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As the result of a new project with a user of aC, I am new to it. Also impartial, so I hope what follows helps...
You have a product. A lot of time was spent developing and testing it. You have a small user base who whilst using the product during R & D effectively tested and made use of it. You now want a return for your time and other expense - and all the hard work.
Your market is wide but at the moment the user base is predominantly project developers. They tend to communicate through technical and other forums, so any news you give will travel fast to a wider audience. Your main competitor is BaseCamp, widely used, accepted and referred to in media and forums. You need to attack this market.
Your mode of attack will be a) branding and b) pricing. Your branding is/will be something like a) Excellent project management; useful; accepted; must-have; easy to learn; supported; working; 1st class project management tool. The branding exercise needs an edge. That edge, if you are wise, will be price, because you will attract BaseCamp users.
Your price should reflect your main CURRENT user base - make them buzz and do a lot of talking for you. You seem to have failed here. From the feedback above a per-projects PER ANNUM pricing structure of <10:Free; 10-20:$25; 21-75:$99; 76-150:$199; 150+:$499 will give you a better start than at present. Per annum will give repeated income and therefore business stability. It is competitive as compared to BaseCamp. It takes interested users from "Not too much to pay" to "Cannot do without it so will pay the extra" without losing business.
You should test your branding and pricing structure over a short period (say 2 months). Announce the test to people like TechCrunch - that will get you interest. Adjust according to feedback and results. From the results, project the future asset base of the business - from that you can begin to calculate a future sale price of the product or company, or attract major investment for future pursuits. That's where the money is.
Get it right - you have an active long-term product and a lucrative business. Get it wrong, as you seem to have done here - the resulting bushfire will forever wreck your market: and your efforts.
Branding and pricing - that seems to be your key.
Good luck!
You have a product. A lot of time was spent developing and testing it. You have a small user base who whilst using the product during R & D effectively tested and made use of it. You now want a return for your time and other expense - and all the hard work.
Your market is wide but at the moment the user base is predominantly project developers. They tend to communicate through technical and other forums, so any news you give will travel fast to a wider audience. Your main competitor is BaseCamp, widely used, accepted and referred to in media and forums. You need to attack this market.
Your mode of attack will be a) branding and b) pricing. Your branding is/will be something like a) Excellent project management; useful; accepted; must-have; easy to learn; supported; working; 1st class project management tool. The branding exercise needs an edge. That edge, if you are wise, will be price, because you will attract BaseCamp users.
Your price should reflect your main CURRENT user base - make them buzz and do a lot of talking for you. You seem to have failed here. From the feedback above a per-projects PER ANNUM pricing structure of <10:Free; 10-20:$25; 21-75:$99; 76-150:$199; 150+:$499 will give you a better start than at present. Per annum will give repeated income and therefore business stability. It is competitive as compared to BaseCamp. It takes interested users from "Not too much to pay" to "Cannot do without it so will pay the extra" without losing business.
You should test your branding and pricing structure over a short period (say 2 months). Announce the test to people like TechCrunch - that will get you interest. Adjust according to feedback and results. From the results, project the future asset base of the business - from that you can begin to calculate a future sale price of the product or company, or attract major investment for future pursuits. That's where the money is.
Get it right - you have an active long-term product and a lucrative business. Get it wrong, as you seem to have done here - the resulting bushfire will forever wreck your market: and your efforts.
Branding and pricing - that seems to be your key.
Good luck!
Well put MikeA..Just found an other(yes, there is competition out there) solution which kind of have a different and well thought pricing structure:
http://www.stuffedguys.com/products/factory/buy.html
If ActiveCollab would go that route I maybe would change my mind on the whole deal(but who knowns, haven't even tested it yet). Otherwise i will run with the Factory Nova.
http://www.stuffedguys.com/products/factory/buy.html
If ActiveCollab would go that route I maybe would change my mind on the whole deal(but who knowns, haven't even tested it yet). Otherwise i will run with the Factory Nova.
Hm.. I feel sorry for all the people who sank hours into the open-source part of the development only to be alienated by the arrival of a higher-than-other-tools out there costs.
I'm immediately put off by this and that's before I explored whether it was worth it or not. Ta ta activeCollab.
I'm immediately put off by this and that's before I explored whether it was worth it or not. Ta ta activeCollab.
p i x e ! p u s h e r e x t r o r d i n a i r e .
Pro
From the last comment to the post activeCollab 1.0: Plans and Prices:
"About the price – we never said that we’ll compete on price or that we want to be a cheap alternative to any existing application"
Ilija, stop kidding, there's still lots of buzz out there about the competition between activecollab and basecamp or other alternatives. You never said it to be wrong.
The pricing plan is just comic, a jump of these proportions in the commercial arena has no previous examples in the open source history (at least I can't remember, do you?).
And, after all, if someone has to invest in project management systems, will feel more comfortable with actors with much more experience (and maybe a bigger staff to count on for development). Read 37 Signals, but there's a lot of qualified competition out there. What's your plus?
"About the price – we never said that we’ll compete on price or that we want to be a cheap alternative to any existing application"
Ilija, stop kidding, there's still lots of buzz out there about the competition between activecollab and basecamp or other alternatives. You never said it to be wrong.
The pricing plan is just comic, a jump of these proportions in the commercial arena has no previous examples in the open source history (at least I can't remember, do you?).
And, after all, if someone has to invest in project management systems, will feel more comfortable with actors with much more experience (and maybe a bigger staff to count on for development). Read 37 Signals, but there's a lot of qualified competition out there. What's your plus?
Pro
I wrote another post with links to some activecollab alternatives, both free and commercial (and cheaper) but I've been censored.
I know, maybe my post is not what I call fairplay, but your move was unfair too... according to a lot of people, and I really mean... a lot!
Don't get angered Ilija, the fact is that you just disattended your promises... There's nothing wrong in big bucks software, but it's wrong to keep people focused on activecollab, with an implicit promise to release a free open source version and another, cheap, commercial version (I mean less then 200$... and I do mean less, not $199.99).
What made you change your mind? Strange influences?
I know, maybe my post is not what I call fairplay, but your move was unfair too... according to a lot of people, and I really mean... a lot!
Don't get angered Ilija, the fact is that you just disattended your promises... There's nothing wrong in big bucks software, but it's wrong to keep people focused on activecollab, with an implicit promise to release a free open source version and another, cheap, commercial version (I mean less then 200$... and I do mean less, not $199.99).
What made you change your mind? Strange influences?
Hi Ilija,
I use and test ur (cool) product since 0.6; now I haven't appreciate your pricing proposal.
This onion release is worse than the pricing of windows vista licenses!
Please, reconsider (strongly) your proposal: is impossible to buy licenses so expensives (and the "cheaps" version is good only to test the product.. For business I can't consider the 5 projects limit, of course..)
I use and test ur (cool) product since 0.6; now I haven't appreciate your pricing proposal.
This onion release is worse than the pricing of windows vista licenses!
Please, reconsider (strongly) your proposal: is impossible to buy licenses so expensives (and the "cheaps" version is good only to test the product.. For business I can't consider the 5 projects limit, of course..)
Staff
Ilija Studen
on Sep 18. 2007. 2:41 pm
Hi, hi,
We heard you loud and clear. You find number of project too limiting and initial cost is high. Also, there are other issues but these are the most important ones. We'll see what we can do about that, but please don't expected a full blown project management and collaboration tool for $49 or cheap alternative to existing products.
We heard you loud and clear. You find number of project too limiting and initial cost is high. Also, there are other issues but these are the most important ones. We'll see what we can do about that, but please don't expected a full blown project management and collaboration tool for $49 or cheap alternative to existing products.
activeCollab Team Member
Pro
One interesting price and business model is SugarCRM. Simple product line, full blown features with reasonable prices, but also good community release.
Just got one idea: for selling as many AC1.0 as possible at the launch might be a group buy model.
1) You set price steps, how many buyers you need to drop the price: 10 buyers = 1500$ each, 20 buyers = 1100$ each, 50 buyers = 500$... etc
2) Set a date when group buy ends
3) Build a plugin to this site, where we can monitor the amount of buyers. Is is good marketing effort as users can get the software cheaper while collecting more buyers for you. You get more cash faster, we get software cheaper.
Then we can count... if the pro version price drops to 199$: how many buyers we need that it´s possible to drop the price and you still make a business with it. Win-Win situation here :)
Just got one idea: for selling as many AC1.0 as possible at the launch might be a group buy model.
1) You set price steps, how many buyers you need to drop the price: 10 buyers = 1500$ each, 20 buyers = 1100$ each, 50 buyers = 500$... etc
2) Set a date when group buy ends
3) Build a plugin to this site, where we can monitor the amount of buyers. Is is good marketing effort as users can get the software cheaper while collecting more buyers for you. You get more cash faster, we get software cheaper.
Then we can count... if the pro version price drops to 199$: how many buyers we need that it´s possible to drop the price and you still make a business with it. Win-Win situation here :)
In addition to the overall price concerns that others have raised, I am worried about the implications of requiring a subscription to receive updates. Are critical security updates only going to available via subscription? Because, if so, that effectively increases the price of aC by making subscriptions mandatory. I understand charging for feature improvements or for new plugins, but charging for security updates rubs me the wrong way, ESPECIALLY since I am running your code on my servers. Could you clarify your position on this?
redndahead
on Sep 18. 2007. 5:46 pm
I won't give you a thought on pricing one way or the other, but since you asked how many projects people have. I work for a college and currently I have 8 projects that I am currently working on, these are web design related projects. Even after I'm done I would like to keep those active so people can see the work and the history of the project. We are a fairly small university so we only have 5 developers in my group. They all probably have the same amount of projects so within our group we would need approximately 40+ projects.
