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At the beginning of November we will be increasing our prices by an average of 30%.

Why?

I recently attended EECI where I participated in a panel of other notable EE developers. Many of us were remarking about how, mainly because of support costs, we were breaking even in our businesses.

We love our work. We are grateful to be part of the community. But we cannot continue to break even or in some cases lose money on our efforts.

For a very long time we, at Solspace, have feared the impact that price increases would have on our business and the community. We did not want to create hardship or consternation. But in dialog with many people in the community we came to realize that a price hike would be more welcome than the demise of a valued and respected company.

The Numbers

Several times in my conversations with other designers and developers I was told that when they evaluated the purchase of an add-on, they considered how much of their billable time it would take to build. Could they build a calendar or forms module in 2-3 hours at their client billing rate? The answer was always no. This is important math to take into account.

What are the Costs?

The vast majority of costs associated with selling an add-on are tied up in support. A highly skilled and competent, not to mention friendly team must be maintained to assist customers with problems. In some cases bugs are found. In many cases people are trying to do complex things with complex software. They need assistance and we want to provide it at the highest level of excellence possible. That costs money. Factor into the cost of an add-on the ongoing maintenance, versioning, advertising, supporting hosting and management tools and eventually you spend a lot of money.

Continuity

Everyone on the Solspace team very much enjoys their work. Whether on the service side building sites for clients or on the product side selling software to you, we all love what we do. We are grateful that there are customers like you who make it possible. I hope that you will understand as we make a change in our business model to insure that we can continue to serve you faithfully for years to come.

I hope that you will understand my reasoning for increasing the prices of our products across the board on the First of November.