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Thank you,

Pricing, Marketing, Great Product, and Acquisition

edited March 2012 in DrivePool
Alex,

First, the product is worth more than what you’re charging.

Wither it’s because you think you’re late to release (relative to the other pay for beta product) and trying to pick up market share.  Or, maybe this is just the introduction period to your product; than thank you.  However, this is a superior product.

If this is as good or better than the Microsoft release of DE you need to price this accordingly.  I think you could easily get the $40 and then bundle a discount for your other products or create a package.  Honestly, the DE was the only reason I initial bought WHS v1 and the only reason I bought WHS 2011 was because of the third party picking up Microsoft’s inadequate support of the product.

Anyway, you need to price accordingly, like you are going to be acquired.  If that day comes, don’t allow yourself to be low balled on a product like this, a huge chuck of change and  some royalties for your code.  Doing what Microsoft couldn’t is worth a $hit load.

Best of luck to you and yours,

Chad

Comments

  • edited March 2012 Member
    I get your enthusiasm but I don't get your post.  WHS2011 can be
    purchased for $40.00 so you suggest to change DP price to be at least that amount?



    $20.00 is a great price and $10.00 is even better after you purchase
    Alex's other $25.00 product.  The price is fair and it has been set.

    So far I am loving DP (although I am having a problem that I will post about later) and I am going to recommend it to all of my friends.



  • edited March 2012 Member

    Really has nothing to do with enthusiasm...

    Really has nothing to do with Microsoft's deep pockets and ability to low price a product (in EU) to increase market share, or even a crappy economy driving prices through cost and demand, or percentage of OS to Application cost ratio.

    It's about actual and/or perceived value for what the product provides.

    This software prevents you from going out and buying:
    1.) RAID Controller (Price/Setup/Time)
    2.) Drives to support RAID: 1,2,3,4,5 ($$$)
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

    Normally home users would go with bare min and the loss of one drive would put them down wondering why their system failed. With the redundant RAIDs you normally want to N+1 for high availability or have a hot spare to maintain up time with a failure.

    How many home users do you think want to learn RAID and on top of that maintain monitoring of messages during a POST to verify all their drives are good; how many home users know what a POST is. If you get a good RAID controller you might get predictive audible alarm that a drive is about to fail; but does the home owner know what to do.

    Add in the BS Convenience Fees (if you like) for being able to use JBOD you have around the house, not that I would want to rely on them; and/or grow your system slowly one drive at a time as your needs grow without the need to rebuild an array… and you have more value added.

    With Drive Pool you don't have a large learning curve to support RAID.  A little hinky around the area of adding folders to pooled drives prior to being able to duplicate; but that can be fixed with a wizard.  Hopefully in v1 prior to mainstream use.
    CAVEAT: haven’t experienced the failure and road to recovery yet.  Anyway… back on track.

    Relative to the cost of some of the other Add-ins I consider valuable;
    Lights Out: I think is priced correctly at $20-30 for its ability to save on power consumption
    DrivePool: I don't think is priced correctly at the same $20 for its ability to save me hundreds of dollars in extra equipment. Go look at NewEgg for what it's going to cost you for a RAID solution.

    Honestly, even though I've already bought the DrivePool license I personally won't take advantage of the discount on the other products, if offered.

    Just my opinion,
    Chad

  • edited March 2012 Member
    I'm not a marketing guro, but I thought Drivepool would have been priced

    a bit more competitive to it's only known competitor, figured it
    would run $30-35, only because it's limited to WHS and SBS essentials,
    where DriveBender may have broader appeal since it works with More operating
    systems, I'm not going to bust Alex's balls for not charging enough, but
    I'd would have paid more than $20


    I would like to know the number of paid users, only to get a feel for the demand for the product. 



  • Resident Guru
    Why cant we just be happy he is charging 20$...If he was charging more then you would have someone start a thread on how the price not right given that its still in beta or some nonsense like that...you should read the debate going on the Flexraid forum about the price being high...wow... people need to chill
  • I would hope that Alex has been in ongoing discussions with system manufacturers that sell WHS-based storage appliances, as this represents a potentially much bigger revenue stream. Whilst we are an active bunch, those of us who build our own WHS rigs represent only the tip of a large and growing market.

    A number of major vendors including HP and Asus brought out models based on WHS v1, but didn't update these when WHS 2011 came out. Why? No Drive Extender. Now that DrivePool provides a viable alternative, I'd really like to see HP and the other vendors bring out updated models based on WHS 2011 + DP (and preferably Scanner as well) as a package. Not because I'd buy one, but because it will increase the size of the ecosystem, so we'll see more WHS add-ins, better integration with other products etc.

    If I'm right, the price we pay for DP as home-build enthusiasts is basically irrelevant - the whole business model should be based on the price that the manufacturers will pay for bulk licensing. Although I would have been willing to pay more, I think pricing it low could be a great way to capture the lion's share of the enthusiast market now, prove the product works across a good size user base, and as a result make it more attractive to the OEM channel who will sell it to the mass market.
  • Why cant we just be happy he is charging 20$...If he was charging more then you would have someone start a thread on how the price not right given that its still in beta or some nonsense like that...you should read the debate going on the Flexraid forum about the price being high...wow... people need to chill
    Quoted for truth.
    I would hope that Alex has been in ongoing discussions with system manufacturers that sell WHS-based storage appliances, as this represents a potentially much bigger revenue stream. Whilst we are an active bunch, those of us who build our own WHS rigs represent only the tip of a large and growing market.

    A number of major vendors including HP and Asus brought out models based on WHS v1, but didn't update these when WHS 2011 came out. Why? No Drive Extender. Now that DrivePool provides a viable alternative, I'd really like to see HP and the other vendors bring out updated models based on WHS 2011 + DP (and preferably Scanner as well) as a package. Not because I'd buy one, but because it will increase the size of the ecosystem, so we'll see more WHS add-ins, better integration with other products etc.

    If I'm right, the price we pay for DP as home-build enthusiasts is basically irrelevant - the whole business model should be based on the price that the manufacturers will pay for bulk licensing. Although I would have been willing to pay more, I think pricing it low could be a great way to capture the lion's share of the enthusiast market now, prove the product works across a good size user base, and as a result make it more attractive to the OEM channel who will sell it to the mass market.
    Great points but Alex comes across as a pretty bright guy and I am sure he will at least try.

    I do believe this product has huge potential and I hope it is fully realized.
  • Member
    Let the developper & owner have the decision how to drive his bussiness. We're the customer; we buy the product and use it. If we're happy with it and give the highest reatings so others would know the good product as well. I will give DP a 5 stars. About the price of the product, a customer will have his/her budget spending.
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