5 ms·

Hi, this is great. I'd gladly pay $99 for having such a convenient helper. However, I'm sad to see it's a temporary license. This is not SaaS, but priced like o

by patates 10y ago

Hi, this is great. I'd gladly pay $99 for having such a convenient helper. However, I'm sad to see it's a temporary license. This is not SaaS, but priced like one. Can't you make it $X for the product + 1 year of updates? I understand that you need sustainability but you can seek for that on enterprise support deals and by convincing users to renew their license after a year to get a newer version.

HCIdivision17 10y ago
With the coupon code in this thread, I was willing to go in on it, because it's comparable to what I pay for SSMS Tools. It's really really handy to be able to query an Excel table; a raw query window in SSMS is just about my favorite tool, but you can't beat being able to just get your hands right on the data like in Excel. Ideally though? I would really like to have a one-time purchase option. I buy this for myself, though I work in a company, because this is a tool I particularly find useful. In a year it's going to just stop working, and I won't remember why, because I won't remember paying a license for it. Then I'll have to look up the email and do all the nonsense to figure out what my login is and buy it again. And that just sucks. I've dropped a lot of services because I just don't need them enough for that. But I'm hoping this works into my flow well enough.
- anakic 10y ago
  Thanks for your purchase!:) I'm really glad you like it. One thing to note - since the db engine is running in the same process as Excel it can interact with it. There are some nice things it can do because of this, for instance, SQL-based conditional formatting (e.g. there's a SetFontColor function), calling VBA functions from SQL and a bunch more. There are also some other quite cool functions, e.g. replacex and regex_split, levdist, eval and others. The QuickQueries dialog has some built-in queries to check out if you're interested in what these can do. As for permanent licenses, I understand the concern. If I do end up going offering permanent licenses for professional licenses, I'll either upgrade the existing licenses or offer a paid upgrade to the permanent license to cover any price difference.
  - HCIdivision17 10y ago
    I'll be honest, I didn't read the full feature list. I looked at some of the quick queries and was really happy to see some of them. Yeah, the amount of intellectual violence I'll be able to perpetrate against my data is just staggering. Regex in Excel has always be a bit of a slog, but to do it in SQL in Excel? Gosh. That's almost worth the price of adminssion right there. (Ever try to conditionally refactor a screwy OPC itempath based on an arbitrary spec and bad naming conventions in a cobbled together dump from an overworked customer engineer? Swiss army chainsaws are the only elegant solution there.)
    - anakic 10y ago
      Exactly, you can really go to town on your data, get nasty with it:) I love regex myself, I feel like a ninja using them:) The replacex function was one of the first ones I implemented. Regex_split is the latest one and I love it (the single post on the QueryStorm blog is about that one). If you're .NET-savvy, check out the "eval" function, you can implement a function as a C#-like lambda expression. I did a poor job explaining what the plugin can do, QuickQueries is a step in that direction, but I only prepared a few. Plus they need short videos or at least blog posts to go along with them.
anakic 10y ago
Hi patates. I get your point. As a user, I'd want that too. I had previously priced the professional license at $149 as a one-off price, but then noticed companies were buying those instead of the enterprise ones, and getting unlimited licenses. I'd definitely like to keep the subscription model for enterprise licenses, but would not mind having the private ones be a one-off price. I'll have to think about that. If I do that at some point, I'll change the existing licenses to permanent, to not be a jerk to existing customers:)
- eitland 10y ago
  JetBrains which creates IntelliJ etc is nice this way, they give you a permanent license to the last version released while you were still a customer (provided you are a customer for more than x months first.) I find this both smart and nice: you can pay monthly and still get a permanent license so you won't be trapped. Full disclosure: I use Netbeans which is free from the start and which I like better anyway, I'm just saying Jetbrains seems to be a nice company ;-)
  - anakic 10y ago
    Yeah, something like that might be the way to do it. Cut off old licenses from new versions but leave it functioning indefinitely with old versions. Offer a paid upgrade option. I think I like that option.
    - seanp2k2 10y ago
      Always seemed like a fair system to me as well. You're paying for a year of updates, then after that it'll continue to work and receive security-critical updates, but you won't get the new features. Of course, it's possible to totally plan features out over the years to encourage people to upgrade, or e.g. Hold back something many have wanted in order to release it with the next big version where people would get cut off, but alas.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
WhitneyLand 10y ago
I would suggest leaving the pricing as is. We know the climbing Everest reality of building software for money. It's an incredible amount of work and a long shot to keep going for any length of time. Subscription is really necessary to keep great releases new releases coming steadily and to deliver quality support. I can see the reasoning of making the license permanent without future support and updates, but I still don't begrudge anyone for not doing that. I'm a developer and not out to try and push the rest of the industry down to the 99 cent app store model.
Meph504 10y ago
I have to agree, that the SaaS pricing model is a something that kills this for my company. I have no problem with you doing a phone home to verify installation, etc... Until this pricing model is changed, I will have to pass or wait for an alternative. It's a shame too, because this seems like a great product.

by patates 10y ago

HCIdivision17 10y ago

With the coupon code in this thread, I was willing to go in on it, because it's comparable to what I pay for SSMS Tools. It's really really handy to be able to query an Excel table; a raw query window in SSMS is just about my favorite tool, but you can't beat being able to just get your hands right on the data like in Excel. Ideally though? I would really like to have a one-time purchase option. I buy this for myself, though I work in a company, because this is a tool I particularly find useful. In a year it's going to just stop working, and I won't remember why, because I won't remember paying a license for it. Then I'll have to look up the email and do all the nonsense to figure out what my login is and buy it again. And that just sucks. I've dropped a lot of services because I just don't need them enough for that. But I'm hoping this works into my flow well enough.

anakic 10y ago
Thanks for your purchase!:) I'm really glad you like it. One thing to note - since the db engine is running in the same process as Excel it can interact with it. There are some nice things it can do because of this, for instance, SQL-based conditional formatting (e.g. there's a SetFontColor function), calling VBA functions from SQL and a bunch more. There are also some other quite cool functions, e.g. replacex and regex_split, levdist, eval and others. The QuickQueries dialog has some built-in queries to check out if you're interested in what these can do. As for permanent licenses, I understand the concern. If I do end up going offering permanent licenses for professional licenses, I'll either upgrade the existing licenses or offer a paid upgrade to the permanent license to cover any price difference.
- HCIdivision17 10y ago
  I'll be honest, I didn't read the full feature list. I looked at some of the quick queries and was really happy to see some of them. Yeah, the amount of intellectual violence I'll be able to perpetrate against my data is just staggering. Regex in Excel has always be a bit of a slog, but to do it in SQL in Excel? Gosh. That's almost worth the price of adminssion right there. (Ever try to conditionally refactor a screwy OPC itempath based on an arbitrary spec and bad naming conventions in a cobbled together dump from an overworked customer engineer? Swiss army chainsaws are the only elegant solution there.)
  - anakic 10y ago
    Exactly, you can really go to town on your data, get nasty with it:) I love regex myself, I feel like a ninja using them:) The replacex function was one of the first ones I implemented. Regex_split is the latest one and I love it (the single post on the QueryStorm blog is about that one). If you're .NET-savvy, check out the "eval" function, you can implement a function as a C#-like lambda expression. I did a poor job explaining what the plugin can do, QuickQueries is a step in that direction, but I only prepared a few. Plus they need short videos or at least blog posts to go along with them.

anakic 10y ago

Hi patates. I get your point. As a user, I'd want that too. I had previously priced the professional license at $149 as a one-off price, but then noticed companies were buying those instead of the enterprise ones, and getting unlimited licenses. I'd definitely like to keep the subscription model for enterprise licenses, but would not mind having the private ones be a one-off price. I'll have to think about that. If I do that at some point, I'll change the existing licenses to permanent, to not be a jerk to existing customers:)

eitland 10y ago
JetBrains which creates IntelliJ etc is nice this way, they give you a permanent license to the last version released while you were still a customer (provided you are a customer for more than x months first.) I find this both smart and nice: you can pay monthly and still get a permanent license so you won't be trapped. Full disclosure: I use Netbeans which is free from the start and which I like better anyway, I'm just saying Jetbrains seems to be a nice company ;-)
- anakic 10y ago
  Yeah, something like that might be the way to do it. Cut off old licenses from new versions but leave it functioning indefinitely with old versions. Offer a paid upgrade option. I think I like that option.
  - seanp2k2 10y ago
    Always seemed like a fair system to me as well. You're paying for a year of updates, then after that it'll continue to work and receive security-critical updates, but you won't get the new features. Of course, it's possible to totally plan features out over the years to encourage people to upgrade, or e.g. Hold back something many have wanted in order to release it with the next big version where people would get cut off, but alas.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

WhitneyLand 10y ago

I would suggest leaving the pricing as is. We know the climbing Everest reality of building software for money. It's an incredible amount of work and a long shot to keep going for any length of time. Subscription is really necessary to keep great releases new releases coming steadily and to deliver quality support. I can see the reasoning of making the license permanent without future support and updates, but I still don't begrudge anyone for not doing that. I'm a developer and not out to try and push the rest of the industry down to the 99 cent app store model.

Meph504 10y ago

I have to agree, that the SaaS pricing model is a something that kills this for my company. I have no problem with you doing a phone home to verify installation, etc... Until this pricing model is changed, I will have to pass or wait for an alternative. It's a shame too, because this seems like a great product.