CQC Pricing Thread

[Dean Roddey]

So you already have over 19000 installed customers?

I meant the entire DIY market for products such as ours. If you add up all of the customres of CQS, HS, Cinemar, HAL, Proximis, etc... I would think it probably no more than 20K (many of which are not even still active customers, just someone who once purchased and are counted as a customer.) Does anyone think I'm way off on that estimate?

But, more importantly, the number of potential new customers at any given time is quite small relative to what it would take to sustain a reasonable business at such a low price.

 

[Dean Roddey]

My only comment on the timeframe was that it was such a short amount of time. It has been clear that you have been busy on the 2.0 release, and I know it was not intended to be a gun to anyone's head, it was just a bit frustrating (buy by tomorrow or it costs $400 more).

Actually, it's $495 until 2.0 comes out, so it's only $180 more during the next month or so.

My other points on large amounts was tied to HS stating they have over 9000 users (which amusingly enough is close to the number you stated).

But, that's over their entire years of doing business. They've been at it at least 5 years, right? And during a lot of that time, I don't think that there was nearly as much competition for the limited number of new customers as there is now. If they've been at it for 5 years, that would be fewer than 2K customers a year. Which these days would be split up among the various products in this space (some of them free for the lower end.)

 

[Mike]

Charmed Quark is not to far out of line. I just priced what it would cost me if I was to use MainLobby instead:

MainLobby3 $99.99
MLServer3 $99.99
MusicLobby $59.99
CD Ripping Engine $29.99
WeatherLobby $59.99
WebLobby $44.99
Russound PocketPC $54.99
MusicLobby PocketPC $34.99
ElkM1 Plug-in $99.99
Russound Plug-in $99.99
-------------------------------------
Total $684.90

Then I still need HomeSeer to handle the Automation that ML can not at this time.
And this does not include other drivers that are still needed.

So for CQC at $895 for everything including current and future drivers it is not a bad deal!

I'll use the poll here to paint an interesting example:

34 HS users at $190 = $6,460 (excluding upgrades, etc)
23 CQC users at $315 = $7,245 (excluding upgrades, etc)
1 MainLobby user at $684 (excluding upgrades, etc) assuming all packages

Yes, there is a higher end to the market, but since it is a smaller space, do you want pieces of all of it, or just the higher tier?

9000 registered HomeSeer users at $315 = $2.835 million
maintenance on that at $95 a year would be $855,000. I think this would even let Dean take some time off.

Granted this takes the example of the entire 'stated' HomeSeer population and as such is extreme, you get the point.

EDIT: I see your point on volumes Dean. I hope it works out. As noted earlier I am very curious to watch this, not just because of my own interest in the product , but to see how this very interesting business scenario plays out.

Is CQC a great product? Absolutely from what I have seen. I think a number like $895 puts this in comparison with other needs and then will wind up losing out, whereas a smaller number gets more people in the pie...

Just my thoughts. I have some considering to do....

 

[Dean Roddey]

9000 registered HomeSeer users at $315 = $2.835 million maintenance on that at $95 a year would be $855,000. I think this would even let Dean take some time off.

But, you have to keep in mind that we'd have to find 9000 new DIY customers in order to do that. The rate of available new DIY customers would make that a project of many more years, just get reach the point of being a very, very tiny company that just is hanging on. I think that people seriously underestimate the cost of running a real company. Once you get beyond the founders, who are willing to work insane hours for nothing, you have to actually start paying people, and having facilities, and have insurance, and so forth. Even in a very low cost area, it probably costs $125K a year of overhead to the company per professional employee. And that doesn't count going to shows, buying the equipment we need to, hosting our own web site and having someone to maintain that, actually pay us founders some sort of real salary, get our books done, and so forth.

So $800K might sound like a lot of money, and I'll kill for it right now for sure, but in business terms it's a trivial amount of money. We can't continue to compete if it's just me sitting the bedroom 16 hours a day and programming.

 

[noshali]

I am always amused when this turns into a ML vs CQC thing. Both have had price increases. It is like buying a car...one might not be better than the other it is what you want to go with and what satisifes your need.

I do have HS and loved it (when it ran) I hear it is much better now. I also tried ML and loved it also....all the products ARE great. The reason whey I chose CQC was stability that I was missing in HS and all the drivers were and are still free.

I am aware that for me this is a hobby so I fall in the DIY market. The day when I realize that this hobby is toooo expensive then I will look for an alternative. I know what each service is worth to me...for that matter if anyone of the HA software makers raise their price to a point which does not satisfy my bang for the buck then I will not use them. I will be sad to give up this hobby but that is the main reason why I have ELK and not a multi thousand $ system like HAI. I could argue for hours with all of you as to which one is better......it is all about what satisifes your needs.

regards,

 

[Dean Roddey]

BTW, I should point out that no one is obliged to buy the full system configuration. If you just want the core plus scheduled/triggered events, which many people could do just fine with for a pure automation scenario, it would be $495+95, so $590, instead of $895. That would leave out the web server (which many people don't need given our strong user interface system), app control (again not much needed in pure automation), and the DNV/XML Gateway which you'd only need if you want to do small .Net based clients.

 

[smee]

Dean:

How about an official pricing announcement thread? Or at least a single post in this one that outlines all the options (near term (Friday?), pre-2.0 release, post-2.0 release, and any other variations there may be)?

It seems like every couple of posts there is a new pricing scheme. Maybe it's worth explaining the whole thing here once.

 

[ellisr63]

I am hanging in with CQC as I see it as the best product on the market (especially for the DIYer)... very stable and with 100 drivers now available it covers everything I need to control and more. Dean has been very good about helping others with little or no experience in programming (I am a prime example of this) as has the whole CQC user forum. Would I like to not have the increase in price.... of course but I also realize that CQC is a bargain for all that it offers.
Ron

 

[lazyone]

Dean

I truly wish you good luck in your new business model, but a saying keeps repeating in the back of my head.

Sell To The Masses, Live With The Rich
Sell To The Rich, Live With The Masses

In the HA market, I'm not sure who qualifies as the masses or the Rich.

lz

 

[AutomatedOutlet]

it's just me sitting the bedroom 16 hours a day and programming.

Dean, a visualization that I didn't need to have - lol :blink:

 

[DavidL]

"Then I still need HomeSeer to handle the Automation that ML can not at this time."

Toymaster, what automation are you looking for (using)? How do you know that MainLobby can't do it? Curious on specifics, as if it is important and worthwhile for others, it will be added. Thanx in advance for taking the time to let us know.

noshali, There is now a demo of MainLobby 3 / MainLobby Server 3 available. I would be curious if you have any reliability issues. I have not heard of a reliability issue since MainLobby Server 3 was released.

 

[The Pod]

BTW, I should point out that no one is obliged to buy the full system configuration. If you just want the core plus scheduled/triggered events, which many people could do just fine with for a pure automation scenario, it would be $495+95, so $590, instead of $895. That would leave out the web server (which many people don't need given our strong user interface system), app control (again not much needed in pure automation), and the DNV/XML Gateway which you'd only need if you want to do small .Net based clients.

I have always agreeded with a yearly maintenance support fee, however, because a user doesn't need to purchase the full product, maybe maintenance should reflect what the person did purchase vs. a fixed price. Lets say 10% per year. Those who purchase the full package for $895 would be paying $89.50/yr maintenance. Someone who purchased only the pure automation scenario Dean gave for $590, they would only have a $59.00/yr maintenance fee.

The Pod

 

[Dean Roddey]

The official announcement is here:

http://www.charmedquark.com/vb_forum/showthread.php?t=2190

It's not changed. We just made two exceptions to allow for people looking to make a move now to do so without paying the new price.

 

[Dean Roddey]

Sell To The Masses, Live With The Rich
Sell To The Rich, Live With The Masses

In the HA market, I'm not sure who qualifies as the masses or the Rich.

It's often true, but only if there is a mass market, which there really isn't for automation right now. If you look at the money spent on automation, it's probably maybe a few millions a year all told in the DIY world (including things like specialty hardware such a GC-100 or USB-UIRT and so forth.) OTOH, the professional installation world is billions per year. Even a small slice of that pie is enough to sustain a reasonably sized company, and of course we'd really like to go much beyond that and become a serious player in the market. Crestron along is ~$500 a year, and they really only sell to the semi-rich to rich. AMX is around $200 million a year, and they sell to the semi-semi-rich to the semi-rich mostly.

Automation will only become a mass market, IMO, if a set of standards were to arise that home builders could use to create homes that are easily 'plugged into' by various automation packages. Without that, it remains a custom installation market for all but the relatively small DIY world, where we are geeky enough to do it ourselves.

A lot of people are getting into the home media market, since that's a much easier piece to bite off of course, because it's a much more limited problem to solve. But that market is still fairly uppity still and it's getting kind of crowded.

 

[Dean Roddey]

Lets say 10% per year. Those who purchase the full package for $895 would be paying $89.50/yr maintenance. Someone who purchased only the pure automation scenario Dean gave for $590, they would only have a $59.00/yr maintenance fee.

We may consider that later down the line. For now, we already have enough 'bookeeping overhead' that it's a problem, and seriously considered just having a single system and leaving it at that, because it gets more complex than you'd think when you start offering options and then moving foward to new versions and whatnot (as shown by the many questions that immediately get asked covering all the possible corner cases.)

So for now, we'll just keep a simple, single price, but we'll consider it in the future.