Price Increases

bradbeckett1

Active Member
Just a heads up to anyone thinking about using Everest Software. The maintenance fee for your Everest Software can rise dramatically at any time. Our price increase this year was 114% increase over last years invoice for maintenance. $280 last year to $600 this year.

While the dollar amount is low, a mere $600.00, the increase of 114% is unacceptable. Everest Software has not been willing to negotiate on the amount so we are either force to pay much higher fees than we originally were quoted or lose support for our software.

We’ve used Everest software since 2003, as a comparison, the CPI from 2003 to 2007 is a modest 13% increase, compared to Everest Software’s increase of 114%.

I thought I would share my experience with all users.
 
That's a market economy: up and down with everything else. There's nothing to apologise for, but it's probably worth explaining our point of view, as a healthy and open discussion will benefit us all:

With our software, the cost of the Yearly Update/Upgrade Subscription is always 20% of the list price of the tool at the time of the renewal in question - per License, per year.

The list prices can of course change from time to time, based on a number of things: inflation, exchange rate, level of suppport, quality and the functionality of the software, etc. Our prices have gone both up and down over the years, it's a normal market process. We believe that in this case, you still get substantially more than what you pay.

To compare, the gold prices went up from ~320 US$/oz in 2003 to about 670 US$/oz in 2007, while our prices have relatively caught up with this process just recently.

The initial introductory prices also eventually get replaced with real prices, or corrected up or down by the market. And ROI is an important factor in this process as well - in terms of ROI, all our software solutions are still heavily underpriced (if you need an example, please e-mail me directly).

Yes, taking this as an example, $600 is 114% more than $280, but either one is still very inexpensive, especially if the tool saves you an order of magnitude more than $600 a year.

Plus it was actually kept down at around the intial price (of $280 in this example) practically without raises for 4 years, which was tremendously appreciated by most users. If anything, this due raise was simply delayed by a few years...
 
I understand Mr. Beckett's issue with a 114 percent price increase; this seems unreasonable But Basic economics seem to provide a more rational way of assessing a price increase. The price charged for something depends on the need, income and elasticity of demand of customers. It also depends on the amount of competition in the market.

Alexander Pastuhov, as far as I know, offers a unique set of tools, below market price. The value that is being extracted from the use of his tools, far exceeds the price that is charged. If the value was less than the price charged, then it seems rational to cancel the license and find a supplier of a similar product with a price that is more in line with your marginal benefit and cost.

Alexander Pastuhov, has put out plenty of free products that people have used, and continue to use. He has contributed to this market, at his cost, in time and effort. I would assert that he is underselling himself in the market.

Plus, it's only 600 bucks. If your company is hurting for that kind of cash, I'd be very concerned.
 
We all struggle with price and support increases - and the mere $600 dollars for support maintenance, might be pennies for what it costs for the actual time/materials to maintain the development cycle.

My experience is that Everest's quotes are, generally, good for the current year or as dated on the quote. To state that the current fee is greater than the quoted is, probably, misleading. Last year's quote is to be honored for last year - only.

The development cycle costs for third party tools is fairly high. ESUs, Updates and Client Issues - take a heavy toll on maintenance service costs. For example, I have a client that created their own tools - very similar to a couple that Everest provides. When they compared the number of hours/per dollar that it cost them to maintain their home-grown tools - it was almost five times what the cost of the tool and annual maintenance...

Comparing Everest (basically a strategic E1 ONLY one man shop) against anything bigger and broader - is unfair. Everest targets a specific(SMALL) market and is highly specialized... Think about what you would pay for specialty software 'maintenance' for running Shuttle Thruster - take into consideration that only a couple companies have the know-how to interface with the rest of NASA... Their R&D Maintenance is much higher - and will go up Every Year!

As a side-note, I am a client and a reseller of Everest software. I pay the same prices and want to pinch pennies too... as an independent contractor (not a Corporate employee) - every purchase hits my bottom dollar S I G N I F I C A N T L Y, too. However, when I look at the savings the tools provide me, personally - the extra dollars each year are worth it. I don't have to spend the thousands of dollars per year - reworking home-grown tools.

Finally - I am concerned that you would pose this in the Support area.... Everest is a small business trying to do a big help to the E1 community. Posting negative feedback in a support forum - can have a direct negative impact on his bottom dollar... This is a support forum - not a negative feedback forum. Your support decisions should be, like everyone else’s - either accept the fee, look for a competing product or build your own.

Everest builds some very helpful tools for the community (some are even free!) and Alex provides a lot of free JDEList-Forum support to the community. I believe that Everest's maintenance fees do match the niche market and R&D Maintenance Costs...

(db)
 
First of all - what is the point of the post ? you're trying to provide alex negative feedback in a public forum over a $200US increase ?

Before you comment about "cpi" - take a look at the past years US $ vs AU $ . If you want to brow beat about CPI, then you really need to understand that the US Economy is falling BIG time, and that the Australian Dollar has been shooting up.

Secondly - Alex has moved out of his initial customer offerings and is now an established software company with referenceable customers. Anyone who understands the software industry knows that initially you offer your products at VASTLY discounted pricing to get the references. Once established, you then raise prices - aggressively if you see no immediate competition. Before, the prices were reflected deep discounts since he was a small individual trying to break into the market. Nowadays his prices reflect a small business with little competition and great demand.

I believe that Supply and Demand was also part of understanding economics.

Finally, I'm shocked that someone would attempt to belittle Pastuhovs' products in such a public way over a few measly dollars. You are showing that either you personally are cheap or your organization has a culture of being cheap - whichever, I really hope this backfires.

Compared to how much you spent on oneworlds' and oracles maintenance, the prices from Alex are literally a drop in an ocean. Oracle has massively increased maintenance costs - many companies face literally double costs compared to JDE's maintenance costs - do you have any pull in your organization in trying to get those costs under control ?

If you don't like it, don't buy it. Maintenance is optional ! Just don't try and brow beat the JDE List community about economics when you obviously have a lack of understanding of the subject yourself.

I certainly hope you're not in charge of anything related to Financials in your organization....
 
Many thanks for all who had contributed to this topic for your kind support!
 
Hey Alexander,

Thank you, for putting out great products. Your pricing is more than fair, (who can beat free???), and your products offer tremendous value in the JDE market.

All The Best,

Mark
 
I find myself in an interesting position in regards to his post. Given that I work directly for finance and procurement sits beside me, I know that this kind of a maintenence fee raise is higher than usual. Having said that in most kinds of agreements that we buy software we have some sort of limits generally in place about how much it can go up each year (%) and there is always the option of dropping it altogether. So this might be a learning experience for you as a purchaser.

On the other hand I can personally vouch for the fact that Everest makes superb software. I've bought Autoprint and Pok-Ta-Pok and these are both fine tools. I bought a security package called E1secure from another company which uses everest's boomerang to install and when I had a problem with the install I got direct support to get it working in a single call. Its solid software.

Morglum
 
Pre-empting another barrage: over the last year, the AU$/US$ exchange rate has gone up by about 30% (and I should stress that this is not an AU$ growth - US$ had also proportionally fell compared to many other currencies and gold).

And so we had no choice but to start compensating for this fall in our prices, which for convenience are still expressed in US$ (this may actually prompt us to list all prices in AU$ or something else to avoid being blamed for "increases", when we in fact charge less).

One such 10% increase was clearly not enough, and the second 10% is still short of the estimated 30% the US$ has seemingly lost, so what you may see as a price increase in the US, is in fact a price drop, as it would appear to us or to many European customers.

Any future changes will of course depend on what happens next with the US$ (or whatever currency we will end up using for the list prices).

Thank you for your understanding.

PS: If you must blame someone, you can always blame the Obama administration ;-)
 
[ QUOTE ]
PS: If you must blame someone, you can always blame the Obama administration ;-)

[/ QUOTE ]

Ha! Good one!

Max
 
Well, thanks! It may sound funny, but that's the simple truth. In fact US$ seems to have lost about 5% more in the recent time, so again: don't blame us ;-)
 
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