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Upcoming Price Increases and Support Plan Changes |
Sat, Feb 23 2013 11:11 AM | Permanent Link |
Tim Young [Elevate Software] Elevate Software, Inc. timyoung@elevatesoft.com | Beginning Monday, April 1, 2013, two major changes will be instituted at
Elevate Software, and this email is to notify you in advance of these changes so that you can plan accordingly. Price Increases for Products ============================ The price for our DBISAM and ElevateDB products will increase slightly. The following are the price increases that will go into effect on April 1, 2013: Products ----------- ElevateDB VCL Standard - $299.00 ElevateDB VCL Standard with Source Code - $429.00 ElevateDB VCL Client-Server - $579.00 ElevateDB VCL Client-Server with Source Code - $749.00 ElevateDB LCL Standard with Source Code - $159.00 ElevateDB DAC Standard - $299.00 ElevateDB DAC Standard with Source Code - $619.00 ElevateDB DAC Client-Server - $579.00 ElevateDB DAC Client-Server with Source Code - $849.00 DBISAM VCL Standard - $269.00 DBISAM VCL Standard with Source Code - $399.00 DBISAM VCL Client-Server - $549.00 DBISAM VCL Client-Server with Source Code - $719.00 DBISAM ODBC Standard - $269.00 DBISAM OCBC Standard with Source Code - $619.00 DBISAM ODBC Client-Server - $549.00 DBISAM ODBC Client-Server with Source Code - $849.00 DBISAM CLX Standard - $269.00 DBISAM CLX Standard with Source Code - $399.00 DBISAM CLX Client-Server - $549.00 DBISAM CLX Client-Server with Source Code - $719.00 New Support Plan Policies ========================= Our existing support plan policy has served our customers well, and we have been very hesitant about changing it, but we have encountered some major issues with the existing policy since it was instituted in early 2008: 1) The unlimited nature of the existing support plan policy has led to over-use by some customers, and this is causing us to lose significant amounts of money in terms of developer time that is not covered by the costs of the support plans themselves. We have spent a lot of time recently analyzing the support usage by customers and found that in some extreme cases customers are requiring 60+ hours of support (email, phone, and Skype) in a year and paying $159 for it. This leaves us "in the hole" by thousands of dollars. 2) The over-use by some customers is also mirrored by under-use, or non-use, by other customers. These customers tend to be developers that are fairly proficient and rely primarily on the manuals and documentation for finding answers to issues. Because of this, these customers are more interested in getting new features and bug fixes as quickly as possible. However, due to the issue of over-usage, these customers are also being short-changed as the number of minor releases and bug fixes that they would normally get are reduced greatly due to the fact that development time is being consumed by support time. This is extremely unfair to these customers who are, in effect, subsidizing the other customers that are using up the majority of the support time. 3) We are receiving a lot of support questions that would normally be considered general programming questions instead of questions that directly relate to our products. We are happy to provide consulting to those that need such assistance, but we cannot do so free of charge and you will need to get a quote from us for such services. 4) In many cases, we are receiving emails from customers that have obviously not taken the time to refer to the introductory portions of the manual or the FAQ section of the web site. There is sufficient documentation and online help available for our products, so you will be able to answer most of your basic questions without needing to contact us for support. 5) We are receiving support inquiries from customers of customers. These aren't particularly frequent, but it happens often enough to be an issue since many times these customers are calling us on the phone or chatting with us on Skype. Please do not misunderstand, we are not trying to place blame on our customers for utilizing the support that we have agreed to provide based upon our existing support plan policy. It is just a simple fact that we need to implement the following changes in order to make our support systems more efficient, cost-effective, and fair to all customers: 1) What is currently referred to as a support plan will now be known as a subscription. The cost will stay the same, but the actual support portion will be split out as a separate charge for what we are now calling a "support session". A support session is comprised of an initial point of contact via email, phone, or Skype, and any subsequent follow-up that is necessary to resolve the issue to the customer's satisfaction. Each initial point of contact will require the following information: Customer # Customer Name Contact Name of Person Requesting Support Brief description of issue/question If any of this information is not provided, then you will not receive support, period. The only exception to this will be a prospective customer that has not purchased yet. At the initial point of contact, the customer contact will receive a support acknowledgement that will include a unique support session number. This number will be required for all follow-up correspondence with our support staff, and you will be required to keep all correspondence limited to the initial subject. Note: This initial point of contact will not be with an actual developer, but rather a customer support person. Once everything is in order and you have received a support acknowledgement, then you will be contacted by a developer to continue the support session. Each support session will cost $19, and you will be able to purchase as many support sessions as you need. The support sessions are not time-limited like the yearly subscriptions, so they will be valid until you use them. At any time, you will be able to view both your existing subscription and support session information on our web site, just as you can now with the existing support plans. 2) Any support sessions that are the result of a product defect or bug will be credited to the customer. However, we expect customers that are aware of a bug up-front to use the incident report submittal form on our web site to submit the bug. This saves us the time of manually entering incident reports into our incident report database. 3) All current, valid support plans (now subscriptions) will be grandfathered with a number of support sessions equal to the value (rounded) of your current support plan(s), and these will automatically be credited to your customer records. For example, if you have a current ElevateDB Client-Server support plan that cost $159, then you will be credited with 8 support sessions. 4) Any new subscription purchases will entitle the customer to bug fixes and minor releases only, for a year starting from the date of the subscription purchase. 5) All new product purchases will include the first year's subscription and a specific number of support sessions that will vary by product. 6) The support forums will continue to be free and primarily peer support. We will still be checking in occasionally to answer questions, but the primary method of direct support will be via email, phone, or Skype (support sessions). We feel that these changes will accomplish our goals of allowing those that don't require a large amount of support to forego bearing any extra cost, while those that do require more support to be able to purchase such support in a cost-effective manner that isn't limited by a time period. It will also allow us to concentrate more on our development efforts and get out minor releases and bug fixes in a more timely manner. We will be sending out emails with more information on the implementation of these changes before they go into effect on April 1, 2013. As always, we are grateful for each and every one of our customers, and look forward to continuing our relationships with you all. |
Sun, Feb 24 2013 5:09 PM | Permanent Link |
Adam H. | Hi Tim,
Firstly, I must say that I have always found you to be fair, always trying to err on the side that benefits your customers. As others have mentioned previous... $20 per support question is definitely on the cheaper side of things, but somehow I think that it's probably more designed as a deterrent to people who use your support / time constantly for simple things that they can work on themselves, or get from the forums, etc. A wise person once pointed out to me that 80% of my time is most likely taken up by 20% of their customers, and in may cases these are the customers that do like to penny pinch. The solution to free up my time is to increase my charges slighty. This doesn't impact on real customers, but those who want something for nothing normally get deterred. As such, I wouldn't be surprised if your plans will work quite effectively to cut down on a lot of support you get directly whilst not really hurting those who really do need dedicated support. And I think you need to do this. You now have 3 products, DBISam, EDB, and WebBuilder (who knows what you're dreaming up of next... an operating system? <vbg>) and I am very impressed (and releaved) that you are still putting time into ye old DBISam with support, maintenance changes and tweaks, and if this is what it takes to be able to continue to be able to support like that - I'm behind you 100%! One thing that has been raised here by Arthur that I can understand is the ability to get answers as quickly as possible without having to bounce back and forth to confirm that one is willing to spend the cash for ASAP answers. As a suggestion, maybe customers wishing to get those could tag their emails as High Importance, or do something else that basically confirms that they're happy to pay for support regardless of whether it's a newsgroup question to get the answer ASAP. (Personally, I find in the majority of situations I get quicker replies from the newsgroup from time to time considering I'm over the other half of the world and you're normally in bed when I'm dreaming up questions and it's only those where I'm really needing specialist help, or have had no response on the NG, or sometimes have found a bug (or think I've found a bug that's not a bug <vbg>) that I contact directly, but I can understand where he may be coming from). As for the price increase - I've always believed your products have always been pretty reasonably priced too and a small increase in price is quite probably due. You have a lot of customers that are small developers with small clients, that need to keep their overheads down - and it seems obvious that you are very considerate of them with this support structure, which I think is fantastic! (Either that, or maybe I'm just in a good mood as I'm about to take a couple of weeks holidays shortly Cheers Adam. |
Mon, Feb 25 2013 11:58 AM | Permanent Link |
Tim Young [Elevate Software] Elevate Software, Inc. timyoung@elevatesoft.com | Adam,
<< As a suggestion, maybe customers wishing to get those could tag their emails as High Importance, or do something else that basically confirms that they're happy to pay for support regardless of whether it's a newsgroup question to get the answer ASAP. >> Sam and I were discussing this very topic this morning in reference to Arthur's suggestions. I think I'm going to add a flag to the customer records to indicate that a customer wants to bypass any "filtering" done at the initial point of contact, and that this will be an option that customers can request in order to make sure that they get responses as fast as possible. As always, we'll let everyone know the full scoop on how everything works before the rollout on April 1st. Thanks, Tim Young Elevate Software www.elevatesoft.com |
Tue, Feb 26 2013 4:13 AM | Permanent Link |
Roy Lambert NLH Associates Team Elevate | Adam / Tim / Anyone
<<As others have mentioned previous...>> <<Sam and I were discussing this very topic this morning in reference to Arthur's suggestions.>> Have I lost a newsgroup somewhere? Roy |
Wed, Feb 27 2013 12:23 PM | Permanent Link |
Tim Young [Elevate Software] Elevate Software, Inc. timyoung@elevatesoft.com | Roy,
<< Have I lost a newsgroup somewhere? >> Some of these were coming up in both the DBISAM and ElevateDB Announcements groups. Tim Young Elevate Software www.elevatesoft.com |
Wed, Feb 27 2013 2:14 PM | Permanent Link |
Roy Lambert NLH Associates Team Elevate | Tim
><< Have I lost a newsgroup somewhere? >> > >Some of these were coming up in both the DBISAM and ElevateDB >Announcements groups. Hmm I'm going to have to do some investigation. I'm subscribed to almost all of your NGs including those. Maybe the electrons gost lost on the way up here, or wandered off to sunnier climbs. Roy |
Thu, Feb 28 2013 7:08 AM | Permanent Link |
Roy Lambert NLH Associates Team Elevate | Tim
I eventually had to delete the three announcement newsgroups and resubscribe. Its very strange because TMaN isn't supposed to miss things and I have an option of going back and re-downloading stuff. I wonder if its due to the server crash you had some time ago which has caused things to get out of sync. I just hope I'm not missing stuff from the other ngs. Roy Lambert |
Thu, Feb 28 2013 12:21 PM | Permanent Link |
Tim Young [Elevate Software] Elevate Software, Inc. timyoung@elevatesoft.com | Roy,
<< I eventually had to delete the three announcement newsgroups and resubscribe. Its very strange because TMaN isn't supposed to miss things and I have an option of going back and re-downloading stuff. I wonder if its due to the server crash you had some time ago which has caused things to get out of sync. >> It may be due to the duplicate nature of the postings. Is that, perhaps, tripping it up ? Tim Young Elevate Software www.elevatesoft.com |
Thu, Feb 28 2013 1:17 PM | Permanent Link |
Roy Lambert NLH Associates Team Elevate | Tim
><< I eventually had to delete the three announcement newsgroups and >resubscribe. Its very strange because TMaN isn't supposed to miss things and >I have an option of going back and re-downloading stuff. I wonder if its due >to the server crash you had some time ago which has caused things to get out >of sync. >> > >It may be due to the duplicate nature of the postings. Is that, perhaps, >tripping it up ? It handles cross posting (which I think is what you mean by duplicates) very happily. I tried a repair before deleting and resubscribing just in case but no different. Its working now so unless I notice something else weird I'll just pretend it didn't happen. Roy |
Fri, Mar 1 2013 6:27 AM | Permanent Link |
Michael Riley ZilchWorks | Roy Lambert wrote:
>I eventually had to delete the three announcement newsgroups and >resubscribe. Its very strange because TMaN isn't supposed to miss >things and I have an option of going back and re-downloading stuff. I >wonder if its due to the server crash you had some time ago which has >caused things to get out of sync. Roy, What is TMan? -- Michael Riley GySgt USMC Retired http://capecodgunny.blogspot.com/ |
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