90 Minds Community

New Sage 100 subscription pricing - I'm not sure how this stacks up to the old pricing (aside from the obvious that you pay 12 months up front). I'll be interested to see if Sage gets around to implementing expiring registration keys. I cannot understand why they aren't doing that for new deals except maybe due to internal tracking issues.

Did I read this wrong? It looks like payment upfront for 12/36 months is an option and if you want month-to-month it's 10% extra.

This quarter's adjective of choice is ""exciting"". If you opt for either the 1 year or 3 year paid up front, the prices per user are the same as the current per user prices. The monthly payment plans represent an increase of 10% over the current per user prices. This appears to only be exciting to Sage.

I do think this is how Netsuite and others price their subscriptions

I wonder how many people will prepay 3 years

There is no price break over one year. It only protects against future price increases (or policy changes). Most customers would rather take the risk and use their money on something more valuable and immediate in their business operations.

So the idea of utility computing is long term contracts?

The prepayment makes subscription far less attractive. If they want make more money, then just raise the price. Those that have chosen subscription have specific financial reasons, and they realize it will cost more over time. I'm not sure why Sage doesn't ask the resellers who sell a lot of subscription their opinion on the changes.

Most of Sage's poor decision making comes directly from the backassward thinking that lead them to spouting ""Customers who buy more from Sage are happier with Sage"" rather than ""Customers who are happy with Sage buy more from Sage"".

Last year I hired an experienced marketing person from outside our industry. She saw the announcement and asked some insightful questions in that they came from an outsiders perspective. Questions like, if I am a new customer, why would I want to pay in advance for something I am renting? If I don't really know Sage Software is for me, wouldn't it be better if I had the option to try it first? Isn't this more expensive? Even though I think ERP is not a try before you buy type product, I would bet her perception is probably closer to that of an end user than any of us seasoned veterans. Software folks like us often assume we know what the customer is thinking and don't get their input nearly as much as we should.

I think Sage is on the right track with the option, but didn't go far enough. I don't object to 10% cost of monthly; 1/3 of our annual agreements are monthly pulls, and that price is 20% over lump-sum. Customers are different. The choice is the critical part. If I were Rich, I'd keep the current choices and then - offer 10% off the whole amount for a 3-yr prepay. Call it ""committed customer thank you"" - offer 3-yr commitment monthly-pay customers the base annual price + 5%. Again, a small sweetner on commitment. - offer NEW-to-Sage customers monthly pricing at the base annual rate (no penalty) for 3-yr contract. These aren't huge numbers. Most customers will pay year to year, lump sum. But there could at least be an expression of thanks for committing to Sage. And Sage will develop useful preference data for future decisions.

The actual new monthly prices show ignorance of how to price. $99 per month per user for the Distribution Bundle was one of those magic prices. Now it's $108.90, which has no magic to it at all and, in fact, confuses the customer. Sage should have just made it $109, $110, $115 or even $119. It doesn't matter which of those they choose, but $108.90 is wrong. This reminds me of a Dilbert strip: http://dilbert.com/strip/2010-11-21

And now that I am in Dilbert mode, I'm also sure someone at Sage believes that if the 1-year payment is a 10% discount, the 3-year payment is a 30% discount!

John, I think you will have some interesting questions for Rich when you meet!

I think the classic pricing puzzle is from ""Taxi"". http://bit.ly/1LtM9sk

Another example of Sage thinking we are ""almost"" capable of reading between the lines...