For better or worse, all of the major qualitative analysis programs are very competitive with regard to the range of features they offer and the prices they charge. But you might look into Dedoose, which is cloud based, so you don't have to worry about compatibility, and which charges by hour of usage.
Given that you have concerns over cost, I would still offer Atlas.ti as an option that is worth looking into. As David L Morgan has noted, most software these days are fairly similar in terms of features, but I have found Atlas.ti to be fairly comprehensive and flexible, and very powerful in its data organization features.
Eric's suggestion of Weft QDA is a good one, though this software is no longer being updated/supported/debugged, so it's definitely a "use at your own risk" thing. I gather that there is now a free version of QDA Miner ("Lite"); here is a link: http://provalisresearch.com/products/qualitative-data-analysis-software/freeware/
I do not know how powerful/useful this will be compared to what you've been using. Depending on your research questions, you also might find Pennebaker's Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) helpful.