QuickBooks Online advertises Simple Start at $19 a month. That price is real and Intuit will honour it. It is also a three month price. The list price on the same page is $38, the offer is 50 percent off for three months, and month four arrives at full freight whether or not you read the small print.
So here is the arithmetic almost nobody in this category prints. Three months at $19 is $57. Nine months at $38 is $342. Year one costs $399. Year two, with no promotion left to apply, costs $456. The $19 headline implies $228 for a year of bookkeeping. Nobody pays $228.
I have sold physical products online for fifteen years and I price things for a living. This review is a verdict on QuickBooks Online at the price you will actually be charged in month thirteen, not the price on the banner. I fetched the pricing pages on 7 September 2026, wrote down every plan gate, and did the multiplication. That is the whole method, and it is more than most reviews of this product bother to do.
The short verdict: QuickBooks Online is a good product that is priced for a business with employees, inventory and an accountant, and it is priced badly for everyone else. If you need inventory tracking, you are looking at $140 a month at list, which is $1,680 a year, and that is the number that should be in your head from the first minute. If you do not need inventory, there are four cheaper products in this category that will do your books properly. I will name them and I will link to them. Some of those links are partner links, which I would rather tell you here than bury in a footer.
See the current QuickBooks Online plans and promotional terms
Four plans at $38, $85, $140 and $340 a month at list price, each shown at 50 percent off for three months. Simple Start works out at $399 in year one and $456 in year two. Inventory tracking starts at Plus, which is $1,680 a year at list. Promotional terms change, so check the plan page yourself before you enter a card.
What the four plans cost in year one and year two
Every plan carries the same promotional structure: half price for three months, then list price forever. That means the honest way to read this pricing page is to compute two numbers per plan. Year one is the promo months plus the remaining months at list. Year two is simply list price times twelve. Here are both, for all four plans.
| Plan | List per month | Promo per month | Year one | Year two | Headline implies |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| QuickBooks Simple Start | $38 | $19 | $399 | $456 | $228 |
| QuickBooks Essentials | $85 | $42.50 | $892.50 | $1,020 | $510 |
| QuickBooks Plus | $140 | $70 | $1,470 | $1,680 | $840 |
| QuickBooks Advanced | $340 | $170 | $3,570 | $4,080 | $2,040 |
The last column is the number a reader carries away from the banner, and it is wrong in every row. On Plus the gap between what the headline implies and what year two actually costs is $840. That is not a rounding error. That is the price of a second piece of software.
The pricing page also offers a free trial for thirty days alongside the discount. I could not locate fine print this session stating whether taking the trial forfeits the promotional rate, so I am not going to tell you either way. Both offers appear on the page. Assume the list price resumes after the promotional months, because it does.
What each plan actually gates
Price alone tells you nothing here. What matters is which features Intuit puts behind which price, because those gates are what force upgrades. Here is what I found on the pricing page and the inventory page.
Simple Start, $38 a month. One user plus two accountants. No inventory tracking. This is the plan for a service business or a store that treats cost of goods as a lump expense and does not need unit level stock counts. It is a competent set of books. It is not an inventory system.
Essentials, $85 a month. Three users plus two accountants. Still no inventory tracking. This is the plan that confuses people. You more than double your bill, you get two more seats and bill management, and you still cannot count stock. If seats are what you need, Essentials is coherent. If stock is what you need, Essentials is a $1,020 a year detour.
Plus, $140 a month, badged as the customer favourite. Five users plus two accountants. Inventory tracking arrives. Class and location tracking arrives, capped at forty. For a physical products business, this is the real entry plan, and $1,680 a year is the real entry price.
Advanced, $340 a month. Twenty five users plus three accountants. Unlimited classes and locations. Batch invoicing. Workflow automation. Intuit also lists Project Management AI, Finance AI and customisable key performance indicators on this tier. At $4,080 a year this is a plan for a business with a finance function, not a founder doing books on a Sunday.
Inventory is the gate that decides this for most stores
If you sell physical products and you want QuickBooks to track stock, you are buying Plus. Intuit’s own inventory page says inventory is available in QuickBooks Online Plus and QuickBooks Online Advanced. There is no partial version of it lower down the ladder. That single sentence sets the entry price for an ecommerce store at $140 a month list, or $1,680 a year in steady state.
The same page says inventory works with popular apps and names Amazon, Etsy and Shopify. What it does not say is which costing method the inventory module uses. I looked for a statement of first in first out or weighted average and did not find one on that page, so I am recording it as not stated rather than guessing. If your accountant needs to know the costing method before you commit, ask Intuit directly and get the answer in writing.
This gate is the reason I wrote a separate piece on the best accounting software for ecommerce ranked by where inventory starts. It is the one specification that reorders the entire category, and price lists hide it.
Seats, and the thing QuickBooks does not do
QuickBooks sets a seat ceiling on every plan. One on Simple Start, three on Essentials, five on Plus, twenty five on Advanced, with accountant seats granted on top. If you outgrow the ceiling, the only route is the next plan up, and the next plan up is a large step in dollars.
That model is not universal. Xero’s pricing page carries the line “Included: No per-user license fees” and shows no user cap on the plan cards. I will not translate that into “unlimited users”, because Xero does not use that phrase and I am not going to put words in a vendor’s mouth. But it does mean the two companies charge for growth in completely different ways, which is the whole subject of my comparison of QuickBooks and Xero on seat fees and invoice caps.
Two things Intuit will not publish, and why that matters
A review that only reports what a company chooses to publish is a brochure. Here are the two figures I went looking for and could not find.
Payment processing rates. Neither the QuickBooks Payments page nor the main pricing page lists an ACH rate, an invoiced card rate, a keyed card rate or an in person rate. The page says, in its own words, that you get competitive payment rates without monthly fees or minimums, just pay as you go, and that if you process more than $2,500 per month you should call to see if you qualify for up to 25% off standard rates. The sales line printed on the page is 1-800-264-1859. So the discount is quantified and the thing being discounted is not.
That is a real finding, not a nitpick. If you take card payments through QuickBooks, processing fees will very likely exceed your subscription within a year. A store doing $30,000 a month at any plausible card rate pays more in processing than the $4,080 top subscription tier costs. Wave, by contrast, prints its rates on its pricing page: 2.9% plus $0.60 per credit card transaction on the free Starter plan, and 3.4% plus $0.60 on Amex. You may not like those rates, but you can plan around them before you sign up.
QuickBooks Live pricing. Intuit’s assisted bookkeeping products, marketed as Live, Expert Assisted, Full Service Bookkeeping and Expert Cleanup, carry no price on the how it works page. It directs you to call 1-800-365-9606. If a bookkeeping service will not quote in public, treat the quote you eventually get as a starting position rather than a rate card.
Inventory tracking starts on Plus, and Plus is $1,680 a year
Plus is $140 a month at list, shown at $70 for the first three months, which works out at $1,470 in year one. It carries five users, forty classes and locations, and the inventory module that Simple Start and Essentials do not have. Confirm the current plan contents on Intuit’s page, because feature lists move.
QuickBooks Desktop is closed to new buyers in the United States
People still arrive at this decision assuming they can buy the desktop product and stop paying a monthly bill. In the United States, new subscribers cannot. Intuit’s own stop sell notice says it stopped selling QuickBooks Desktop Pro Plus, QuickBooks Desktop Premier Plus, QuickBooks Desktop Mac Plus and QuickBooks Desktop Enhanced Payroll to new US subscribers after Sept. 30, 2024.
Read the second half of that notice too, because a lot of coverage got it wrong. Intuit also says existing subscribers are not impacted by this change, and that existing QuickBooks Desktop Plus and Desktop Payroll subscribers can continue to renew their subscriptions after that date. QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise is a separate product and is unaffected. So Desktop is not dead, and if you already run it nobody is forcing you off it. It is simply not a door that opens for new US buyers any more.
The small end: Solopreneur and Lite
Intuit sells a separate, smaller product for one person businesses. The Solopreneur page shows three tiers: a Free tier, Lite at $20 a month with a promotional $10 a month for three months, and Simple Start at $38 a month with the same $19 promotional rate as the main pricing page.
Lite year one is $30 plus $180, which is $210. Year two is $240. For that you get unlimited invoices, unlimited receipts and mileage, three contractors, the mobile app, automated bill pay, automated sales and sales tax, instant deposit and app integrations. Moving up to Simple Start adds general reports, cash flow history, in person payments, recurring payments, lending access and unlimited contractors.
Intuit is explicit about who this is for. The page says Solopreneur is built specifically for single owner, self employed businesses, focused on automated transaction sorting, goals and tax readiness instead of broader team and inventory features. That is an unusually honest product boundary and I will take it at face value. If you have a partner, an employee or stock, Solopreneur is not your product. Note also that QuickBooks Self-Employed is still referenced as a separate product with its own login, so do not assume it has been retired.
Who QuickBooks Online is right for
I will be specific, because a recommendation without a boundary is marketing.
Buy QuickBooks Online if you sell physical products, hold stock, and need unit level inventory inside the same ledger your accountant works in. Plus at $1,680 a year is defensible for that business, because the alternative is a second inventory system and a reconciliation habit.
Buy it if your accountant or bookkeeper already works in QuickBooks all day. The accountant seats are free on every plan, and the cost of making a professional learn a new ledger is real money that does not appear on any pricing page.
Buy it if you run payroll and want it in the same product. Intuit sells payroll as bundles in 2026, and the middle bundle, Workforce Payroll with Essentials, is $125 a month plus $6.50 per employee per month. For three employees in steady state that is $1,500 plus $234, which is $1,734 a year. I break every bundle down in my full QuickBooks pricing breakdown for year one and year two.
Buy it if you are heading for an audit, a loan application or a sale, and you want the ledger to be the one every outside party already recognises.
Who should not buy it
Do not buy it if you are one person invoicing a handful of clients and you do not hold stock. At that size you are paying $456 a year for capability you will never open. Wave gives you invoicing and bookkeeping records for nothing on its Starter tier, and Wave Pro is $190 a year on annual billing.
Do not buy it if your revenue is under the Zoho Books free threshold and your invoice volume is modest. Zoho Books has a genuinely free tier for one user, capped at 1,000 invoices a year, as long as your revenue for the financial year does not exceed a $50,000 threshold. Standard is $15 a month on annual billing, which is $180 a year for three users.
Do not buy it purely to send prettier invoices. FreshBooks is built around client billing and its Plus plan is $516 a year at list. Be careful at the bottom of that ladder though: FreshBooks Lite has no double entry accounting, no bank reconciliation and no accountant access, and all three arrive at Plus.
Do not buy it if you send fewer than twenty invoices a month and want the cheapest real ledger. Xero Early is $25 a month at list, which is $300 in year two, but read the cap before you celebrate.
And do not assume the enterprise names are cheaper. Sage does not show prices at all on its Business Cloud Accounting pricing page. Sage 50 does publish, and it is expensive: Pro Accounting at $128.67 a month for one user, Premium at $182.50, Quantum at $271.17, with a minimum one year commitment required.
Year two annual cost, across the whole category
This is the table I keep coming back to. No promotions, no first year discounts, just what each product costs in a normal year at list price, ordered cheapest first.
| Product | Year two annual | What it buys |
|---|---|---|
| Wave Starter | $0 | Invoicing and bookkeeping, no bank feed auto import |
| Zoho Books Free | $0 | 1 user, under $50K revenue, 1,000 invoices |
| Zoho Books Standard | $180 | 3 users, 5,000 invoices |
| Wave Pro | $190 | Bank import, branded invoices, reminders, receipts |
| FreshBooks Lite | $276 | 5 clients, 1 user, no double entry accounting |
| Xero Early | $300 | 20 invoices and 5 bills a month |
| QuickBooks Simple Start | $456 | 1 user, no inventory |
| Zoho Books Professional | $480 | 5 users, 10,000 invoices |
| FreshBooks Plus | $516 | 50 clients, double entry accounting arrives here |
| Xero Growing | $660 | Unlimited invoices and bills, no multi currency |
| Zoho Books Premium | $720 | 10 users |
| FreshBooks Premium | $840 | Unlimited clients, project profitability |
| QuickBooks Essentials | $1,020 | 3 users, still no inventory |
| Xero Established | $1,080 | Multi currency, projects, expense claims |
| QuickBooks Plus | $1,680 | Inventory arrives here, 5 users, 40 classes |
| QuickBooks Advanced | $4,080 | 25 users, batch invoicing, workflow automation |
QuickBooks does not appear until the seventh row. That is not an argument against it. It is an argument for knowing exactly what you are buying with the difference, which for most stores is the inventory module and the accountant familiarity, and for some stores is nothing at all. If the difference buys you nothing, my guide to QuickBooks alternatives organised by the problem that sent you looking is the faster route.
What I would do with a real store
If I were setting this up from scratch for a store doing meaningful volume, I would start on Plus rather than start cheap and migrate, because migrating a ledger mid year is the most expensive kind of thrift. The order of operations matters more than most people expect, and I wrote it out step by step in the setup order that prevents rework. If you are already on something else and considering a move, read how to switch accounting software without losing your history first, because the history is the asset.
If the reason you are shopping for a ledger is that filing season went badly, the ledger is only half the fix. My rundown of the best tax software for ecommerce sellers covers the other half.
One more thing before the money section. Nothing here is tax or accounting advice. Plan features, tax treatment and filing obligations change, and they change by jurisdiction. Confirm anything that affects a return with a CPA or with the taxing authority itself.
Running the business behind the books
Bookkeeping software is a cost line, and the fastest way to make a cost line feel small is to raise the gross margin above it. Most of what I write at E-Commerce Paradise is about that side of the equation rather than the ledger.
If you are still choosing what to sell, start with the list of profitable high ticket niches and work out which one you can actually source.
If the model itself is new to you, this explanation of how the high ticket dropshipping model works covers the economics that make a $140 a month ledger irrelevant.
Sourcing is where most stores stall, so I put everything I know into a complete supplier sourcing guide that goes supplier by supplier.
Before you take a payment, get the entity right, because retrofitting it later is painful. Here is my walkthrough of business formation for a high ticket store.
On the stack itself, I run my stores on Shopify and have for years. For the entity paperwork I use Bizee, which handles formation and registered agent service without the upsell theatre.
For liability cover once you are selling real volume, Hiscox is the one I point people at, and again, talk to your own adviser about what your specific business needs.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is QuickBooks Online worth it in 2026?
It is worth it if you hold inventory, run payroll or work with an accountant who already lives in QuickBooks. Those three cases justify $1,680 a year on Plus. If none of them apply, you are paying for capability you will not open, and a free or cheap ledger will keep books that are just as correct.
What does QuickBooks Online actually cost after the promotional period?
List price resumes in month four. Simple Start is $38 a month, Essentials $85, Plus $140 and Advanced $340. In steady state that is $456, $1,020, $1,680 and $4,080 a year respectively. Year one is lower because of the three promotional months: $399, $892.50, $1,470 and $3,570.
Which QuickBooks plan includes inventory tracking?
Plus and Advanced only, according to Intuit’s inventory page. Simple Start and Essentials do not include it at any price. The cheapest route to inventory inside QuickBooks is therefore Plus at $140 a month list, or $1,680 a year.
What does QuickBooks charge to process a card payment?
Not published. I checked the QuickBooks Payments page and the main pricing page and neither lists an ACH, invoiced card, keyed card or in person rate. The page offers up to 25% off standard rates if you process more than $2,500 a month, and gives a sales number, but it does not state what the standard rates are.
How much does QuickBooks Live bookkeeping cost?
Not published either. The how it works page for the assisted bookkeeping products carries no price and directs you to call 1-800-365-9606. Get any quote in writing and treat it as an opening position.
Can I still buy QuickBooks Desktop?
Not as a new subscriber in the United States. Intuit stopped selling Desktop Pro Plus, Premier Plus, Mac Plus and Desktop Enhanced Payroll to new US subscribers after Sept. 30, 2024. Existing subscribers are explicitly not impacted and can continue renewing. QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise is unaffected.
Bottom Line
QuickBooks Online is a capable ledger sold with a headline price that describes three months of your relationship with it. The honest numbers are $399 then $456 for Simple Start, and $1,470 then $1,680 for Plus, which is the plan an inventory holding store actually needs. Judged at those numbers it is good value for a store with stock, employees and an accountant, and poor value for a solo operator invoicing a few clients a month.
The two things that would make me hesitate are not features. They are silences. Intuit does not publish payment processing rates and does not publish assisted bookkeeping prices, and in both cases a competitor does. If you are the sort of buyer who wants the whole invoice visible before you commit, that matters, and it is a legitimate reason to look at what Wave gives away free and exactly where it stops before you decide. And once again: none of this is tax or accounting advice, so confirm anything that touches a filing with your CPA or the taxing authority.
Ready to price it against your own numbers?
Simple Start is $399 in year one and $456 in year two. Plus, the first plan with inventory, is $1,470 then $1,680. Advanced runs to $4,080 a year. Those are list prices at the time of writing and Intuit changes them, so read the plan page before you decide.
If you would rather skip the build entirely and have the whole store handed to you ready to trade, my team offers a done for you high ticket dropshipping build and launch service.
Related Articles
QuickBooks Pricing 2026: Every Plan Costed for Year One and Year Two
QuickBooks vs Xero 2026: Seat Fees, Invoice Caps and the Real Annual Cost
QuickBooks Alternatives 2026: Organised by the Problem That Sent You Looking
How to Choose Accounting Software: The Five Gates That Decide It Before Price
How to Deduct Ecommerce Business Expenses
Trevor Fenner is an ecommerce entrepreneur and the founder of Ecommerce Paradise, a platform focused on helping entrepreneurs build and scale profitable high-ticket ecommerce and dropshipping businesses. With over a decade of hands-on experience, Trevor specializes in high-ticket dropshipping strategy, niche and product selection, supplier recruiting and onboarding, Google & Bing Shopping ads, ecommerce SEO, and systems-driven automation and scaling. Through Ecommerce Paradise, he provides free education via in-depth guides like How to Start High-Ticket Dropshipping, advanced training through the High-Ticket Dropshipping Masterclass, and fully done-for-you turnkey ecommerce services for entrepreneurs who want a faster, more hands-off path to growth. Trevor is known for emphasizing sustainable, real-world ecommerce models over hype-driven tactics, helping store owners build scalable, sellable, and location-independent brands.
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