I am a qualitative scholar that uses/has used NVivo, Dedoose, MAXQDA, and Atlas. I think which software you use is entirely dependent on what you want to do with it. Are you wanting the software to do the analysis for you (word counts/ word frequency / word proximity)? Are you wanting to code the data (themes, open coding, etc.)? I would say that I used NVivo for several recent projects that included organizational documents, video, audio, and transcripts. It worked well to code everything. I used Dedoose for my dissertation which was great as my advisor took a job across the country during my final year and is web based (the UI for Dedoose is awful though).

I just wanted to clarify a point that's usually overlooked - none of the qualitative software discussed here (nVivo, Atlas.ti, Maxda, dedoose. nudist) actually "analyze" the data for you in the way that quantitative software does. They are more tools for systematically organizing, coding, annotating, visualizing, etc. In essence, you are still doing the analysis yourself, just using the software for assistance in managing and exploring the data. This chart provides a good (though slightly outdated) comparison of what each of the QDA programs are better suited for, depending on what kind of data you're analyzing, what you want to do with it, how much time you have to learn the software, etc: http://website.education.wisc.edu/qdatools/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Software-Comparison.pdf.  In my experience nVivo is most widely used; though it's relatively pricey - there are some open-source packages too. (For quantitative analysis of qualitative data, regressions etc, if you're even interested in doing those - and a lot of people explicitly are not -  you would  probably be best off learning R).

Congrats on passing the proposal! I agree with much of what has been said. I would only ever recommend Dedoose for collaborative projects. NVivo is better for individual projects. Like Methods-Geek, I have also switched to MAXQDA. The reason for that is that it is far superior to all the other programs for integrating both qualitative and quantitative logics of analysis. For instance, qualitative codes can be easily converted into quantitative document variables in MAXQDA, but it was almost impossible to do when I was using NVivo. Granted, that was a decade ago, but I have not regretted the switch.

I use both, below are my impressions, hope it helps, cheers. Dedoose Pros: it is simpler, much easier to collaborate with (cloud based) and is payable on a monthly use basis, Cons : since it is browser based, can get slow and crash, also although you can easily modify your coding tree to create sub codes, in context, it is difficult to split a code, once the excerpt is coded you can relabel it as something else but not easily break it into smaller coded excerpts. I feel this lack of in-text flexibility could potentialy impact your analysis as it makes it harder to evolve from your initial, first cycle coding tree. Nvivo Pros: you can sub code excerpts (lump and detail) including from within -soon to be- parent code excerpts, or on the other hand merge codes (split and gather) at will. the software is computer based, no lagging, very rare crashing. Cons: it is expensive (easily worth 20 months of Dedoose subscription), the learning curve is longuer, it is difficult to collaborate with, but not impossible (you either need to coordinate coders to regularily export and then you gather and consolidate NVP files, or have access to Nvivo servers/ Nvivo for teams which is very expensive-in the thousands USD per year). in brief, it depends: the shorter the analysis timeframe, the more collaborative= Dedoose; the longuer the analysis timeframe, the less collaborative (i.e. PhD thesis)=Nvivo

Alll of the major software packages (ATLAS, Dedoose, NVivo & MAXQDA) do pretty much the same thing -- code and retrieve, plus they have all been competing for so long that they have similar feature sets. So, the main difference is in "look and feel." Fortunately, they all have useful trial versions and extensive video tutorials, so you can try them out first. Also, although I would not consider QDA Miner to be a refined as the others, the minimal version of the program is free. If all you want to do is basic coding and retrieving, then that could be a deciding factor. (But note that the full version of QDA Miner is the most expensive programs out there.)