Looks like I'm a little late to this party - my apologies.
The $400 per year subscription gets you three things:
- All Application Updates for the period
- Unlimited access to toll free technical support
- Access to our online plant encylopedia
In my opinion, the cost is easily justified, and the benefits outweigh the costs by a large margin.
Should you buy another piece of software without an upgrade policy, you'll be hit up for upgrades at some point should you need them - and you will. The way our subscription works, you'll always have our latest most up to date version, without having to worry about upgrade costs you haven't budgeted for. $400 dollars a year or $1200 every three years - is there really a difference?
In addition, you have unlimited access to our toll free support at any time - I'm sure many of us have heard the horror stories about poor folks who are forced to pay $$ for 'technical support' for various computer related issues.
Lastly, you have access to our online plant encyclopedia, which allows you to search plant culture information from within our CAD tool, and produce plant care reports.
We're not trying to beat on anyone for being a small operation, in fact, we are a small operation ourselves, and as such can sympathize with many of the pressures you feel.
We have to pay our staff to update our plant encyclopedia, to answer the phones and respond to tech support, and to develop our products on an ongoing basis. Anyone will tell you, software development is expensive.
As far as our updates are concerned, we're not just fixing bugs, we're adding new features. I'm currently involved in several large projects that we hope to bring to market - that will be given (read: for no additional charge) to our existing users as part of their subscriptions. These subscriptions give us a stable revenue base which enables us to take on larger, more longterm projects, which in turn will provide greater value to our loyal customer base.
We've set ourselves the lofty goal of helping to "professionalize the industry" through the development of intelligent, green focused tools. We're often challenged because for the majority, the value of the intelligent application of technology in their business is not apparent. Technology changes, and software needs to be maintained, just like a piece of heavy machinery.
So, to some $400 seems like a lot. If the benefit you receive from using our latest tools and staying connected to us is worth less than $400 a year to your business, you probably shouldn't renew your subscription. We most certainly aren't trying to fleece anyone or punish them for being small businesses. At that point, we'd thank you for your business, and urge you to keep an eye on where we'll be going from here - we'd like the opportunity to change your mind.
Hope this helps,
F.