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Chalkmark and Treejack Pricing
Are Chalkmark and TreeJack going to remain free? If not, how much will they cost? Will beta testers get any discounts?
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Inappropriate?Hi Jared,
we recently emailed all our account owners with information about forthcoming changes to Treejack and Chalkmark. Unfortunately it seems to you did not receive this email, so here are the important bits.
In brief...
- We will start charging for Treejack and Chalkmark on the 5th June 2009.
- Both tools will be temporarily unavailable for up to 8 hours from 00:30am GMT+0 on 5 June 2009.
- Your account will convert to our 'Free' plan by default.
- Special discounts are available if you upgrade before the 5th June.
- The 'Free' plan is limited to 3 tasks per survey.
- Any active surveys with more than 3 tasks will be set to 'Finished' on the 5th June.
- Help us reach 10,000 customers this year!
In detail...
Since we launched Treejack and Chalkmark, more 12,000 participants have completed 5,570 tasks across 1,100 surveys. Thank you for helping us build two fantastic new usability tools.
There comes a time for every business to start making some money (so we're told!). For us, that time has come. To say thanks for being an important part of our beta program, we have some great deals if you upgrade before the 5th June:
- Buy 30 days and get another 30 days free.
- Get $100 off an annual plan.
- Receive an additional 20% discount if you buy our annual Family Pack bundle (OptimalSort, Treejack and Chalkmark).
- We buy you a drink and talk shop if you ever see any of us in person! (We will be in Portland, USA in June for UPA 09!)
So how much are the pricing plans? We thought long and hard about this and settled on two plans for each product:
- 30 day plan for US$109.
- Annual plan for US$559 (a 57% saving!).
We feel that this is a fair price. It's important to us that you feel the same, so our rationale is included at the end of this post. To upgrade, simply send an email to... support at optimalworkshop dot com
If you do nothing, on the 5 June 2009:
- Your existing Optimal Workshop account will convert to our new 'Free' plan.
- The 'Free' plan will let you use Treejack and Chalkmark for small projects with 1, 2 or 3 tasks only.
- Any active surveys with more than 3 tasks will automatically 'finish' at 00:30am GMT +0. Any surveys with less than 3 tasks will remain unchanged.
None of this means we're finished working on these tools either. Far from it. We have just started. We will be intensifying our efforts to make these tools remarkable and worth every dollar.
If you love our tools, why not tell a few friends? We have a goal of 10,000 customers this year. If we achieve this we can ask our Board of Directors to invest more money - which means even better tools in 2010 for all our customers! So don't be shy - spread the word.
I hope this answers your questions. Please let us know if there is anything else we can help you with.
Steve
Optimal Workshop
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A note about our pricing rationale...
Treejack and Chalkmark is priced at the same level as OptimalSort. There were several factors that lead to this level of pricing:
- We serve a small specialised market and this price point seems to be the fairest for both buyer and seller.
- The tools saves time and generates additional revenue in the order of several multiples of the purchase price. We know this first hand from our own consulting companies Optimal Usability and Optimal Experience.
- We want to keep things simple and avoid the type of complexity that will invariably mean we have to pass costs on.
- Our buyers' situations are such that it does not always make sense for them to commit to ongoing monthly recurring charges.
- It gives us enough margin to keep the lights on so that we can keep building usability tools that you will love.2 Comments
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Hi,
Can you clarify - is it $559 for both Treejack & Chalkmark together, or is it $559 for each?
What is the cost for OptimalSort, Treejack & Chalkmark together for a year?
Many thanks. -
Hi IAUX,
It is $559 for each product for a year.
For a super sized family bundle of OptimalSort, Treejack & Chalkmark for a year it is US$1,350 which represents a further 20% discount on top of the savings of individual annual subscriptions.
Hope that clears things up?
Thanks, Sam -
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Inappropriate?Hi Jared,
I see that you've marked your response as 'sad'. Could I trouble you to let us know why? We really like to get feedback (good or bad) so that we can work out where we need to improve.
Thanks.
Steve
Optimal Workshop -
Inappropriate?Sure. One of the challenges in your proposed pricing structure is that there is only a 30 day or annual subscription. Say I did some simple paper prototypes and uploaded them to Chalkmark. 30 days may be enough for one round of responses but probably wouldn't be enough for two or three. that leaves me with two options. A) Pay for several 30-day subscriptions, or B) Pay for an annual subscription, for which I'll only use a few months of it.
Simply put, for designers with many projects "on the go" simultaneously, this pricing structure is reasonable, but for designers working on one or two projects at once, it is not cost-effective.
One idea would be to have an alternative pricing structure based on number of responses (e.g.: you could charge $xx.xx per survey up front, then $xx.xx per response for instance. Perhaps customers could even buy "response credits" that would count towards multiple surveys.)
Hopefully this helps to clarify things,
~Jared -
Inappropriate?Thanks Jared.
As you can probably imagine we've spent a fair bit of time discussing pricing models and approaches and working out which will suit us and our customers best.
I'm afraid there will probably always be instances where our plans do not cover the needs of certain customers as efficiently as they might, but we will always open to tweaking things to try and get them right.
I'll raise your points with the rest of the team this morning as I'm sure it will raise some good discussion points.
Thanks again for your thoughts, your feedback is greatly appreciated.
Steve
Optimal Workshop -
Inappropriate?Hi Jared,
Thanks for your feedback. You raise some valid points and some great ideas about alternative pricing options.
I just want to re-iterate Steve's comments by assuring you that we are listening closely to how customers, like you, respond to our pricing model. If necessary, we will make changes.
If anyone else reading has other suggestions or comments to add, please let us know what you think.
Cheers,
Sam
Optimal Workshop
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