A micro bubble bursting in the productivity arena?

Posted by Ken
Aug 19, 2015 at 09:55 PM

zoe wrote:
It must be very tough out there for smaller companies to market their
>products/systems to the diverse landscape of large & small companies,
>individual freelancers, and academic/nonprofit users.
> >I’ve repeatedly read that the ultimate cost-benefit analysis is revenue
>vs. support for each class of user. Users who pay less (or nothing) tend
>to become money LOSERS for a company, even if they are evangelical. An
>article I read about the death of free-tier software said that free
>users do recruit more users; the only problem is that they recruit more
>FREE users. And they all need lots of hand-holding, which costs the
>company lots of time, money and manpower.
> >Conversely, larger enterprise customers are more likely to stay on the
>conservative side and stick to Outlook, Sharepoint, and other tested
>enterprise-level software, for all its faults. Even Evernote can’t
>really sell itself as a secure or reliable enough platform to be
>dependable for a sizeable corporation to depend on.
> >And as for us users, I find myself routinely circling back around to
>open-source software, plaintext files, and highly-portable non-database
>systems. I’m tired of fleeing sinking ship after sinking ship…
>

A timely post for me. I wanted to subscribe to Wrike, but their free version was missing some features that was hoping to access. I do not mind paying for software, whether as a purchase or annual payment, but the jump in cost to the next levels was not a small amount. Nonetheless, I called them to ask if there was some middle ground, knowing that it was a long shot. The gentleman that I spoke with seemed very helpful, and did state that the enterprise version of the software ran $1,500USD/yr for 10 users, and that he might be able to work up a price for me. Now, I do not expect good software to be free, but if Adobe can offer their Creative Cloud package (Photoshop and Liightroom) for $120USD/yr, I was hoping that a simpler software package like Wrike could initially be priced at a more competitive rate. I did not want to discuss rates with the rep until I really knew that this was the program that I wanted, so he was kind enough to let me know that I could trial any of the versions when I wished. I realize that the enterprise market is where the money is, but is it really that hard to offer up something in the middle ground? I do not want to be a drain, but I do not have the resources of a company to expense my software. While I was treated very well, I did feel a bit as if I were asking to use the facilities in the first class cabin while riding in coach. It also made me wonder how all of these independent developers who sell their products for $25-75USD survive in the long run, but that is a topic for another discussion and thread.

—Ken