Joel on Software should be essential reading for anyone in the business of creating and selling online software. Joel has huge experience in the field and his personal blog is a wonderful showcase of useful information and interesting anecdotes.
His recent essay: Camels and Rubber Duckies is another must-read even if the title seems rather esoteric. In a nut shell it is a point of discussion on selecting pricing for your software products and something to keep in mind if you ever decide to sell the fruits of your labour. There are no firm answers but it definitely gets you thinking. It covers some of the factors we take into consideration when pricing our products. Contrary to popular belief, we don’t simply pluck a figure from thin air and use it, we actually do a lot of calculation based on demand, cost of support, product worth and projected sales (which is tied to the price model we select).
I firmly believe that any company has to constantly change and evolve to survive and succeed in this market and staying stagnant for too long or using a model which does not account for growth is a very bad idea. Our main competitor is actually using their stagnation as a selling point. They, for some reason, believe that not reviewing their pricing and licensing models for over four years is a good thing and creating an unscalable support structure with over-promised support targets is a secure and long-term business model.
Takes all sorts, I suppose.
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I see what you mean about the “other” place. I just visited “them” and saw virtually no difference from when I visited a year ago.
No drivers for anything other than MySQL, no hosted plans, no trial versions, no reseller opportunities and no major official plugins.
Their equivalent of “all the sad people like me who visit company forums every day for fun” must lead very dull lives.
Beeing a freeware developer I never thought about pricing, but this was definitely an interesting read (I already read about it on Zef’s blog).
I wish you a very good new year!
Tis a good reading…
I will sure use it for my pricing structures.
Chad
Can’t say I have anything that needs pricing at this point, but it was certainly an interesting read.
Your main competitor has essentially had the same pricing model 4 years ago that you finally figured out makes the most sense and duplicated. At least give credit, where credit is due.
Those that do not change, will die. Your competitors are not growing as I see it. You are. When you are #1, you can’t rest on your laurels. Everyone is gunning for you. You must get even better when you are #1!