Todd,
My response really had nothing to do with you, but was my reaction to
SmarterTools and how they have gone past the limit of what the bulk of
the market is willing to pay. They could still increase revenues in
other ways, such as pushing software upgrade agreements at lower prices,
pushing out new fantastic functionality that everyone will want to have,
and actually marketing the availability of these things instead of
expecting their customers to always come to them. They could make up in
volume that they would be losing in gross profit.
So because they are boneheads, we are paying more and more. My
"upgrade" this year will cost nearly as much as my full version did
before. Those are sharp increases in price, and need I not remind
everyone what happened to Ipswitch's business when they pulled this stunt?
Matt
Todd Richards wrote:
Matt --
I'm not arguing, but simply asking as I'm looking at moving to SM.
Our license with Ipswitch is 3x that of the same version of SM. The
service agreement that we purchased -- but never used (because I never
had enough faith in the new version of IMail) is almost twice the cost
of purchasing SM new. From what I've heard from everyone I've talked
to, SM actually works, so the support calls are minimal anyway. You
do get free updates within the version. So if once a year I have to
buy the newest version at 65% of the retail, which is still much
cheaper than Imail, I'm not sure what the difference is?
My SA with Imail actually just expired as I haven't had a chance to
test SM yet. So my dilemma is do I renew my Imail SA at almost
$1000,so I can continue running 8.22, or purchase a brand new version
of SM for half that through Declude, and have the features that work
that we've been waiting for?
As for the software protection, I was working with a rep from
SmarterMail at the start of February. He informed me right then and
there that they were planning a release at the end of Q1, and that I
would get the new update. Doing the math, that is almost 45 days on
the bat. So either they actually keep their promises (unlike
Ipswitch) or they would have stretched that time to take care of me.
Again, maybe I'm missing something so this wasn't to start an
argument. And I apologize for continuing the OT email.
Todd
*From:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *On Behalf Of
*Matt
*Sent:* Monday, March 10, 2008 5:17 PM
*To:* declude.junkmail@declude.com
*Subject:* Re: AW: AW: [Declude.JunkMail] Hardware upgrade -Software
Crossgrade?
Wow. One thing immediately pops into my head...these people are
greedy as hell!
Prices continue to rise with each successive version, and they
continue this odd behavior of not selling software subscriptions, but
instead charging 65% of the original price for upgrades. This might
be all fine and dandy except for the fact that they are on a one-year
upgrade cycle, they stop updating previous versions, and you don't get
a support contract with your purchase. Of course this flies in the
face of the reality of the market where hosting is heavily
commoditized and only getting worse.
SmarterMail works well, but it's a shame that they don't understand
the economies of their customers, and that works against them. I
would definitely argue that by not offering a software subscription at
a reasonable and standard market rate of 30% of full retail price,
they fail to capture a good deal of upgrade potential and therefore
upgrade revenue, and they lose goodwill by having fewer customers due
to this pricing. They also lose customers by only offering 45 days
(formerly 30 days) of protection for new purchases, so anyone thinking
about buying it now would be better off waiting for the release just
to guarantee that they weren't stuck on an unsupported version of the
product. That's hugely boneheaded of them. So it would be close to a
wash in revenue to do something as typical and expected as to have a
software subscription for a standard market rate.
Matt
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