QuickBooks Online: What It Is, Every Plan and the App
QuickBooks Online is Intuit’s accounting software sold as a monthly subscription you open in a browser. Nothing to install. Five tiers, $0 to $275 a month, and the thing that decides which one you land on is usually how many people need to log in. QBO is the shorthand. The mobile app is free on the paid plans and syncs to the same books.
What QuickBooks Online actually is
Intuit’s own answer to the question is blunt. There is no need to download QuickBooks Online because it is connected to the cloud, which means you can reach it from any device with an internet connection. Open a browser, sign in, your books are there.
That is the split with QuickBooks Desktop. Desktop is software on one machine. Online is a subscription that syncs across computer, tablet and phone, backs your data up, and updates itself. Intuit says you are free to switch plans or cancel at any time, and you can upgrade between Simple Start, Essentials and Plus. QBO is just what accountants and forum posts call it. Same product. Intuit QuickBooks Online is the same thing again, with the parent company’s name on the front.
Setup is quick. Intuit’s own estimate is about five minutes once you have synced your bank or credit card transactions.
Every plan and what it costs
Prices below are the standard monthly rates on Intuit’s pricing page today. The users column is the ceiling that pushes most small businesses up a tier.
| Plan | Monthly | Users | Accountant seats |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 1 | None |
| Simple Start | $38 | 1 | 2 |
| Essentials | $75 | 3 | 2 |
| Plus | $115 | 5 | 2 |
| Advanced | $275 | 25 | 3 |
Accountant seats sit outside the user count, and inviting your accountant is free. So the bookkeeper is not what moves you off Simple Start. A second person in the office is.
Intuit also sells QuickBooks Lite at $20 a month, but it is not on the QuickBooks Online pricing page. It sits in the Solopreneur line: one user, no accountant access, three contractors, unlimited invoices. Useful to know if you are on your own. It is not a sixth rung on the ladder above.
What $0 actually gets you
The Free plan is real, not a trial. It is also capped hard enough that most trades businesses outgrow it in a month.
One user. No accountant access. Two invoices a month. One bank connection. Two receipt uploads a month. Five mileage trips a month. One estimate a month. One sales channel. Support is the one thing Intuit’s own page cannot keep straight: the Free plan card lists chat support, while the comparison table row for product guidance reads no chat or phone. Until Intuit resolves that, treat support on Free as unsettled.
Two things matter more than any of that. Intuit’s own footnote reads: “Mobile app access and third-party integrations not currently available with QuickBooks Free.” So if you want the app in your van, or you want QuickBooks talking to anything else you run, Free is not the plan.
The QuickBooks Online app
Download it from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. It is free with the paid plans and it syncs with your QuickBooks Online account so the numbers on the phone are the numbers on the desk.
What people actually use it for: photographing receipts, auto-tracking miles by GPS, building and sending invoices and estimates from photos of handwritten notes, and checking what is coming in against what is going out. Taking in-person card payments through the app is iOS only.
Phone support is included with a paid subscription from Simple Start upward, and free during the 30-day trial. Integration counts depend on where you look. Intuit’s comparison table caps advanced app integrations at two on Essentials and Plus, and makes them unlimited on Advanced.
90% off, or 30 days free, not both
New customers get a choice at signup, and it is genuinely one or the other. Either 90% off for three months, or a 30-day free trial. Intuit’s terms say offers for the same product cannot be combined, and both require you to be a new QuickBooks Online customer signing up on a monthly plan.
Work out which is worth more before you click. Three months at 90% off Plus is $34.50 against a $345 list, so you keep $310.50. Thirty days free on the same plan is $115 saved and then full price from day 31. The discount saves more money on every paid tier, Simple Start included: three months at $3.80 keeps $102.60 where the trial keeps $38. There is no tier where that flips. The trial wins only if you genuinely might walk away.
The one thing every tier stops short of
Free through Advanced, the story ends at the same place. The customer pays, QuickBooks Online marks the invoice paid, and nobody asks them for a Google review. That ask is the highest-value thirty seconds in the whole job, and it is the one part still sitting on a sticky note. Trophy Jar picks it up there. Connect QuickBooks Online, choose the invoice status that means the work is finished, and the customer gets a text or an email, their pick, asking for a review on Google or wherever else you want it to land. Texts go from your own dedicated local number, and we handle 10DLC registration end to end for US businesses. Launch is $9 a month for your first two months, then $29, with 100 texts a month. Growth is $19 for the first two months, then $49, with 1,000. Sign up now and that rate is locked in as long as you stay subscribed. Intuit puts its own 4.3 out of 5 from more than 6,700 Capterra reviews at the foot of its pricing page. Reviews sell accounting software. They sell drain cleaning and dog grooming too.