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A few criticisms. Hopefully you can put them to good use, or at least understand what some old fuddy-duddys that aren't impressed by "the cloud" and "social" t
by fotbr 14y ago
A few criticisms. Hopefully you can put them to good use, or at least understand what some old fuddy-duddys that aren't impressed by "the cloud" and "social" think. Or have a beer and laugh at the old guy saying "get off my lawn" - I'm OK with that too.
When you make claims like "the worlds most sophisticated layout tool" you're making impossible claims. I've yet to see anything that your tool does that Protel (now Altium) and others weren't doing a decade ago.
I understand different markets, but at $299 / user / month for your "professional" offering, you're not too far off of Altium Designer's cost. You're roughly double Eagle's price, and yours is a subscription service, rather than a pay once and done.
It appears you also have to pay separately for simulation - another cost that Altium and Eagle do not have.
You make pricing hard to find on your website. I'm looking for pricing, not a "try upverter now" button - to me that says "get the demo", not "pricing". Your package names look like something designed picked by someone just out of college and trying overly hard to be hip, not something meant to convey any meaning. "Open Source" "Awesome" and "Professional" - really? Why not just "Free" "Personal" and "Professional"? Conveys what you get with each package much quicker and more clearly. You have very little about what's included with each package. For instance, what's a "Team+User" account type vs a "User". How much simulation time is included with each package, since you make a reference to paying for only what you use? What's the cost of additional simulation time?
From your "Professional" registration page: "Welcome, Professional. This is going to be awesome!" Really? Awesome? I thought "Awesome" was your middle-tier package. It creates confusion and impressions you may not want.
Too much emphasis on buzzwords. Do you really need to use "cloud" that often? How about "Awesome!"?
Your "Terms of Use" basically say you're not responsible for the security of anything. Not something you want when you're trying to entice people into doing creative work with your service. You say you can end the service whenever you want with the only notification being via the webpage - Not something to make businesses shell out $3588 / year. Likewise, you say you're able to revoke access entirely or in part without notification, and that the website may be unavailable at times, and that you may, at your discretion, delete a user's uploaded data.
From a business standpoint, these terms are completely unacceptable - would you pay $3588 / year with no guarantee that you'd be able to use the service, or that you'd be able to access your data?
As a hobbyist, are you willing to have all your work and data disappear on a third party's whim?
From a business customer standpoint, I'd rather pay the extra to Altium, sink the cost of the software, pay half your yearly cost for Altium's subscription, and keep my propitiatory data in-house, instead of trusting an unknown 3rd party's claims to privacy, security, and longevity. Knowing where Protel was a decade ago - I'll also say that their software does a lot more than yours, again putting your claims at being the "most sophisticated" in question.
From a hobbyist standpoint, I'm still not comfortable putting things that are as tedious to reproduce as schematics and board layouts under the control of a third party. Eagle "Standard" is $169 (individual hobbyist use), and the copy will be good as long as I have a computer that will run it. That cost just over two years of paying for your "Awesome" package. Eagle "Light" is $69, less than one year of your "Awesome" package, and I again have something that lasts as long as I maintain a computer that can run it. I can buy a new "Light" package every year and still save money over your service.
- stephen_g 14y agoI agree - I'd be excited by this if I were a hobbyist using the free version of Eagle, but despite what they say on their blog it doesn't look anywhere near as compelling as Altium for my business even if the subscription was another 50% less... Hopefully tools like these will eventually get better to the point where put a bit of pressure on the big guys to make them lower their prices though!
- akiselev 14y agoYeah claiming to be the most sophisticated PCB editor is a massive stretch. Just looking at the last project I did and the features I could not have done without, do you have differential pair routing? Interactive length tuning? From-tos? Pin swapping? Integration with some part swapping system for the manufacturer? Export and then reimport of DSNs for Electra/Specctra? Polygon pours? Integration with PLMs? Use scripting engine? As far as working with Altium goes, those features are all pretty basic.