Guess the pricing was preventing take up. Why do Claris always price too high and have to respond accordingly? https://community.claris.com/en/s/question/0D50H00007uv1PaSAI/claris-connect-pricing-updates
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From what I’ve heard from multiple sources, it wasn’t preventing adoption. This is purely a response to feedback they received from partners, the community, and other developers.
Kudos to the management team for being in touch with the market and the community in general. It was the right move, even if it wasn't the first move.
Please Josh - then why do it?
Second sentence. That IS the reason. They listened, and were able to make an adjustment.
I welcome the changes but to say that it wasn't due to kickback about pricing, limitations and slow adoption is disingenuous in my opinion.
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I am not uncertain. To say that it's not because of that reason is also disingenuous.
If adoption is not slow then why make the changes including:
Removing arbitrary limits on flows/apps
Introducing a new level for existing Filemaker users (how the hell did they miss this opportunity in the first place?)
Introducing a new developer tier - seriously a development company not offering a development option?
If the take-up was not hampered by these restrictions then it just begs the question - why change?
I welcome the changes - the limits on apps/flows were ridiculous and rightly called out as such.
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Ok. Let me correct my wording so it has more clarity about what I mean. That may make it easier.
- The original offering definitely hampered adoption by specific groups. Honestly, our company was one of them. It was simply too limited to be useful to us.
- But #1 was only affecting specific groups. Many other groups passed expectations. Overall, the market has received the product very well.
- This new pricing and options fills in all the gaps, and Claris likely will see significantly broader adoption, including those initial groups that were not excited by the offering.
Hope that makes more sense than my poorly worded description earlier.
Kudos to Claris, as this cannot have been an easy decision to make. Their ability to quickly course correct restores a lot of confidence. The price is now within the realm of reason, and we'll see how it plays out.
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This makes me think of other deployments I have seen. Companies like Apple are known to keep the same pricing for a product or service until the next major release. They also often have availability issues for weeks and months for new releases. Other companies like Tesla charge a premium or limit the low end offers during the initial deployment to blunt demand. FileMaker seems to be neither. As @jormond mentioned, FileMaker acted on feedback despite a good adoption rate. Kudos for acting on feedback.
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@jormond @bdbd Where is the input coming from? I have no Idea if "the market has received the product very well" or not so well, or if CC has a "good adoption rate" because I did not see anything documented on that.
I did hear a lot of partners voicing their concerns about both the limitations and pricing.
I know some vendors are pricier than CC, but I also know a good number of them that are priced below or have lower tiers to their pricing.
Also, for both devs and partners, I'll say that I would not expect people who will basically be selling & implementing the use cases end up having to pay to get access to the platform.
I'm completely ok if they want to have Draconian limitations on that type of account, but access should be made available to the masses to favor adoption in a FileMaker Go kind of way. Getting tons of people to touch the product, without having to get anywhere near a yearly commitment of any kind. CC is supposed to have intrinsic value even for people who are not using FileMaker. How will all the integrators who know nothing about FileMaker adopt CC, if they have free tiers available elsewhere to see if the product is a fit to their requirements?
By the way, a challenge to anyone: go find me another pricing page that puts a "this plan is intended for testing purposes only" disclaimer next to a paid plan.
I get that some software vendors do charge for developer access to some resources because:
- it comes with support that is different from the support given to regular users
- the platform has such an amazing adoption, combined with an exclusive offering, that being able to integrate with it is a selling point on my end
CC does not fit any of the above.
Claris is not the first player to enter that space, but the pricing table does not indicate to me that they are aggressively going after the competition. It tells me they are relying on their FileMaker client base for adoption. I believe CC should not be for FileMaker clients, I believe CC should be the automator service for the masses.
The product does not seem quite mature either, despite the fact they acquired it from Stamplay.
The day I don't know what to do with all the calls I get from people inquiring about CC and seeking professional services, I'll be happy to pay a "developer only access" related fee, but we are not in that stage of the product life cycle.
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Great post. My thoughts exactly.
Same as a licence called 'developer subscription' that is only for testing and NOT for development work.
The disconnect continues...
The big piece that most devs/users are missing when people like Wim, Steven Blackwell, Todd, all of the MVPs ( which includes me ), is the relationship these people have with Claris the company, and several people that work at Claris.
Facts:
- Claris doesn't not talk sales numbers publicly. We have recently gotten a sense of scale based on their 1 million subscriber marketing bits.
- Any info they don't present publicly, but may talk about with certain groups privately, is under NDA or expected not to be talked about publicly.
- You receive from people, like mentioned above, is a general, and purposefully vague interpretation or application of the knowledge they do have. They, we, can't divulge any further info.
- If you want that kind of info, you have to establish that kind of relationship with the people at Claris, and abide by their "rules" for engagement. That involves "how" you talk about the product and the company. Typically, it's not that hard. When people choose not to listen, we typically just move on. We can't engage in full on debates where we provide all the info we have.
- Whether or not we, individually, like how Claris handles this part of it is inconsequential. It is what it is. We can work inside those boundaries and get a closer look...or we can fight against it and sit on the outside of the wall. And most companies have a wall, even when they seem open. We have seen this so much lately with many companies. The reality is every company does it a little different, this is how Claris International has chosen to operate their business, and they have that right.
Did you watch the preview webinar? This is clearly changing. I, personally, agree that was counterproductive. Hopefully we see a better developer subscription come out the other side of the recent changes.
This is very common in business when launching a brand new product. It's a slow roll-out. The worst thing that could happen is that you get 50 million subscribers and you find out your infrastructure, while tested to handle it, can't. That's a dead product, and it will likely never recover without serious influx of revamping and marketing spend.
I had a quick look at it. That new developer thing is cloud only, it says. No business case for me. The FM-related business now makes up for less than 1% of my revenue. I am working in projects where custom software is commonly developed and used. None uses FM.
Quick-look means you missed a lot of what they said. The reality of it is, they understand the limitations of the offering. And they are making changes. I would reserve judgment until they actually make the changes.
Sorry, can't wait. From experience, it takes half a decade for fixing these things.
Different management. Look how quickly the Linux thing went from being talked about to in progress and on track to be released.