The startup now has 58 apps built on top of its online accounting service by other software shops, and they span the gamut from CRM to mobile expense reporting for Android phones.

Intuit, meanwhile, offers 42 apps in total across all of its products, and just five for QuickBooks, in particular. However, it should be noted that the model is different. Intuit charges its customers for everything — time tracking or online data protection, for example — so these apps are really minor add-ons. With FreshBooks, the apps are truly core enhancements to the online accounting platform. BillFLO is a good example. BillFLO forecasts cash flow, and that forecasting engine, through the app, can sit on top of FreshBooks.

This is how an old-school software company gets off-ed. FreshBooks — which is actually more expensive than QuickBooks, assuming the company is an existing QuickBooks user — becomes so much more than just its core software. It becomes the “Facebook” of accounting software, with all of these other companies, including PayPal and Authorize.net, contributing to making the overall service profoundly better than Intuit’s closed-network QuickBooks. Oh, Intuit is trying. The company has its Intuit Labs thing, and has done “contests” to spur app development, but Intuit, at its core, is a “pay me” company. That’s vastly different from FreshBooks and other online software providers. They are “pay us” companies. While the overall price might equal or even exceed an Intuit’s, “us” beats “me” in today’s software — as Marc Zuckerberg would attest.