Alibre promises to license you its software for 10x cheaper than the price quoted by a comparable competitor. (The announcement will be made tomorrow.)
We are seeing lots of discounts among CAD vendors as they attempt to maintain new sales volumes in these recessionary times. The whole point, of course, is to sell the razor cheaply and make future recurring income from the blades (aka annual maintenance fees).
The Tactic is Not New
CAD and other software vendors have offered competitive crossgrades since the 1990s. Indeed, back then I found it cheaper to buy a new license of Microsoft Publisher for $100, and then fax the manual's cover page to Adobe to purchase the PageMaker crossgrade for $200 -- than to pay the PageMaker list price of around $1,000.
And we in the CAD media keep hearing complaints from CAD vendors how their competitors seed customer sites with greatly-discounted or even free software. Last decade, IMSI even did the stunt publicly, giving away one million copies of TurboCAD -- free! -- as part of its Corporate Seeding Program.
Can CAD Software Become Cheaper than Free?
We are seeing a nascent trend in paying people to use software, though not yet in the CAD world. It works like this: you use free software that generates ads seen by others, of which you get a kick-back from the software maker.
Source.
For example, a quote for SolidWorks Standard at www.solidworks.com runs at $3995 for one license and $1295/year for a maintenance subscription for a total of $5290.Lessee, Inventor LT is now running at $595...
A user can bring this quote to Alibre and get Alibre Design Standard and one year of maintenance for $529, 10% of the competing quote.
We are seeing lots of discounts among CAD vendors as they attempt to maintain new sales volumes in these recessionary times. The whole point, of course, is to sell the razor cheaply and make future recurring income from the blades (aka annual maintenance fees).
The Tactic is Not New
CAD and other software vendors have offered competitive crossgrades since the 1990s. Indeed, back then I found it cheaper to buy a new license of Microsoft Publisher for $100, and then fax the manual's cover page to Adobe to purchase the PageMaker crossgrade for $200 -- than to pay the PageMaker list price of around $1,000.
And we in the CAD media keep hearing complaints from CAD vendors how their competitors seed customer sites with greatly-discounted or even free software. Last decade, IMSI even did the stunt publicly, giving away one million copies of TurboCAD -- free! -- as part of its Corporate Seeding Program.
Can CAD Software Become Cheaper than Free?
We are seeing a nascent trend in paying people to use software, though not yet in the CAD world. It works like this: you use free software that generates ads seen by others, of which you get a kick-back from the software maker.
Source.
The best stupid idea I ever heard! By asking for a quote, Alibre will enforce the prospects to inform the most talent and aggressive Cad sells force out there , that he is a potential buyer!
Posted by: GR | Nov 09, 2009 at 11:37 PM