What Is An Upgrade Worth To You?
I officially made Jim Mitchell Design a licensed business a little over six months ago. Up until then, it was always an under the table, pay me in cash sort of operation (and yes, I paid my taxes on it). When I decided I wanted to take it to the next level, there were natural expenses that came with doing so, which meant buying licenses for software packages I had previously done without.
One of those licenses was for QuickBooks Pro 2007 from Intuit. I’d researched all the other accounting packages for the Mac, and felt QBP was the better choice out of them all (though none were really up to Mac standards). Even though it was a little pricier, I plunked down my $199 and decided to live with it.
Today, Intuit released QuickBooks Pro 2009 for the Mac. I thought to myself “Cool, time to upgrade. Hopefully it’s a better Mac application. It couldn’t be more than a minor investment.” It turns out I was sorely mistaken. After trying to navigate the “updated” Intuit site for more than 15 minutes looking for some kind of upgrade information (Seriously Intuit. Your site is a HUGE pain to find anything on and renders like crap on modern Mac browsers), the only reference I could find was “upgrade starting from $179.”
Wait. Are you serious? I paid $199 for a brand-spanking new license only six months ago. Now you want me to pay another $179 to “upgrade?” Well, no that’s not really the case. Intuit wants me to buy their product all over again, because they’re offering the exact same product to NEW customers for the same $179 it would cost me to upgrade.
Did I miss something here? Me–an existing customer–pays $378 ($199 + $179). Joe the Plumber–a new customer–pays $179 for the exact same product. Intuit == Fail.
While I understand there are costs involved in developing new software, and those costs need to be covered by new sales, I’m of the mind that expecting existing customers–the ones that initially provided you some of the capital to pay those software developers to update your new version (I’m sure the code base wasn’t started from scratch)–to pay full price for an only marginally better product amounts to no more than corporate greed. Needless to say, unless Intuit informs me to the contrary, I will not be upgrading my license for QuickBooks Pro 2007. Times as they are, that would be stupid for my bottom line.
But it got me thinking. What’s appropriate when it comes to software upgrades? Free for life? Full price at each update? Or keep track of a user base and pro-rate upgrade amounts? Personally, I opt for the latter. I really feel Intuit should have recognized that I was a customer with less than a year of use, and offered me some kind of price break. Apple does it with their OS upgrades (sort of), so I don’t think it would have been hard to do. They have my contact information, and the date I purchased the original license. But instead, they chose to snub me and run the risk of losing my business–which they have. In addition to using QuickBooks Pro, I’ve been a long time users of TurboTax. Once this tax season is past me, I will be looking for an alternative software solution for the 2009 tax year.
What’s your take on software upgrades? Should they be free, full price, or pro-rated?
Comments are closed.
I prefer the way that Adobe used to do upgrades before all of the CS nonsense.
When version 1 was made obsolete by version 2, they would sell a special upgrade copy of v2 at half the price of the full copy. The catch was that the upgrade copy required both v2 and v1 serial numbers.
This allowed Adobe to restrict half-price upgrade copies to users of the previous version, without the need to “keep track of a user base” as you mentioned.
They have since done away with this type of offer (and raised their prices to add insult to injury), so I have upgraded to Pixelmator.
As a systems administrator and a “pro” small business person, I believe it is up to the company itself.
For some, if they choose to allow unlimited upgrades for the life of the product to established customers, then I believe it is their right. I would tend to follow this line since I believe that keeping the established customers in a state of contentment with the product is a social and business positive.
For others, if they choose to pull a “Redmond” and charge for the mouse and the mouse-trap then that is their right. I believe it is a poor business model and doomed to eventually fail.