For many years we’ve been licensing software at MediaRoost and our previous companies, and for most customers, the standard pricing and usage model works just fine, but for some, at very different ends of the spectrum, it does not. I’m going to share my thoughts today about one end of the spectrum, non-profits – who generally do not often have large budgets. In a few days I’ll discuss the other end of that spectrum — customers who have large budgets, and larger needs, but who want to have more control over the software they use — and what we’re planning for them.
We had an email today from someone at a non-profit. He loves TweetRoost, but does not have the budget for the number of users he needs. I felt our team here missed this one, since we’ve always had plans for people at non-profits (schools, research institutions, charities., etc.) — in our previous companies. We should have had a plan in place for them at MediaRoost. We’ll solve this quickly. The non-profit who contacted us will get special pricing, and so will every other non-profit too.
It makes sense to have a policy for these folks, especially in today’s economy where money is so tight.
a. It allows them to have excellent software they can afford to use.
b. It means that we get a new customer, and along with that we get some revenue, even if that revenue is smaller. And we’re doing a good deed.
c. Their staff gets to learn the software and use it and tell their friends. In addition, people move on, and when they do, we hope they’ll buy new copies for their new organization. At UniPress, we had one customer buy our FootPrints product at his university (at a discount), and then move on to two other institutions of higher learning, and each time, that new place licensed the product because he loved it so much.
Check our pricing page over the next few days, you’ll see our new policy on non-profits.
Mark
