly added features. Back a few years ago, when they decided to change their file format for quicken, there was a period of time when the banks balked at paying large fees to be Quicken compatible, so it left us out in the cold. I'm still sour from that experience. The there is the Turbo Tax registration debacle from a couple years ago. My crystal ball sees more of the same in the future for Mint.

@12-Inch Idongivafuck Sandwich: I took a look at the site to see what they do and this is just an FYI for anyone looking to join up with the yodlee service: their sign-up page has the following 2 options already selected for you, so decide if you want that or not.

I would like Yodlee to share my information with third parties for joint marketing purposes.

I would like to receive emails from third party vendors on behalf of Yodlee, regarding Yodlee MoneyCenter updates, information emails and/or product announcements.

@josquin021: Odd, I thought Mint.com was a web-based service, similar to the constantly-updated-Quicken Online which works really really well.

Why would someone who uses an application program care if Mint.com was purchased by a company that realizes the woes and low revenue from constantly having to re-write software just because of an OS update?

This seems quite logical and not scary.

Ugh. I despise Intuit and consider this to be the equivalent of taking a big pooper on Mint...of which I'm a huge fan.

Why do I despise Inuit? Try activating QuickBooks 2009 sometime and we'll see if you still wonder...

uncool

Intuit is a horribly shitty company that makes awful software. I don't personally use it but I could see it as a necessary evil because it's popular and fairly cheap for what it can do. It's the same story that most companies have these days: used to be great and make great products, but due to greed and a lack of forethought they became greedyCand the rest was downhill from there.

I hope I'm wrong for the sake of those that use Mint, but I only see it turning badly. Something along the lines of them offering the service for free only because of a contractual obligation through the sale for however many months or years and then immediately charging for it after that time.

Purchasing Mint would only make them complacent in actually trying to do a better job and compete for business. We all know how this story ends for the consumers.

Nooooooooooooooo 10x^9999

I started using Mint to get away from the Intuit crap!

Me: "So every time I do an account update in quicken I get locked out of my internet banking website."

Quicken: "this isnt a problem its a feature you are more secure if noone can access your data"

Me: "So my quicken file thats stored on a network drive suddenly asks for a password, this has not happened in the last x versions of the product"

Quicken: "Your data file is corrupt, it should have never worked on a network drive so feel glad that the last x versions worked"

Me: "I cant do the one step update, I even tried to create a new file it will work once then not again.

Quicken: "Create a new file"

@t-r0y: Yeah, cause this is the straw that broke the camel's back.

@TheDude06: As a web developer who works on a lot of shopping cart sites, I can say without a doubt that Intuit does indeed SUCK. The biggest problem I have with them is that they have locked in everyone with Quickbooks POS (Point of Sale) systems to ONLY use other intuit sollutions. For instance, a client of mine wants a shopping cart, however their merchant services only works with a few select (i.e. SHITTY) carts.

To top it off, they just started offering their own shopping cart that is so rife with 'ala carte' services that what starts at 200 bucks quickly becomes 3000. ARRRR its so frustrating!

Booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

What, Intuit will buy Mint and suddenly have great ideas about how to run a personal finance website? No. Intuit will apply its crappy ideas to Mint and turn Mint into crap.

It may take a while, but this cash out is bad news for Mint fans, including me :(

@PhilFR: Yeah, this is pretty much the correct question: what will be their first step towards screwing up Mint. It's not a matter of if but when. You don't spend millions of dollars on something and do nothing with it. You want to squeeze it for every penny you can get.

@Persistence: Buying your competitor may lead to better products for you in the short term as you leverage their resources to improve your own, but long term, the winner will always be the innovator. If Intuit can stay ahead of the innovation curve by buying an innovator, they've only bought time. They must learn to innovate. Sooner or later, in a truly capitalist system, someone is going to one-up them and run with it with a product they can't compete with, nor afford to buy for themselves.

I see nothing wrong with the purchase. Buying a competitor does not kill the market.