Drake Software Reviews 364

We have been with Drake Software since the mid 1980's. They have been a huge part of our growth and progress.

Here are 3 reasons why we love Drake Software:
1) Service
2) Service
3) Service

Integration with Drake Portals for document exchange, E-signatures & payment for our services. Can be digital start to finish all within the software.

I have used Drake 30+ years. The software continues to be one of the best out there. I highly recommend Drake; the software is continually evolving to make my job easier in these changing times. With Drake the programmers are at update schools to interact with users and gain insight as to how we use the software. Support is responsive when needed and will go out of their way to help even if the issue is not software related.

I have been using Drake software for over 15 years. Last year the software was generating estimated tax payments for clients who have never made quarterly payments and have simple returns. I'm not sure how the software came up with figures that were calculated for each quarter. I reported it in late March and early April of 2023, however I was only given instructions on how to override it upon several follow up calls. Jimmy, the proclaimed highest level of customer care had no answer for the overpriced glitchy software, even when i followed up today, July 27th 2023. A patch was never created to fix the issue. I have quite a number of customers that continue to be affected by this software issue. The generation of calculated quarterly estimated tax payments causes the client to owe more than what the software concludes without overriding the estimated tax payments to zero for each quarter. No one in this company cares to be held accountable by addressing why it happens or what can be done to remedy the problem. We pay entirely too much money for software that does not comply with IRS regulations. I do not recommend a company with no integrity. I am Dr. DuPree, and can further explain to anyone who cares to know why Drake Software is no longer reliable and why the company has poor business practices.

Awful Company and terrible software. Don't you dare make a mistake on pay-per-return or they will refuse to give money back even if they didn't provide the service. Very dishonest, unethical people. They software itself is pretty bad. It would take less time to prepare simple returns on paper because of all their little nuances scattered in all nooks and crannies throughout the software. Their lower prices reflect their quality. Best to stay away and find a tax preparation software that will actually work for you.

DO NOT DOWNLOAD their demo. They "do not have an uninstaller" and simply deleting the files in File Explorer will leave residuals all over your hard drive. Once they know you are not purchasing their software, they come completely unhelpful.

I use right networks billed through Drake, I cancelled my user in May after tax season, I was still billed in June I called right networks and was told that I needed to contact drake as they are the billing agent, after cancelling the user there is a second step to stop billing that I was unaware of, I am a new user to hosting, they refused to refund my lousy $99 even though my 2nd user had no access and could not use the login in June, this is just horrible customer service, I could choose many hosting companies, but chose Drake as I love their tax software, and felt as if they were a reputable company even though they were more expensive then their competitors. I am shocked at their unwillingness to correct the issue, and I will be moving my hosting to another platform.

I switched to Drake Tax 2 years ago after leaving my tax software provider of 15 years due to hefty price increase in 2021. After speaking with Drake Tax sales department in 2021, they assured me that they only have a minimal increase each year or none at all. So here I am 2 years later and they have increased the price by over 25%. When I called my sales rep, he stated that the company (Drake Tax) was purchased by a hedge fund in 2022 and that the price would be significantly increasing each year. It has already increased over $500 putting the final bill over $2000.
Aside from the pricing issues, their support is often slow to respond, occasionally rude and multiple times they would promise a return call which I would never receive. Last season there was an issue with their software that miscalculated my clients Estimated Tax Penalties (line 38) and the IRS had to issue a second refund for those clients. It's not exactly fun explaining a software error to my clients. This reflects badly on me and my office.
So where does this leave me? Another software conversion? Wasting time and money to convert all clients and train on yet another software program? The Drake sales staff are like used car salesmen. Trust at your peril.

First I have to start off by noting that the end of season survey that was supposed to be available until 5/31/2023 is already unavailable on 5/30/2023 so Drake is not holding true to date promises which is disappointing since I intentionally tried to take that time to compile a thoughtful review.

Moving on, I have 7 areas I found where Drake could use some additional development and improvement in their Tax software and related products and services.

1. The Drake Portals or Secure File Pro app is in need of a preparer interface. At a minimum that interface would allow preparers to message with clients with the next desired feature being the ability to access client account set-up and finally showing a listing of documents uploaded even if there is no ability to open or review the documents would be nice.

2. Drake e-Sign pricing needs to become more competitive with other products in the market. For this past filing season it was over-priced compared with the competition and it lacked the option for an unlimited signature event package.

3. The Pay-Per-Return package should allow for the SSN on a return to be updated or modified as this is allowed in the unlimited package. The disallowance of this function simply appears to be used to incentivize preparers to purchase the unlimited package or force preparers to collect payment before services are rendered or incur extra unnecessary costs from clients who decide not to file through the preparer. The fact that the function exists in unlimited packages shows there's no tax authority or data restriction and it's cruel to force preparers into such business operation decisions.

4. Drake Tax could use to incorporate the ability to store payment information in the Pay-Per-Return software to expedite the ability to purchase more returns. Alternatively, Drake could offer a consolidated location for product purchasing as discussed in the next point.

5. For this past season purchasing software, e-sign events, and other options was available in the account website while the Pay-Per-Return software required return purchasing to be done from inside the software. Payment information can be stored in the account website for an expedited purchasing experience while the software is not able to store that information as noted previously. This inconsistency and separated purchasing location is an unnecessary inconvenience and delay for tax preparers and administrators.

6. Perhaps this point is due to my inexperience with the offerings during my first year having my own subscription to the Tax software but it seems help resources lack clarity on when they involve communication with a person compared to searching published materials. It would be nice to have some indication to know when entering a help resource if you'll be connected to a person by entering that resource.

7. Finally malfunctions and bugs in the Tax software should not require a phone call to be reported to the appropriate team. Early in this past season I identified what turned out to be an issue in the software causing a diagnostic error in filing the AZ S-corp return because the software was incorrectly pulling a formatted phone number to a field in the AZ return. While identifying this issue to a chat representative I was told I had to call the support team to get the issue reported as a bug or malfunction because the chat support I was told the chat support team was not allowed to make that report. When I did call the support team, there was nothing more to be done by the phone support representative other than making the report to notify the appropriate team. This lack of permissions for the chat representatives causes an unnecessary delay in getting attention to issues in the software and may even result in some issues never getting reported. I understand there may be a need for representatives to have a requisite skill level for reporting software issues to be resolved but this can still be done through the chat support with the use of escalation within the chat support team.

I'm hopeful to see improvement in at least a few of these areas before the next filing season begins as I've already purchased my subscription for next year.

Identified a WY state tax problem and the support team placed a trouble ticket because it could not be explained but I never heard back. I had to send back several WY address returns because Drake refused to accept WY. Additionally....This software is NOT user friendly - I wanted Drake to work!

I cant import data by uploading W2 or 1099 forms.
Had an issue with Drake not allowing me to efile return I had already paid for, now that is fixed but I can no longer print anything. Drake acts like it is going thru the process of creating a pdf but nothing ever shows up.

We think we will be using other software for TY2023

Your customer service is phenomenal. I am new to Drake and had some software questions and had to call in a couple times because things weren't making sense. They answered my questions immediately and correctly.

Unable to get software working didn't even file a single tax returns asked for a refund gave me the finger

I've been using Drake since 2015. I find the product pretty solid. The support is great. The only weakness is in Ohio cities', which is found with all tax software. The changes just prior and during the 2022 filing season have been cumbersome. I am glad the different sign-ons have been consolidated but the instructions on the resulting screens are unhelpful.

I have a client with about 50 rental properties. When the file was rolled over this year, the properties were all renumbered and some were missing. There is no way to fix the numbering on the properties. I called support and she sent me some knowledge base articles which indicate that when a preparer sets up a new property, the software assigns an MFC number to that property and then the preparer has to use the same MFC number for the assets. What am I supposed to do when all of the assets have been renumbered by the software? Go through all the assets and figure out what property they go to and renumber all the assets?

When she couldn’t give me any better information, she hung up on me.

I understand that the software has been sold. I will not renew this year.

I've been with Drake for about 11 or 12 years.

Sadness: No Business Returns Included: cannot use all the 1040s allotted (10) and they want $45 per business/trust/nonprofit return. Local customer for 6 years, they changed the rules for 2022 with minimal notification and a lot of cost to me. When I asked for help they dismissed my concerns like I did not matter. Now the software costs $345 + 45 *7 = $615. I called, I wrote emails, I talked to the sales team. I do 7 trust/990 returns. So it is $345 for the software + $45 per return. The unlimited version costs $1,800. There are no promotions for the pay as you go version. Drake has chosen profit over nonprofits. I will not follow their lead, I will not pass the price increase along to the non-profits. I will be absorbing this cost, rather than hurting a small nonprofit.

It is February 28, 2023 and Maryland tax returns still have TAXPAYER COPY ONLY - DON NOT MAIL THIS FORM on their tax returns and payment coupons. I am literally going onto the Maryland website and creating payment coupons so my Maryland clients can pay their Maryland taxes. This is also on their Maryland Trust tax returns that CANNOT be electronically filed and HAVE to be mailed to Maryland.
I can live with the crap phone tree. I cannot live with not being able to file hundreds of Maryland tax returns.
I have called several other software providers and Drake is the ONLY PROFESSIONAL SOFTWARE PROVIDER that is having this issue.
I have called Drake on at least a half a dozen occasions on this and get fed the same line.
I have changed software providers before, it is a major league pain, but rest assured, I will do it again.
Drake you are going to lose those #1 statuses this year when we rate what you have done. You are quickly becoming the Turbo Tax of the industry.

The company was recently sold. My prior review was based on the original owners. This just goes to show you the dramatic difference. It is quite sad that they have in less than 1 year destroyed the Drake's good name.

I've parsed Drake for their customer support always answering the phone on the third or forth ring. but this year 2023 I can't get through. they have a automated system with the most annoying music. Getting help was easy but now it's like we got your money now shut up and wait. I love the software 5-star, but the support has gone out the window.

I have a small tax firm . I bought e-signatures that my clients could not open up . I asked for refund and they denied . This goes against their return policy. The manager was rude and made me feel uncomfortable .

After running Drake Software for more than 15 years I am sad to say this stuff is total junk. Drake sold us long time preparers out and down the river. They do not care. I would not have thought Phil Drake would have done that. Sold to a foreign company to bolster their "tax act software" thats always been junk .

I have had several critical issues in the last two months. Including the inability to simply renew my software.

Look to other software. Unless you want an english company helping you do US returns.