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As someone building a company with the model you speak of: do you think communicating to potential purchasers via website copy that others in my industry have e

As someone building a company with the model you speak of: do you think communicating to potential purchasers via website copy that others in my industry have essentially abandoned their platforms because of lack of incentive to continue updating post-purchase would perhaps soothe some of that?

antaviana 9y ago
We also use this model (software subscription). One thing that is very important is that never, under no circumstance be tempted to sell perpetual licenses even if there is demand for them. If you do subscriptions you should do only subscriptions.
- acct1771 9y ago
  Thanks, that's advice you're probably giving for a good reason you've experienced, I'm assuming! Any other insight into your experiences/troubles? How you decided on pricing, whether it had any impact on sales/sales efforts, what you had to do to support such a model? Thanks very much for your time!
  - antaviana 9y ago
    We transitioned from freeware to subscription (it's B2B), a subscription model shares a lot with freeware logistics, for example most users are in the last version. Another advantage has been to be able to add features any time it was fit, no need to save them for the big upgrade. We decided a price at the beginning (EUR 99/year) that we thought would allow us to expand our offering under the same subscription umbrella. We run several promotions to experiment with pricing (in particular a Dutch action which was very successful at EUR 29/year, that brought a big revenue spike and also many new paying customers). But even after experimenting with good results we always stuck with our EUR 99/year price point. Due to the rather low price pint, we chose not do any type of customer segmentation (all customers pay the same per user, regardless of quantity of users). We do not do promotions anymore to avoid confusing users with pricing (since it is a subscription, we want to avoid that users wait for the next promotion to renew). Curiously very few potential customers ever asked for a permanent license. We have a extremely generous trial 30 days of actual use, not calendar days. Conversion at the end of trial is high, about 30%, probably because by the end of trial, users probably found a few use cases that somehow justify the price.
HeyLaughingBoy 9y ago
No, they just won't care. I was on a non-software forum last week where a dev was gathering pain-point information because he intended to produce software for that niche. The main feedback I remember was "just let me buy it. No f'ing subscriptions."
- acct1771 9y ago
  Any chance you can share what niche this was?
  - HeyLaughingBoy 9y ago
    Machined-object Contract Manufacturing. e.g., https://www.milacron.com/services/contract-manufacturing/ https://www.milacron.com/services/contract-manufacturing/
    - acct1771 9y ago
      What does the software for that industry track?

antaviana 9y ago

We also use this model (software subscription). One thing that is very important is that never, under no circumstance be tempted to sell perpetual licenses even if there is demand for them. If you do subscriptions you should do only subscriptions.

acct1771 9y ago
Thanks, that's advice you're probably giving for a good reason you've experienced, I'm assuming! Any other insight into your experiences/troubles? How you decided on pricing, whether it had any impact on sales/sales efforts, what you had to do to support such a model? Thanks very much for your time!
- antaviana 9y ago
  We transitioned from freeware to subscription (it's B2B), a subscription model shares a lot with freeware logistics, for example most users are in the last version. Another advantage has been to be able to add features any time it was fit, no need to save them for the big upgrade. We decided a price at the beginning (EUR 99/year) that we thought would allow us to expand our offering under the same subscription umbrella. We run several promotions to experiment with pricing (in particular a Dutch action which was very successful at EUR 29/year, that brought a big revenue spike and also many new paying customers). But even after experimenting with good results we always stuck with our EUR 99/year price point. Due to the rather low price pint, we chose not do any type of customer segmentation (all customers pay the same per user, regardless of quantity of users). We do not do promotions anymore to avoid confusing users with pricing (since it is a subscription, we want to avoid that users wait for the next promotion to renew). Curiously very few potential customers ever asked for a permanent license. We have a extremely generous trial 30 days of actual use, not calendar days. Conversion at the end of trial is high, about 30%, probably because by the end of trial, users probably found a few use cases that somehow justify the price.

HeyLaughingBoy 9y ago

No, they just won't care. I was on a non-software forum last week where a dev was gathering pain-point information because he intended to produce software for that niche. The main feedback I remember was "just let me buy it. No f'ing subscriptions."

acct1771 9y ago
Any chance you can share what niche this was?
- HeyLaughingBoy 9y ago
  Machined-object Contract Manufacturing. e.g., https://www.milacron.com/services/contract-manufacturing/ https://www.milacron.com/services/contract-manufacturing/
  - acct1771 9y ago
    What does the software for that industry track?