Pricing Part Deux

Posted on March 14, 2007
Filed Under Marketing |

My friend Charlie Wood released his breakthrough SpanningSync product and declared the price points, $25 per year or a $65 perpetual license.

Over at the influential TUAW blog the comments are 100% negative, even though the majority of commenters actually like the product. I can understand the negativity if we’re talking about a $600 product, but for something that delivers a unique feature set and gap fills like SpanningSync does, well I’m not so sure that giving Charlie $2 a month, or less than the cost of a latte, is really that egregious.

Ultimately, the marketplace will determine if the price points are right, not the commenters at TUAW and if any one of them thinks the price grossly unfair then they have an opportunity to create a competing product and sell it for less. Ain’t capitalism grand?

Charlie also pointed to a really timely post about pricing over at Daring Fireball where the final paragraph reveals a real piece of wisdom.

Pricing any product is difficult; pricing software particularly so, because the cost of goods isn’t a significant factor: it’s all just ones and zeroes. Of course you can set too high a price — but far more budding indie developers fail because their prices are too low than too high. Aim for high quality and set your price accordingly. If you want users to treat your software like it’s valuable, you, the developer, need to market it as though it’s valuable.

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