Best 8 QuickBooks alternatives 2024: find the ideal accounting solution for your needs

If you mention accounting software, one of the first examples that comes to mind is QuickBooks Online (QBO). Intuit’s flagship product is estimated to have a market share of 80% and has been the go-to choice for small and medium-sized businesses for many years. Indeed, perhaps no tool has helped shape the modern accounting industry as much as QuickBooks Online. 

But is QuickBooks Online’s popularity an accurate reflection of its quality? And how does it compare to its competitors? In this article, we’ll aim to answer these questions for you. Read on for a detailed look at some of the best QuickBooks alternatives, their pros and cons, and how they stack up against the market-leading platform.

Why explore alternatives to QuickBooks?

Given QuickBooks’ popularity, it can be tempting for accounting teams to see it as the default choice. After all, over 7 million customers worldwide can’t be wrong. While QuickBooks is clearly a safe bet, there are several reasons why accounting businesses should explore alternative options. Here are some key factors to consider:

Cost-effectiveness

QuickBooks Online isn’t the cheapest option on the market. In fact, its relatively expensive price point was the fifth most common reason for a negative review on G2. What’s more, with multiple different pricing plans, you might have to pay more to unlock features that you consider essential. 

For these reasons, it’s worth looking at how QuickBooks Online compares cost-wise to the competition. While there’s always a tradeoff between price and quality, you may find an alternative platform that provides the features you need at a more affordable price.

Feature flexibility

When it comes to features, no two platforms are the same. While QuickBooks Online is generally considered a comprehensive offering, the most-mentioned drawback in G2 user reviews is missing features.

You may find that QuickBooks Online doesn’t quite match what you’re looking for. For example, you might need specialized capabilities or advanced features that QuickBooks Online doesn’t provide. When you dig deeper, you might find that alternatives offer better options for customization or flexibility. 

Integration options

QuickBooks Online is well known for having excellent integration options, connecting to over 750 third-party business apps. But depending on the specific tools you use, you may find a more suitable alternative. 

Integration is a crucial factor to consider when picking an accounting solution. By connecting to a practice management platform such as TaxDome, for example, you can build a highly cohesive accounting tech stack, including all the tools you need to run a highly profitable and efficient accounting firm.

User experience

QuickBooks Online is well known for being user-friendly, with ease of use being by far the most common mention in positive G2 user reviews. That said, usability is a somewhat objective factor, and you may find that you prefer the dashboard and layout of an alternative tool. 

For this reason, it’s worth exploring alternatives alongside QBO and making use of free trials and demos to get a feel for how they work.

Customer support

Customer support is an often-overlooked factor when choosing a software solution, but being able to access reliable customer support around the clock is essential — especially when new to a platform. Poor customer support ranked second on the most common complaints for QuickBooks users on G2, so it’s worth researching what competitors offer and how it compares.

8 best QuickBooks alternatives

The accounting software sector is booming, with an increasing number of tools to choose from. To save you time, we’ve reduced the field down to eight of the best QuickBooks Online alternatives. 

• Xero
• Sage Intacct
• Zoho Books
• FreshBooks
• NetSuite
• AccountingSuite
• Wave
• Kashoo

1. Xero

Behind QuickBooks Online, Xero is perhaps the second most well-known cloud accounting software for small and medium-sized businesses. Let’s take a look at what it offers.

Key features

Xero offers a comprehensive feature set, spanning most of the tools you’d need to manage and automate your accounting, tax, and payroll tasks. Its key features include:

• Automated data entry through seamless integrations with third-party apps
• Secure bank connections for real-time transaction updates
• Bank reconciliation with smart suggestions for how to classify expenditures
• Online billing, with automated invoices and multiple payment options
• Automated reporting — produce balance sheets and financial statements with a single click
• Customizable business dashboards for real-time financial insights

On the integration side, Xero allows you to connect to over 1,000 apps via the Xero App Store — a dedicated portal for finding the integrations you need and creating a seamless software ecosystem.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Xero has three pricing plans: Early at $4.50 per user per month, Growing at $12.60 per user per month, and Established at $23.40 per user per month. At the time of writing, these prices are valid for the first six months of a subscription and increase significantly thereafter.

The Early plan restricts you to just 20 invoices and 5 bills per month. As you’d expect, as you graduate to more expensive plans, you unlock more advanced features and lose those restrictive limits.

User reviews

Xero has an average G2 rating of 4.3 out of 5 from over 650 reviews, making it slightly more highly rated than QuickBooks Online at 4.0 out of 5. Users often mention the platform’s ease of use, affordability, and integration options as its main plus points. 

On the flip side, some users claim that the platform lacks critical features, while existing features — such as bank connections — can be buggy or limited. 

Summary

Xero is a decent accounting platform and a worthy QuickBooks Online competitor. Its feature set is slightly narrower than QBO’s, but on the other hand, you get unlimited users across all plans and a cheaper price point. 

Overall, Xero is perhaps slightly more complex to use than QuickBooks Online, partly because it was designed with accountants and payroll professionals in mind, while QuickBooks Online also caters to small-business owners without a strong background in accounting. That said, both platforms are easy enough to get to grips with.

2. Sage Intacct

Sage Intacct is a cloud-based financial management platform that combines a range of accounting applications and tools. It can be seen as a more advanced, modern version of the well-known Sage 50 accounting platform. 

Key features

Sage Intacct provides a very broad range of features that span accounting, payroll, and even HR, with a strong focus on AI and automation. Here are its core capabilities:

• Automated accounts payable
• General ledger with AI-powered anomaly detection
• Flexible, real-time dashboards and reporting
• Payroll and HR capabilities via seamless integration
• Comprehensive budgeting capabilities
• Multi-entity insights that support larger, multinational companies

Sage Intacct offers hundreds of native integrations via its marketplace, allowing you to connect it to your CRM, business management, or e-commerce platforms, for example. You can also use Sage Intacct’s Accounting API to connect to industry-leading services outside of the Sage ecosystem.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Unfortunately, Sage Intacct doesn’t provide any details about pricing on its website. To find out how much it costs, you’ll need to get a custom quote. This reflects the fact that Sage Intacct is designed for larger enterprises, not small businesses.

User reviews

So what do users think of Sage Intacct? With an average G2 rating of 4.3 out of 5 from over 3,200 reviews, it’s clear that this is a highly popular platform that’s getting a lot right. Over 1,500 of these reviews focus on the platform’s ease of use, proving that despite its complexity, Sage Intacct is indeed a user-friendly and intuitive choice. 

Other positive reviews mention the platform’s integration capabilities, with an open API that enables you to expand its capabilities while centralizing data from multiple sources.

No platform is perfect, however, and some users complain that some existing features could be tweaked to improve efficiency.

Summary

Sage Intacct is an excellent choice for larger businesses looking for an advanced platform to connect their accounting, payroll, and HR data in one place. It might be worth looking at for QuickBooks Online customers who feel like they’re outgrowing the platform, but smaller businesses should look elsewhere. 

3. Zoho Books

Part of the Zoho suite of cloud software tools, Zoho Books enables businesses to manage and automate their accounting workflows in one easy-to-use platform.

Key features

Zoho Books offers plenty of interesting features, but we’ll condense the list down to some of the most important in this section: 

• Automated payment reminders, report scheduling, invoicing, and payments
• Seamless bank feed connections for real-time transaction updates
• Accounts receivable automation
• Real-time dashboards and financial statements
• Task and product management
• Collaboration features
• Inventory and stock management

As a Zoho product, you get seamless integration with other Zoho tools, including their CRM, finance, IT management, and HR platforms. This creates a joined-up ecosystem for managing your entire business. Beyond Zoho, there are some integration options with third-party apps, but this is limited compared to QuickBooks Online and other competitors.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Zoho Books has four pricing plans. Unlike many of the platforms on this list, there’s a completely free version available for single users. Then there are three paid plans:

• Standard at $15 per month with a three-user limit
• Professional at $40 per month with a five-user limit
• Premium at $60 per month with a ten-user limit

The more expensive the plan, the more features available. 

User reviews 

Zoho Books has an average G2 user rating of 4.5 out of 5, although from a relatively small sample size of just over 280 reviews. As you’d expect from a platform designed for solopreneurs and small businesses, the platform ranks highly for its user-friendliness, as well as its seamless integration with other Zoho tools.

That said, other users point out some of Zoho Books’ limitations, claiming that it simply isn’t as advanced or broad an offering as some of its competitors. 

Summary

With a free version for single users, a simple and intuitive user interface, and a somewhat limited feature set, it’s clear that Zoho Books is aimed at individuals and small businesses — and for that audience, it’s an excellent platform. Larger businesses or those in need of more advanced capabilities may want to look elsewhere, however.

4. FreshBooks

FreshBooks is a cloud accounting platform designed to help individuals and small businesses manage their accounting workflows and collaborate with ease. 

Key features

FreshBooks has most of the features you’d need to manage accounting and payroll for small businesses, including:

• Customized invoices and automatic payment reminders
• Automated recurring billing and payments
• A range of double-entry accounting tools
• Automated expense tracking with real-time data updates
• Project management, team collaboration, and time-tracking
• Simple dashboard and real-time reporting
• Payroll with automated tax calculations and filings

In addition, FreshBooks has its very own AppStore where you can find native integrations with over 100 third-party tools. 

Pros and cons

Pricing

FreshBooks has the following four pricing plans, each with different limits and features:

• Lite at $7.60 per month, for up to five clients
• Plus at $13.20 per month, for up to 50 clients
• Premium at $24 per month, for unlimited clients
• Select, for which you’ll need to contact FreshBooks for a quote

User reviews

FreshBooks has an impressive average G2 rating of 4.5 out of 5 from just over 750 reviews. The most common reason for a positive rating is its ease of use. 

Other users call out some of the limitations of existing features, resulting in the need for time-consuming workarounds.

Summary

FreshBooks is an excellent choice for small businesses and particularly sole proprietors looking for a simple yet effective way to manage their invoicing and accounts. For a more scalable solution and broader accounting features, you might want to choose a more advanced platform, such as QuickBooks Online.

5. Netsuite

Produced by software giant Oracle, NetSuite is a cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform that offers a range of products and services, including financial management, accounting, HR, payroll, and more.

Key features

As a comprehensive business management solution, NetSuite combines multiple platforms in one, making its scope much broader than the other solutions on this list. But here, we’ll focus more on the accounting side of things. Here’s what NetSuite’s cloud accounting software offers:

• General ledger capabilities, including reporting and audit trails
• Tools for managing cash flows, fixed assets, and liquidity
• Automated accounts receivable, accounts payable, and payment processing
• Automated account reconciliation
• Tax management, with detailed reports
• Task automation for a rapid financial close process

In terms of integration, NetSuite’s accounting platform integrates seamlessly with all other NetSuite offerings, which are available at extra cost. So if you want to add payroll capabilities, for example, you’ll need to pay more. NetSuite also offers integration with third-party apps and services via a range of APIs and connectors.

Pros and cons

Pricing

As a highly customizable and flexible solution designed for enterprise use cases, NetSuite doesn’t provide standard pricing. You’ll need to get a quote from the NetSuite team, which will likely differ depending on the specific parts of the platform you want to use and the size of your team.

User reviews

NetSuite has an average G2 rating of  4.0 out of 5 from well over 3000 reviews. Users like its customization options and comprehensive accounting features, including robust reporting.

The flip side of being an advanced platform is that NetSuite is highly complex compared to some of the competitors on this list. In some cases, businesses need external help to maximize the platform’s capabilities.

Summary

NetSuite is a powerful platform that spans multiple use cases — from accounting and financial management to payroll, HR, and client management. This makes it a solid choice for larger businesses looking to centralize their business operations, but smaller businesses looking for a simpler accounting platform will be better suited to some of the alternatives on this list.

6. AccountingSuite

AccountingSuite is a cloud-based accounting and inventory management platform designed primarily for solopreneurs, startups, and small businesses. 

Key features

For a platform aimed at smaller businesses, AccountingSuite packs a pretty big punch, with features spanning accounting, payroll, e-commerce, and more. Here are some of its core features:

• General ledger with audit trails and multi-entity reports
• Tools for project management and time-tracking
• Purchase module for handling purchase orders, vendor bills, inventory receipts, and refunds
• Expense tracking and approvals
• Asset tracking — from hardware and devices to machinery and vehicles
• e-commerce module with multi-channel inventory control
• Integrated payroll with unlimited monthly runs

AccountingSuite also comes with an app library, where you can find a range of native integrations and extensions designed to create a cohesive technology ecosystem.

Pros and cons

Pricing

AccountingSuite offers the following four pricing plans:

• Start-Up at $19 per month
• Business at $99 per month
• Professional at $249 per month
• Pro with eCommerce at $349 per month

User reviews

AccountingSuite has an average G2 rating of 4.4 out of 5 but from a very small sample size of just 70 reviews. Some users claim that despite its clunky user interface, it’s a superior product to QuickBooks Online at a fairer price. 

But it’s not all rosy. Some reviewers point out performance issues, bugs, and poor design.

Summary 

AccountingSuite is a relatively lesser-known platform compared to some of the big hitters on this list. Nevertheless, it offers powerful tools for small businesses, especially those who need a solution for managing inventory and e-commerce. Many people will be put off by the outdated-looking interface, however, which pales in comparison to the user-friendly feel of QuickBooks Online or FreshBooks, for example.

7. Wave

A relative newcomer on the cloud accounting scene, Wave has grown in popularity in recent years thanks to its user-friendly approach and simple invoicing features. 

Key features

Wave offers somewhat basic invoicing and accounting features compared to some of the platforms on this list, but what it does, it does well. Here are its core features:

• Unlimited customizable invoices
• Automated expense tracking and a mobile receipt scanner
• Seamless payment options
• Payroll available as a paid add-on
• Unlimited bank and credit card connections

Pros and cons

Pricing

Wave offers clear and transparent pricing, with two plans available. The first, Starter, is completely free and offers users unlimited invoices, estimates, and bills, as well as a handy dashboard for tracking cash flow. 

The second, Pro, costs $16 per month and includes more standard accounting features. You can also add payroll at a cost of $35 plus $6 per employee/contractor per month.

User reviews

Wave has an average G2 rating of 4.4 out of 5 from just under 300 reviews. Many of the positive reviews focus on how easy to use and accessible the platform is, especially when it comes to invoicing.

Meanwhile, some users claim that Wave’s customer support can be slow to react. 

Summary

Wave is one of the more basic tools on this list and perhaps lacks some of the more advanced features you’d expect from an accounting platform. That said, if your needs are simple, Wave is an excellent choice for invoicing and basic financial management. It’s relatively easy to use, and the free version is a great place to start for solopreneurs and budding businesses.

8. Kashoo

Another accounting platform targeting the small-business accounting niche, Kashoo is one of the lesser-known platforms on this list. How does it stack up against some of the bigger accounting software names? Let’s find out.

Key features

Kashoo describes itself as “the world’s simplest accounting software,” offering a pared-back alternative to some of the more complicated platforms out there. Kashoo offers a couple of different platforms for different business sizes, including:

• TrulySmall — a simplified accounting platform for micro businesses and solopreneurs. Including:
  • Process automation
  • Invoicing and reporting
  • Digital payments
  • Receipt scanning and management
• Kashoo — an accounting platform for small businesses, including:
  • Auto bank imports
  • Bank reconciliations
  • Expense tracking
  • Integrated payroll
  • Detailed reporting

Kashoo also offers native integrations with a range of third-party tools, including payroll and payment providers, but there’s little information about the specific options on the Kashoo website.

Pros and con

Pricing

Kashoo’s two product offerings come with fixed annual pricing. The TrulySmall platform costs $216 per year, while Kashoo accounting software costs $324 per year. Both platforms allow you to add unlimited users at no extra cost.

User reviews

Kashoo has an average G2 rating of 4.6 out of 5 but from just over 50 reviews. As you’d expect from a platform that prides itself on its simplicity, Kashoo users are happy to point out how quick and easy it is to get up and running.

Inevitably, however, Kashoo’s greatest strength also becomes its weakness, with some users pointing out limitations in areas such as integrations and customization, as well as a lack of new features overall.

Summary

If you’re a very small business looking for a bare-bones accounting platform without the complexity of more advanced alternatives, Kashoo is worth looking into. As a direct competitor to QuickBooks Online, however, it falls way short in terms of features and capabilities.

Conclusion 

QuickBooks Online is the clear market leader when it comes to accounting software for small and medium-sized businesses, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only option out there. The best accounting platform will depend on the specific features you need (or don’t need), your budget, integration requirements, and more. 

The QuickBooks Online alternatives we’ve listed in this article all offer something a bit different — from more advanced, enterprise-ready platforms such as Sage Intacct and Netsuite to simple, pared-back apps such as Wave and Kashoo — and everything in between

Whichever platform you go for, we recommend considering how it will complement your existing tech stack. By pairing your accounting software with a comprehensive practice management platform such as TaxDome, you can consolidate your data and tools into two powerful systems. Your accounting software handles the accounting, while TaxDome handles everything else.

To see for yourself how TaxDome can become the operating system for your accounting business, request a demo today!