Quicken is the oldest name in personal finance software, while Personal Capital is newer and offers advanced tools for free. Read on to see if it's a good alternative to Quicken.

1. How Does Quicken 2017 For Mac Compare To Money Converter
2. How Does Quicken 2017 For Mac Compare To Money Laundering
3. How Does Quicken 2017 For Mac Compare To Money Market
4. How Does Quicken 2017 For Mac Compare To Money Transfer

Quicken 2017 for Mac was originally launched on the Mac App Store for $74.99 although due to strong competition from Amazon, Quicken slashed 40% off until January 10th 2017.

• About Personal Capital and Quicken
  
• Key Similarities
  
• Key Differences
  
• Detailed Comparisons Breakdown
  
  • Cost
    
  • Synchronization & Accessibility
    
  • Budgeting
    
  • Debt Reduction
    
  • Bill Pay
    
  • Investment Tracking
    
  • Retirement Planning
    
• Personal Capital Pros & Cons
  
• Quicken Pros & Cons
  

• But in 2009, it was acquired by Intuit, the makers of Quicken and TurboTax. So you can call it the best Quicken alternative without any doubt. Especially for US and Canada based small businesses, Mint is a go-to Software solution which turns out to be a handy tool when it comes to managing money, bill payments and tracking all your credit score.
• Geography: Quicken for Mac software and the Quicken mobile app are not designed to function for use outside the U.S. Importing Information. Quicken for Mac 2017 imports data from Quicken for Windows 2010 or newer, Quicken for Mac 2015 or newer, Quicken for Mac 2007, Quicken Essentials for Mac, Banktivity. Mobile System Requirements.
• Quicken for Mac still trails Quicken for Windows in ease of use, interface (i.e., navigation), intuitiveness, versatility, and features. Quicken for Mac also falls a bit short when it comes to investment tools, especially in regard to its lack of automatic cost-basis calculations. Another area that people have complaints about is the interface.

About Personal Capital and Quicken

About Quicken:
Quicken can be considered the granddaddy of personal finance software, originating all the way back in 1983. It allowed people to gather all their finances in one place and quickly perform tasks that were usually done on paper.

Quicken is a subscription-based desktop software. It offers comprehensive financial tools including budgeting, bill pay, investment tracker, and property and business accounting tools.

About Personal Capital:
If Quicken is the veteran, then Personal Capital is the new kid, having formally launched in 2011. It's digital-only and offers two services:

1. A free advanced financial tools
   
2. A paid robo-advisor service for investors with at least $100k

In this comparison review, we're only looking at Personal Capital's free personal finance tools versus Quicken's tools.

Personal Capital's tools are completely free, while Quicken charges a subscription fee. Read on to learn which is right for you.

Key Similarities

Both Personal Capital and Quicken allow you to link all your external accounts so you can view your financial life in one place.

Both offer these features:

• Overall Picture of Finances
  View balances on your accounts and your overall net worth
• Cash Management
  See your spending by category, sort transactions from all your accounts, and track income and expenses
• Bill Reminders
  Alert you about upcoming bills
• Investment Tracking
  Track your investments across all accounts, compare your returns to market indexes, analyze fees, and suggest target allocations
• Retirement Planning
  Play with different scenarios to see how they'd impact your retirement nest egg
• Security
  256-bit encryption security

However, note that Personal Capital offers all of these for free, while you have to pay a subscription fee for Quicken.

Key Differences

Here's a quick look at where Personal Capital and Quicken differ.

Personal Capital offers:

• Free money management tools
  
• Online web- and app-based platform
  
• Shows your net worth right on the dashboard
  
• Personalized investment advice for ideal allocation
  
• Education planner to estimates college costs and create a savings goal

Quicken offers:

• Subscription-based service ($35.99–$103.99/year)
  
• Desktop program that can be used offline
  
• Ability to manually enter transactions
  
• More advanced budgeting software
  
• Store and save pictures of receipts
  
• Debt reduction tool (Deluxe plan)
  
• Ability to pay bills (Premier plan)
  
• Accounting for small businesses (Home & Business plan)
  
• Property management (Home & Business plan).
  
• Creation of tax reports
  
• Export Quicken data directly into TurboTax
  
• Free credit report

Detailed Comparisons Breakdown

Now let's take a more detailed look at how the two compare.

Cost—Winner: Personal Capital

All Personal Capital financial tools are free. You just can't beat that. For the average person, the free tools offer more than enough to effectively manage your finances.

On the other hand, Quicken's tools are on an annual subscription basis. Quicken offers 4 plans:

• Starter: $35.99/year
  See all your accounts, create a budget, categorize expenses, manage bills, export to Excel
• Deluxe: $51.99/year
  Added functions include: track loans, investments, and retirement accounts, create customized budget, manage and track debt, create savings goals
• Premier: $77.99/year
  Added functions include: online bill pay, investment analysis, create Schedule D tax reports, track market value of your home, priority customer support
• Home & Business: $103.99/year (Windows only)
  Added functions include tools for small business and real estate managers (see more detail below)

The cost is quite expensive for simple features such as budgeting and expense tracking. Many other apps do these same functions for free.

But more advanced features like debt reduction planning, tax reporting, business accounting, and real estate management could be very valuable for the price.

Synchronization & Accessibility—Winner: Personal Capital

Personal Capital operates online only through a web platform and mobile app. Linking accounts is fast and automatically synced between the web and mobile app. This makes it easier to manage your finances in real-time.

On the other hand, Quicken is a desktop software that you need to purchase and install on your computer. You'll need internet connection to import your accounts and manually initiate updates. (You get 5GB of secure online backup with Dropbox.)

Quicken's desktop software seems outdated. But it may appeal to those who don't trust their information being stored in the web/cloud.

Recently, Quicken introduced a web platform. And a mobile app has been around for years. These are optional companions to the software. You'll need to manually sync your Quicken data to the cloud to be able to access your info on-the-go.

Budgeting—Winner: Quicken

Quicken has comprehensive budgeting tools, while Personal Capital only offers limited functions.

Personal Capital's budgeting feature is simple. You can only set an overall monthly budget. It'll track how much you've spent this month so far, and compare it to your spending last month. You can't assign a budget to each spending category or set other features.

Quicken allows you to create a more customized budget. Features include:

• Create as many spending categories as you want
  
• Set a budget for each category and see how much you've spent
  
• Analyze areas where you can save more
  
• See regular expenses that you may have missed
  
• Include or exclude specific expenses

Debt Reduction—Winner: Quicken

The Debt Reduction Planner is a feature unique to Quicken (offered in the Deluxe plan). This helps you create the best debt pay-off plan to minimize interest.

• Automatically searches for loan and credit card balances
  
• Exclude or add a debt manually
  
• Set an amount to pay towards debt each month
  
• Project how different payment amounts will impact pay-off

This can be a valuable tool for those in debt and who need a solid pay-off plan they can actually afford.

Personal Capital does not offer debt reduction planning.

Bill Pay & Reminders—Winner: Quicken

Both Personal Capital and Quicken have bill reminders. However, Personal Capital only has reminders for credit cards, loans, and mortgages. Quicken also allows you to set up bill reminders for gas, utilities, and telecom services.

Quicken also has online bill pay access to over 11,000 online billers. You can pay your bills directly through the software. Personal Capital does not have bill pay.

However, the online bill pay is only available at the Premier plan. Many banks now offer free online bill pay, so this isn't a feature we should have to pay for anymore.

Investment Tracking—Winner: Personal Capital

We'd give this one to Personal Capital because it really shines in investment tracking. It offers personalized advice for your investments—and all for free. Personal Capital's investment tools include:

• Portfolio Overview
  See the overall performance of your portfolios compared to market indexes, such as S&P 500, DOW, etc.
• Fee Analyzer
  Calculates how much is being lost to fees and the expense ratio within each fund. This way, you can consider switching out funds with high fees.
• Investment Checkup
  Analyzes your current investment strategy and suggests a target allocation. It also tells you exactly how to rebalance your portfolio to reach the suggested allocation.

Quicken only offers investment tracking in the Premier and Home & Business plans. Some features include:

• See all your investment fees and your true market returns
  
• Set up stock watchlists
  
• See your actual portfolio allocation and target allocation (Windows only)
  
• Evaluate your portfolio with Morningstar's X-Ray tool (Windows only)
  
• Run IRR and ROI reports
  
• Compare your portfolio's performance to market benchmarks
  
• See realized and unrealized gains for tax planning
  
• Use 'what if' scenarios to see tax implications of selling
  
• See market comparisons to help with buy/sell decisions

How Does Quicken 2017 For Mac Compare To Money Converter

Retirement Planning—Winner: Tie

Personal Capital has one of the most advanced FREE retirement planning tools. You set at what age you want to retire and how much you plan to save per year. Personal Capital will calculate what your retirement looks like.

• See projected portfolio values at different ages
  
• See projected monthly retirement income
  
• See calculated Social Security distributions
  
• Get recommendations on what you can change to grow your retirement savings
  
• Enter 'what if' scenarios (like buying a house, paying for a wedding, traveling), and see how these will impact your retirement

Quicken has a 'Lifetime Planner' that also lets you play with different scenarios. You can input things like future homes, college costs, future loans, living cost adjustments, etc. Quicken will use these assumptions to give you an interactive look at how they'll affect things.

Both programs do a good job of showing you how big financial events would impact your retirement nest egg.

Property & Small Business Management—Winner: Quicken

Personal Capital doesn't offer any functions for real estate and small business management. So this section will cover what Quicken offers.

Quicken's small business and property management are only included in the Home & Business plan. Note that this is only available for Windows.

Small Business Management Features:

How Does Quicken 2017 For Mac Compare To Money Laundering

• Track all your assets and liabilities
  
• Separate business and personal transactions
  
• Store contracts, receipts, and other business documents
  
• Create Schedule A to E tax reports
  
• Track business deductions, even from personal accounts
  
• Export directly to Turbotax
  
• Create and email custom invoices

Real Estate Management Features:

• Track property value, loans, rental income, and expenses
  
• Save tenant lists, lease terms, rental rates, and security deposits
  
• Track outstanding and paid rents
  
• Send email reminders and custom rent receipts
  
• Run Schedule E and other tax schedule reports

The fee for Home & Business plan is a great deal to better handle more complicated finances and simply your taxes.

Personal Capital Pros & Cons

Pros

• Tools are completely free
  
• Digital only and automatically updates accounts
  
• See your accounts in real-time
  
• See net worth instantly displayed on your dashboard
  
• Portfolio analysis and personalized recommendations
  
• Robust retirement planner
  
• User-friendly interface and mobile app

Cons

• Simple budgeting features
  
• No manual transaction entries
  
• No tax reporting
  
• No business or property management features
  
• No online bill pay

Quicken Pros & Cons

Pros

• Most comprehensive set of financial tools
  
• More advanced budgeting tools
  
• Reconcile accounts
  
• Manual transaction entries
  
• Debt reduction planning (Deluxe plan)
  
• Online bill pay (Premier plan)
  
• Small business and property management (Home & Business plan)
  
• Import directly into TurboTax
  
• Free credit report

How Does Quicken 2017 For Mac Compare To Money Market

Cons

• Costs $35.99–$103.99/year
  
• Need to manually import data
  
• Synchronization issues
  
• Lots of customer service complaints

How Does Quicken 2017 For Mac Compare To Money Transfer

Alternatives to Quicken and Personal Capital

If neither Quicken or Personal Capital seem like a good fit for you, here are some other popular alternatives.

• Mint
  Mint (read review) is a completely free money management app. You can link up all your accounts to get an overall picture of your finances. It allows you to create a custom budget and assign a monthly limit to each category.

  Other features include goal tracker, debt payoff planner, bill reminders, and credit monitoring. It also tracks your investment portfolios, but it doesn't offer any advice.

  Read: Mint vs. Personal Capital detailed comparison review
  
• You Need a Budget (YNAB)
  YNAB (read review) purely focuses on budgeting. Instead of just tracking your spending, it actually teaches you how to budget and helps you save. There is no investment or retirement planning.

  YNAB costs $11.99 per month, so it's best for serious budgeters committed to changing their habits.

• EveryDollar
  EveryDollar (read review) is the budgeting app created by celebrity money expert Dave Ramsey. It incorporates his signature '7 Baby Steps' to financial success.

  The basic version is free and only supports manual entry. For auto account syncing, it costs $129.99/year. It's good if you're not sure where to start your financial journey.

Bottom Line: Which Is Better?

This is hard to say, because it's hard to compare a free service with a paid one. Yes, Quicken offers more robust, comprehensive features, but you need to pay for those. Personal Capital's free tools are just about the best on the market and… well, they're free.

This makes Personal Capital the better choice for the average person. Quicken is better for small business owners, multiple property owners, and those with more complex finances. You do need to pay for the software, but it'll save you time and make managing your money easier.

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Read Next:

Quicken Alternatives for your MAC: There are a plenty of bad personal financial software for MAC out there in the market. Here we will narrow down some of the alternatives to Quicken for MAC 2017. These alternatives if not better than Quicken are as good as Quicken to solve all your money management needs. All the alternatives are different from each other in one way or the other.

If you are one of the person who has already given up on Quicken because Intuit no longer supports Quicken. With the best alternatives to Quicken that we will discuss here, you will never look back to the Quicken once you get your hands on these alternatives.

Some things to check before going for an alternatives

• Do you want an online banking integration with the application?
• Do you want a track of all of your investments?
• Is the software provides you with the sync support?
• Can it handle multiple currencies?
• Can it support multiple user profiles?

The problem with the most of the alternatives is that they do not include all of the above features and the customers have to run for the other software every time they need other solutions. The alternatives we discuss here will consist of solutions to all the above problems to make things easier for you.

Bankitivity

This is one of the most popular personal finance application for MAC. Some of the features in Bankitivity are not available in Quicken also. These features include full investment support, multi-currency support and QIF data import and much more. Unlike Quicken, Bankitivity is specifically designed for MAC so the look and feel of the application are better than Quicken.

Moneydance

This application has already satisfied the needs of many customers. Since the very first version of the application that was launched in the year 2005 it has worked perfectly with MAC. Online banking and bill payments can be made easier with the help of Moneydance.

SEE Finance

Although not as popular as Bankitivity, SEE Finance can solve many money management problems. It is the most reliable and robust of all the platforms although it lacks a bit in the look and feel. For the enterprise that needs to import a lot of Quicken QIF data, this is the best application. The chance of duplicate transaction data is minimized in SEE Finance.

YNAB

You Need A Budget (YNAB) is difficult to be compared to Quicken but worth a mention over here. It is brilliant budgeting tool that helps the people to manage their personal finances. If you need a software that is easy to use then YNAB is worth.

HomeBank

If you are looking for your personal use and don’t want to pay for it, then HomeBank can be the solution. It is easy to use software for the personal use. It has some of the most powerful filtering tools that can help you to manage your finances in an elegant way.