How much would you Pay? To improve SketchUp
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At the opposite end of the spectrum, I've often wondered why Trimble doesn't introduce a mid-price version, for example SketchUp pro without Layout and Style Builder. If even a small fraction of the free/Make users chose to upgrade to this product, it would be a substantial amount of income.
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Imagine a Free version with Plugins disabled. That'd shake shit up.
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@slbaumgartner said:
At the opposite end of the spectrum, I've often wondered why Trimble doesn't introduce a mid-price version, for example SketchUp pro without Layout and Style Builder. If even a small fraction of the free/Make users chose to upgrade to this product, it would be a substantial amount of income.
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@arklandesign said:
Unless it could gain a much larger license fee, what incentive does Trimble have to make it so? Surely the $95 yearly upgrade is not enough profit to induce such needed changes.
There are two ways to increase the profit, higher price or more user, why not choose the second?
@arklandesign said:
SketchUp is low priced in comparison to many other programs with hundreds of thousands of users using the free version. There is not that much difference between the free and pro version to persuade many to turn pro.
An important change here was the limitation of commercial work to the PRO version.
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If I wanted super pro now then I would be looking at other products. Trimble aren't going to make the major changes you are looking for any time soon. They are well placed in the market without risking competition from more adept or specialised software by raising their price.
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@gilles said:
...Flamingo+Penguin+Bongo...
who asked for rendering and animation?
Rhino alone is only 995€ (or $995
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Folks these days, particularly in the architectural field, are not too keen to part with cash simply because the work levels in many countries have plummeted. So it looks like the current price is the ceiling!
As we know SketchUp Make is free and I imagine its being used for commercial work extensively in spite of the warning as to type of use allowed.
@rich o brien said:
Imagine a Free version with Plugins disabled. That'd shake shit up.
Maybe Rich's suggestion would make sense from a business perspective on the basis for a bare bones 'middle' product, say priced at somewhere between $150 - $250.
As for the case of SketchUp Ultra at $1500. I imagine many current professional users could well be interested in such an application. But DI think there would need to be a number of flavours, Arch, Eng, Product Design etc.
I image the development costs would run into several millions and take at least 18 to 24 months, if not longer. Let's say for argument that the development costs would be $5,000,000. In order to break even, sales would need to reach 3,333+ copies! That's quite a lot of heads but again maybe not considering that SketchUp is now a standard.
Maybe to way to test the market would be via a crowd funding setup. Quite a few Kickstarter projects have broken the $1,000,000 pledge levels. Based on the below, it would not be beyond possibility to raise $5,000,000 for an Ultra product in a few flavours.
FORM 1 @ $2,699
Pledged $2,945,885
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/formlabs/form-1-an-affordable-professional-3d-printer?ref=most-fundedPEBBLE @ $99
Pledged $10,266,845
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper-watch-for-iphone-and-android?ref=most-fundedMike
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@solo said:
@gilles said:
Rhino+Flamingo+Penguin+Bongo - 1 695 €
I can pay $10 and see more animals at the zoo.
Too funny, but seriously if you are prepared to pay thousands for a rendering/animation software like Lumion, why wouldn't you pay the same for dream come true version of SketchUp with all the bells and whistles included? What would you cough up for this to become a reality.
@rich o brien said:
Imagine a Free version with Plugins disabled. That'd shake shit up.
I agree Rich and was very surprised that the Make version did not dumb down further to encourage more Pro users. But with supposedly 30 million unique activation's last year and about 2.5 million using it regularly every week, the actual plug-in downloads are far below what I would expect, especially for all the free plug-ins.
So, either SketchUp users are, for the most part completely ignorant of plugins, or have little use for them or a combination of both.Maybe this will change due to the easier installation process that sketchucation and Trimble have both provided.
We have what 200,000 members right here on Sketchucation, perhaps half of them using SketchUp pro regularly and yet the highest download I can find for any of the plug-ins is under 10K, I would have thought there would be significantly more in numbers.
So, I would doubt disabling extensions for Maker users, is going to shake things up that much.@slbaumgartner said:
At the opposite end of the spectrum, I've often wondered why Trimble doesn't introduce a mid-price version, for example SketchUp pro without Layout and Style Builder. If even a small fraction of the free/Make users chose to upgrade to this product, it would be a substantial amount of income.
I doubt that many more licenses would convert to pro, simply for a lower price by losing Layout. Sketchup is already cheap at $600. Yes, I know in some parts of the world that is a huge amount of money but layout is a HUGE part of SketchUp and a part that I really hope continues to evolve.
@cotty said:
There are two ways to increase the profit, higher price or more user, why not choose the second?
An important change here was the limitation of commercial work to the PRO version.
I hear ya on both points but, I don't think more users are a real possibility as long as the make version is available and that version should remain, as it is used in thousands of classrooms all over the globe to enable kids to enjoy building in 3D.
I also can't see how Trimble are going to make your second point stick. People can continue to use previous versions which allow for free commercial use.
@mike lucey said:
Folks these days, particularly in the architectural field, are not too keen to part with cash simply because the work levels in many countries have plummeted. So it looks like the current price is the ceiling!
As for the case of SketchUp Ultra at $1500. I imagine many current professional users could well be interested in such an application. But DI think there would need to be a number of flavours, Arch, Eng, Product Design etc.
I image the development costs would run into several millions and take at least 18 to 24 months, if not longer. Let's say for argument that the development costs would be $5,000,000. In order to break even, sales would need to reach 3,333+ copies! That's quite a lot of heads but again maybe not considering that SketchUp is now a standard.
Quote John Bacus”Thanks to Trimble, we’ll be able to continue to [highlight=#ffff40:33pno2b8]make SketchUp into the tool that we—and you—have always hoped it would become[/highlight:33pno2b8]. With a strong wind at our backs and plenty of sunshine ahead, this voyage just keeps getting more exciting
Quote by Trimble on acquisition “enhance our ability to extend our existing market applications including the cadastral, heavy civil, and building and construction industries.”
How can a company pay a reported 90M for SketchUp only to have it languish as a "low end -cad type" modeling software? Surely Trimble and the SKP team have much bigger plans for it.
Trimble have the means to make this happen especially if they want to live up to the quotes by John Bacus and the acquisition quote? Surely they do
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@arklandesign said:
I also can't see how Trimble are going to make your second point stick. People can continue to use previous versions which allow for free commercial use.
Yes, but I think it's a great motivation to make the new version so well that no one wants to stay with the old.
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I'm already like $1200 in at this point... I'd pay another $500. wait. that's not enough for a full license as is. well I guess you see my point.
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I think this question is a bit reversed.
SketchUp will never be able to do everything everyone wants.Maybe a better question would be to make a list of the most wished features and set a price on them?
What would you be willing to pay extra for feature X?Not that I like that approach either.
Personally I'm gonna wait until v2014. Hopefully it will finally have something in it to convince my boss to upgrade...
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I am always surprising for break to upgrade or not for a professional using !
What is the % of this price of this update / against Pro projects over a year?
Seems it's peanuts! It's not a shoes' price!
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It's not just one seat you know...
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ok, now I see better the little problem!
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@pixero said:
It's not just one seat you know...
Exactly! Many practices are slow to spend unless they see major productivity improvements.
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@arklandesign said:
@slbaumgartner said:
At the opposite end of the spectrum, I've often wondered why Trimble doesn't introduce a mid-price version, for example SketchUp pro without Layout and Style Builder. If even a small fraction of the free/Make users chose to upgrade to this product, it would be a substantial amount of income.
I doubt that many more licenses would convert to pro, simply for a lower price by losing Layout. Sketchup is already cheap at $600. Yes, I know in some parts of the world that is a huge amount of money but layout is a HUGE part of SketchUp and a part that I really hope continues to evolve.
I respectfully disagree. I very much doubt that many current users of free/Make will spring for the current price, even if it is a bargain compared to other similar products. They wouldn't buy any of those other products either! But I believe that a significant portion of them would pay a modest amount to get the features that are disabled to create free/Make out of Pro (I would). You have to keep in mind that most of these people are non-professionals who don't need to make formal, architectural-grade documents for clients using Layout, nor are they artists who want to do esthetic presentations by creating their own styles. So, Layout or Style Builder may be huge to you, but it is largely irrelevant to these people. And one way to provide a middle-priced product would be to unbundle these items, which are effectively separate applications in the first place. Even if a small fraction of the free/Make users buy in, something is always greater than nothing; it would be a source of new revenue for Trimble.
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@arcad-uk said:
If I wanted super pro now then I would be looking at other products. Trimble aren't going to make the major changes you are looking for any time soon. They are well placed in the market without risking competition from more adept or specialised software by raising their price.
Apologies for missing your post. I just don't see how some of the frequently requested improvements can be attained with only the $95 yearly upgrade. Perhaps some of them can and I'm hoping the next release is a major improvement on many fronts. I agree that SketchUp's success in becoming an industry standard is twofold: Its really easy to learn and it is inexpensive. A winning combination no doubt.So Yes Trimble is unlikely to mess with this winning combination, but i still suspect that they have long term plans that will significantly improve it.
@slbaumgartner said:
But I believe that a significant portion of them would pay a modest amount to get the features that are disabled to create free/Make out of Pro (I would). You have to keep in mind that most of these people are non-professionals who don't need to make formal, architectural-grade documents for clients using Layout, nor are they artists who want to do esthetic presentations by creating their own styles. So, Layout or Style Builder may be huge to you, but it is largely irrelevant to these people. And one way to provide a middle-priced product would be to unbundle these items, which are effectively separate applications in the first place. Even if a small fraction of the free/Make users buy in, something is always greater than nothing; it would be a source of new revenue for Trimble.
On reflection you are right. There are certainly 2/3rds more casual users than Pro users and I guess most have little use for Layout...which is a shame as it really is a great presentation tool and for the most part under utilized by the design industry.
Hopefully that too will change overtime.
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@arklandesign said:
So Yes Trimble is unlikely to mess with this winning combination, but i still suspect that they have long term plans that will significantly improve it.
And there you have it in a nut shell. A popular product at the right price, a revenue stream from Pro upgraders and a slow release of features that keeps people wanting more. I've have SuperPro on my hard drive, in my case ArchiCAD, but for now I prefer SU and will tough it out with finger's crossed for accelerated development under Trimble of evolutionary workflow functions rather than a myriad bloatware commands.
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@arklandesign said:
There are certainly 2/3rds more casual users than Pro users and I guess most have little use for Layout...
yes, and there are Pro users too, who have no use at all for layout... (ME!)
@unknownuser said:
I am always surprising for break to upgrade or not for a professional using !
What is the % of this price of this update / against Pro projects over a year?
Seems it's peanuts! It's not a shoes' price!
Maybe... but why should i update, if the new version gives me NO improvement?
Ok maybe the toolbar problem, that should have been fixed already years ago... -
I'm glad that Trimble didn't go to a subscription model ala Adobe CS, but re: this thread, I'll vote for a fully capable SketchUp as a standalone offering. If it can stay under $200.00, there'd be more than a few who upgrade from 'Make'.
I'd go a little further; If one has a Pro license, additional 'full' SU could be $100. per seat.
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