***OFFICIAL HOMESEER PRICING THREAD***

[Spam]

My ownly concerns on the third party plugins is support. There have been a few instances where the developer just vanished and there was no support. Since HST is not responsible for this you are screwed. What I would consider paying for on plugins is support. Why can't HST contract with content providers to guarentee a working format for pluings?

I know I get weather reports from blank.com. If blank.com changes it's format, my plugin dies! Why for some fee, can't HST make a deal with blank.com to guarantee a data feed that will never change? RSS isn't that big a deal any more. We all saw what happened with the MSN plugin and a developer that vanished. Guarantee my content, guarantee my support, and I will consider buying a 3rd pty plugin. There are some great ones out there.

As far as 2.0 goes? 1.7 does everything I need it for. No reason to upgrade. My HA setup is simple. And btw why after several years, is there still no good HST supported interface for HSP?

 

[CFGuy]

My ownly concerns on the third party plugins is support. There have been a few instances where the developer just vanished and there was no support. Since HST is not responsible for this you are screwed. What I would consider paying for on plugins is support. Why can't HST contract with content providers to guarentee a working format for pluings?

I know I get weather reports from blank.com. If blank.com changes it's format, my plugin dies! Why for some fee, can't HST make a deal with blank.com to guarantee a data feed that will never change? RSS isn't that big a deal any more. We all saw what happened with the MSN plugin and a developer that vanished. Guarantee my content, guarantee my support, and I will consider buying a 3rd pty plugin. There are some great ones out there.

As far as 2.0 goes? 1.7 does everything I need it for. No reason to upgrade. My HA setup is simple. And btw why after several years, is there still no good HST supported interface for HSP?

Why for some fee, can't HST make a deal with blank.com to guarantee a data feed that will never change?

Mainly due to the cost. When I first started working on HSTV there was no xml feed available. So I contacted Zap2it to see how much it would cost to get the data from them. They wanted $4000 per month plus $1 per month for each user. Their typical customer is newspapers with a large number of subscribers.

The only reason companies like zap2it and weather.com make their data free for personal use is to because its cheaper than having the data scraped from their web pages. Plus less wear and tear on their server. They can't go after every person that scraps their site but they can go after someone who sells something that uses their data illegally.


Check out phoneWeb for the HSP interface. Its got really good support.

 

[Spam]

Woah, I read that at 400 a month, not 4000. I was thinking what is so bad about that? That is quite steep. Seems like a loss for content providers as clearly there is a market for it. I'm sure they know their business better than I do. Stability is what is all comes down to. It's had to drop $30 on a plugin that may or may not work next week.

 

[zimmer62]

I have a few things to say about Homeseer and their pricing.

Over the years I started getting interested in homeseer and I finally broke down and bought it after using the trial seval times and getting fed up with HAL2000

this is what I have into it.

$100 for homeseer.
$50 homeseer phone
$100 voices
$20 audrey plug in
$30 temp plug in.
$1000's+ on x10 hardware and other misc interfaces hardware
$350 SC400 PC

At some point I'll hit the price mark where it would have been better for me to go with a more professional solution.

I was under the impression a long time ago before I bought homeseer that future upgrades would be free... homeseer will nickle and dime me right out their product and into another if they keep this us.

Mr house is always an option for Linux, I've played with it and I'm not a huge fan, but if enough people get frusterated with homeseer, I'm sure we are all quite capable at putting our minds togeather and developing a far superior product.

I think homeseer is great, however as someone pointed out, it looks cheap... it's not super efficient and it's had it's share of problems over the years.... This kind of software is the kind that I usually read the back of the box, take a glance at the user interface and put the box back on the shelf becuase it looks cheap.

Lets discuss plugins... you can have them free from homeseer, or you can charge a min of $5.... They want to up that to $30? That just seems wrong. I would like to use more plugins.... MCE, hauppauge (or web cam) as well as many others where cost has steared me right away... I just don't feel good about playing $100's every year for sevearl added features here and there... The hardware is always going to cost a lot of money, but at some point the software is going to come down, especially if a bigger company gets involved...

Think of Windows or some of the games out there, these companies charge < $200 for their products however the products are FAR FAR more mature than homeseer... it's weird buying any software that cost more than the computer it's running on, more than the operating system it's running on etc. It's kind of like putting a $5000 stereo system in a $500 beater car.... you just don't do it.

I do understand that HS needs to make money, but most of us find time to write these scripts (that homeseer should be doing for us, providing a large base of examples and custom scripts in an easy to sort through manor) and tinker for hours and hours each week, if you consider the time and money we are investing in homeseer and related technologies, we could just stand up from the chair walk over to the $0.31 light switch and flip it on. We however choose to take the path of working hard to be lazy, and it's fun we enojoy doing it, but at some point (the direction this is headed) the middle class will not be able to afford all of this, and the upper class will pay professionals to use products other than homeseer.

Sorry for the super long rant, I could go on and on....

 

[bblackmoor]

I have seen several people refer to buying Home Seer for $40 - $50. Where is it available for this price? I would buy it for $40, but at $140+, it simply isn't worth it.

 

[Mark S.]

That was several years ago - inflation you know.

As far as being worth $150? - that's your call, but there are a few thousand satisfied users who clearly believe it is.

Mark

 

[electron]

I am not sure if I would buy it at $150 (or higher soon with the release of the new version), as you still need to invest in nice voices, maybe the HSP addon and some plugins, so it starts adding up pretty fast, however, imo, the software is the best at what it does, HAL and others (HouseBot etc) are pretty good too, but if you want flexibility, Homeseer is the way to go. If I am not mistaken the new version of HAL is more flexible too now, but I haven't had a chance yet to look at it, and I don't remember what the price is.

 

[Squintz]

Worth $150? Yes IMO, But not worth $150 + $60here and $30There... User created plug-ins should be kept free because from what i read that is how it used to be in the old days. Everyone would help each other out with their scripts and plug-in and everyone was happy. We are all in this hobby together and we should all help each other out.

 

[Skibum]

Yes Squintz, those were great times. The HS board was ALIVE with energy, and assistance. Pay plug-ins saw a quick end to the comraderie. :blink:

Now it's "just buy my plug-in, and all your problems will be resolved..."

 

[Mark S.]

I have to agree with Squintz on the plugins. Very few free ones these days. I think we all appreciate the hard work of the creators, but it is really starting to add up, especially at up to $40 a pop.

Mark

 

[Spam]

I got HS at $39.95 and will never regret that decision. However at $150 for what I do (not much) I'll NEVER suggest to any one thinking of 'tinkering' with the software to touch it. Its too much to just tinker with. I've not used any of the other apps, but I've been wanting to do that. With the limited things that I do with my system, I'd have no problem turning it off. I really only use it for voicemail any more and I'm not particularly happy with the quality.

Hrmm can you ebay your license key?

 

[Rupp]

I'm with you guys. I too bought HS at $39.95 back in the good ole' days. I have yet to buy a plugin and more than likely never will. You see, there is no one as tight as me on the HS BB so I would rather built my own than buy. Don't get me wrong I'm sure some of the plugins are worth $20 or so but at a minimum of $39, that's half of the cost of the dang operating system. I sadly can no longer tell my friends and co-workers about this exciting product I use as a hobby. I don't even show off HS any more because inevitably they will ask the cost of HS and I find myself scrambling to come up with the justifications. They simply aren't there any more. It wouldn't be so bad at $150 but then most users are going to need a few plugins and BAM! you've spent $200-$300 for what? I can definitely say I would NOT buy HS at $150. But then again I squeak when I walk. I've even thought about writing a few plugins that are similar to existing ones but I'm afraid of the repercussions. For example I need a SIMPLE one-wire plugin that only reads a few temp sensors and writes the values to a database. I have a script but would like to move this to a plugin. The only one I know to exist is the MCSTemperatures which is a Lexus and I need a Pinto. Oh well. Such is life and it certainly doesn't seem to be affecting new users?

 

[Skibum]

That is the sad part of it.... new users are oblivious. Just gimme, and "how much?"

 

[smee]

Rupp:

For your 1wire temperature stuff, why do you want to replace your script with a plugin? What will the plugin do that the script won't? I'm not faulting the idea, I'm just curious what the benefits are.

If you do decide to write the plugin, I don't think you will be stepping on very many toes with this one. As long as you don't throw in the kitchen sink, you'll be ok. I think the MCS Temperature plugin suffers a bit from feature overkill. It does a lot, but the last time I looked at it I thought it was very confusing (i.e., you set what where to do what?). Admittedly, it's been a while so it may be much better now.

Also, if you write one, be sure to put in handles for scripts. Allow the user to specify a script that should be called after each temperature read cycle, for example. This way, a lot of the functionality that would normally be embedded in the plugin can be added by the user.

 

[Rupp]

Smee,
The main reason I want a plugin is to combine scattered parts of the script. I have the script writing to an access database and another java plotting utility that I installed so long ago that I probably couldn't reinstall, plotting the readings. In addition I wouldn't mind learning how to code this one wire stuff in VB as well. Other than that I have absolutely no reason to convert the script. It works fine.