Recent Posts1
Other / Re: Question for people who have built commercial apps
« Last post by marcov on Today at 12:04:56 pm »Back around 20 years ago it was common for most major software running on the PC to be payware. Nowadays it seems people increasingly expect programs to be free or low cost. Is there some truth in this?
I don't think it is fundamentally just an audience thing. Of course, if there are free alternatives that are equivalent, why wouldn't they go for it? But if you can get something better suited for a reasonable price, why wouldn't you just pay it also?
So, yes, the free alternatives moved, but at the same time paid software got proportionality more expensive. In the last decade even more so due to subscription fees.
The reasons for that can only be guessed, but I think that 1995-2005 was an expansion time for software. Heaps of users entered the PC market for the first time, and market share among them mostly determined your next year's revenue.
After that, software directly marketed to end users became more a replacement market, and growing market share exponentially was less of an option and direct revenue (and thus company profitability) became more important.
All this lead to price hikes and targeting the products at more advanced users that would pay those prices. That leads to a vicious circle where your audience becomes smaller and more price hikes are required.
As we are on a Lazarus/FPC forum, one of the ultimate examples of this kind of behaviour are the products of our direct competitor, Turbo Pascal and Delphi. Their current commercial offerings start at Eur 1500/year. This was sub Eur 100 for an eternal license (or equivalent pre euro currency) for the cheapest, commercially usable edition a good 20 years ago.
Now there has been some inflation in that period, but not 1500%, and than I'm not even taking into account perpetual vs annual fee.
Even back then many software had free versions bundled with e.g. hardware. Scanner OCR etc, entry levels of photoshop with digital cameras etc. route planning software with GPS equiped PDA's etc.
Quote
For those who have authored payware over the years I am wondering if you find some benefit in having a free community version instead of a trial version, and a premium paid version on top of that. Have you gotten much benefit from this, or do you find you lose a lot of potential customers to the free version? I am figuring increase uptake of the program would offset that.
I write software professionally for over 20 years now, but never sold boxed products to end users. Always B2B "solutions".
So we have established above that if you sell perpetual licenses, the number of users buying it will naturally decrease by year per definition in a not exponentially growing market like 1995-2005. And you still have to spend marketing to get even those.
That is where the free versions come in, these are architected so that the community version only covers one common, but occasional and basic use . People requiring the full product will have other uses/requirements that only the full product satisfied.
This essentially make the free users kind of a marketing instrument. People starting/testing the free version in companies and later upgrading, people using it are members of some club or forum related to what they are doing and tell what they are using etc.
Never make the mistake that a free user is a customer lost. Most would never have been a customer anyway. You will need to carefully craft your SKUs so that this relation between free and paid remains to not cannibalise your market.
It is a fine line that requires careful balancing. One tip that I think is smart is to make some way to end the free version. (e.g. some form of activation) Not so much to be able to take them off the market, but more to force your users always using the newest version with the conditions and limitations attached to that version. Makes the balancing easier, and allows you to correct a slip up int he balancing.
And also subscriptions. I share your dislike for them, and it is often not easy for non widely established products, but if there is something in your business model that requires annual updating of software (or its data), it might be at least an additional revenue source. Even if just at modest prices (so not pay for use, but pay for data updates), and at the same time that can be a vehicle to keep the upgrade train moving a bit, also improving revenue.
