Thank you very much for taking the time to post your thoughts, I really appreciate all the feedback! We have spent years working on LTPX and spent countless hours agonizing over every detail, from the software itself, to the release, to pricing, all trying to determine what is best for pilots, and what will make as many people happy as possible. There’s no denying there is one limiting factor, we can’t give it away for free, which would undoubtedly make everyone happy, however it would be short lived because then there would be no more updates to LTP because Coradine could not continue as a business. So sustainability was a very key concern in our discussions: how can we deliver the constant updates that people want, provide the great, quick, customer service that people want, keep the price as low as possible, and still be able to pay the bills. A brief history: - LogTen Pro 3 launched on December 1st, 2006 for $89.99USD. We offered upgrades to existing customers for $49.99. - LogTen Pro 4 launched January 1st, 2008 for $99.99, and we offered upgrades at $69.99. - LogTen Mobile was the first pilot logbook for the iPhone, and hit the App Store on July 22nd, 2008 just 13 days after the App Store opened for the first time. It was strictly a companion app for the Mac, and was primarily only used for adding flights and seeing a brief summary of your totals, then syncing to the Mac via WiFI. It sold for $39.99 We experimented with a “lite” version for 19.99, but it was a tiny fraction of sales and added more confusion for users trying to figure out the difference between the two and then later wanting to upgrade or switch that it was ultimately discontinued. - LogTen Pro 5 launched on August 17th, 2009 and sold for $99.99, upgrades were $49.99. - LogTen Pro for iPhone, the first mobile pilot logbook to provide full logbook functionality and give you access to your entire logbook debuted on July 15th, 2010 and sold for $49.99. - LogTen Pro for iPad, the first pilot logbook for the iPad, debuted one November 1st, 2010, at $79.99. - LogTen Pro 6 was then the first launch that unified LogTen Pro across Mac, iPhone and iPad all launching on December 14th, 2011. Mac started at $149.99, iPhone at $49.99 and iPad at $79.99, with half price upgrades for each. However since it was all three, it meant upgrading users who had all three had to pay $140 to upgrade and for new users or users who missed the upgrade window in the App Store the total cost to start using LogTen Pro 6 on all devices was $280. If you started on the day LogTen Pro 3 launched, and purchased each of the next releases at the upgrade prices on the day they launched, it would have cost you $539.93 over 5 years, Or $107.99/year. About a month after the launch of version 6, we did respond to users feedback that it was too much having to upgrade all their devices at once, and we decided to significantly reduce prices, cutting the Mac version to $99/$49 (Full and upgrade price), we launched a universal version for iPhone and iPad at $79, and cut the iPhone only to $29.99 and the iPad to $59.99. So if you upgraded to v6 after the price cuts, your totals for the 5 years would have been $489.93, or $97.98/year. I would love to hear your ideas and suggestions for alternative, sustainable ways to sell LogTen Pro and give pilots what they want. What we found over the last several years as the App Stores have grown, the Mac App Store was introduced, and Apple continued to subsidize their software more and more with their hardware to the point of giving away most of their apps for free, including yearly new operating system releases, everyone expects all their software to work like Apple’s. They want continuous improvements, full compatibility with every magical new device and service that Apple launches, they want it to work flawlessly, update automatically, and they ultimately expect it for free. There are somewhere around 2 million pilots in the whole world. We’re certainly not close to getting them all using LogTen Pro yet, but there’s definitely a very finite number of potential customers. So offering LTP as a one time purchase, and then relying solely on new people coming through the door is not a recipe for long term success, and means that all our focus has to be on NEW customers, and what they want, rather than existing customers. If you have an app like WhatsApp or Angy Birds that you can sell to every person with an iPhone, now you’re talking 500 million iPhones… If you’ve got 100 million customers, having them each pay $0.99/year is great! But when you have around 60,000 customers, and you try that you can’t even pay one engineers salary. People were extremely upset about having to upgrade using the old model, and many people feel entitled to forever updates with a single purchase. No software can do that without some other source of income. So, since so many people want regular updates, and we had many customers who chose to hang on to old versions, or just never got around to updating, but then updated their operating system, got a new computer, new phone, whatever, and suddenly found their 3 or 4 year old logbook software wouldn’t work with it, they felt forced into buying a new version so they could keep accessing their logbook. I can empathize, but ultimately, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t have the latest systems but run old apps. If you want to buy everything once, you CAN, but you can’t update some things, and not others. If you want the latest systems from Apple, you’re going to need your software vendors to be successful enough to keep updating their apps to work with the march of progress. We really wanted to keep everything as simple as possible too, and avoid the complexities of having to have some kind of new Coradine account, logins, multiple purchases for Mac and iPhone and iPad etc. We wanted to make it so you never had to be surprised by an update, or wonder what the next release might cost. Be able to offer it free to students, as well as free trials for everyone. We wanted to be able to deliver each new feature to customers as we finish them, rather than having to save them all up for one big release to get them to upgrade so we could afford to start work on the NEXT big release. We wanted to future proof pilots logbooks, so no would ever get into the situation of having logbook software so old that when they got a new computer or device, they couldn’t open their logbook anymore, kind of like having your favorite video of your child on a video format that can’t be played anywhere, and then you have to go through some complicated steps to digitize it or update it to the latest format, and get a new player, etc. Last, everyone wants great customer service, available 24x7 with quick response times, and we’re constantly even asked for live phone support they can call any time. As the number of customers we have continues to grow we have to constantly grow our staff to support them, so the revenue has to grow to match. Our new subscription model addressed all these concerns: The initial price to get LogTen Pro and try it out is now $0. You don’t have to pay until you have over 40 hours of total flight time, so students can use it for free at no risk. Then if you fly some months but don’t fly in the winter for example while building your time, you can only pay for the month you’re flying if you like. If you stop paying you still have full access to your data, you can view, edit, plan, analyze, run reports, even if you just want to export all your data and stop using LogTen Pro, you can do this on the latest hardware and systems because you will always get the new updates for free. We can release new features as they’re ready, and be more open about telling everyone what we’re working on next so people can anticipate what they will be getting soon, and request new stuff. We made the Mac version free, so that you only have to make a single purchase, and now everyone can benefit from the power of the Mac version for things like schedule importing, editing multiple flights at once, building custom reports, etc. And last, if you want the incredible convenience of logging your flights on your iOS devices and effortlessly having them sync everywhere via iCloud, it’s actually significantly cheaper on a yearly basis, and MUCH cheaper for the initial purchase. Again, I would love to hear your suggestions for other ways to accomplish this, I REALLY care about all our customers and want to provide the best service in the world! I am, as always, at your service, Noah
Posted on: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 13:42:13 +0000
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