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Comments
This is my comment and only because if someone at Onshape takes 3dcad's comment seriously then I want to be on board.
Great job Onshape gang!
Dave
I really like the current community aspect and the public/private sharing features as well. However, I don't see how an a la carte pricing model would kill this community. Under an a la carte system the free tier rules wouldn't necessarily change from what they are now and people would have the opportunity to play and learn as they do now. My suggested "a la carte" plan would be something that kicks in when you want to move beyond the resource restrictions (space,speed) of the free tier.
You agree that you would like to see something in the middle, but your ideal system isn't ideal for everyone. For example, I would be more interested in paying for access to additional virtual processors, dedicated hardware resources, faster raytracing (when they make raytracing a feature for everyone), or improved transfer rates for my documents so that the work flow is faster rather than paying only for tons of additional storage space. An a la carte model can make you happy and me happy at the same time (ie. $/cpu hour, $/GB month, $/Mb). Granted, I don't know any of the details of the backend infrastructure that powers Onshape and how much the local hardware resources of the user trump the resources of the cloud; but one would assume they are running their cloud service through one of the major players like Amazon which is doing the majority of the heavy lifting. I think I've read somewhere that their goal is to have a fast and smooth UI that is equal for all users so maybe my arguments are of little value. However, if space or document count is the only motivation for a paid version, then I still think that having a simple $/(GB month) or $/(private doc. month) for anything over the free tier is a better way to go. If Onshape still wants to offer, or users demand it, a fixed unlimited plan could kick in when one reaches the current $1200/year.
For example, lets say I only need 20 private documents, should I spend as much as someone who has 10,000 private documents?
Or lets say I need 2D cam, should I spend as much as someone who needs 5 axis high speed toolpaths?
And lets say I need FEA von misses for one part for a week, should I spend as much as someone who is using FEA daily?
I'm hoping Onshape will allow these things to be a-la-carte and prorated to the month, week, or even day.
At the same time, though, I shouldn't be spending $8 for a render as per Autodesk Fusion 8.5x11" renders. That's insane.
I think the hardest thing about current CAD/CAM offerings is you really have to dish out a huge amount of money for a lot of capability that you may never use. They don't differentiate between if you have one seat producing drawings and toolpaths for a company that makes $50M in revenue and someone who needs 3 axis machining for parts they sell on Etsy. Both people need similar capabilities but the scale and budget is so completely different. How you make this 'fair' for both is really difficult, but I have confidence Onshape will figure it out.
I guess I would say for my small business, 10 private documents, 3 axis CAM, and drawings should cost about $50 a month. (This is why I jumped on the promotional $300 annual for Fusion Ultimate because it works out like that. I like Onshape better, though.) But that's just my opinion.
And the idea of limiting documents is a little strange to me because you can have infinite (?) part studios inside each document...
+$1 a month for additional documents up to 25 or +$50 a month, unlimited documents
$10 a month - Drawings
$10 a month 2.5 axis CAM
+$10 a month per axis (3 axis, 4 axis, 5 axis, swiss turning center, etc)
$10 a month FEA von misses
$10 a month topology optimization
$10 a month FEA heat transfer
$10 a month FEA flow analysis
So if you needed:
10 documents $5
3 axis CAM $20
drawings $10
von misses FEA $10
topology optimization $10
you'd be $55 a month
Dave
Ariel, WA
Mike
Surely it's a difficult equation to please corporations, small business, freelancers, hobbyists and students.
I just hope Onshape will get enough paid customers to keep it running and have plenty of development resources also in future.
I'd be OK if OnS went from free to $10 per month, $110 a year for say 10 docs and 10 gb
I also hope that Onshape keeps going. It would be a shame for all those folks at OnS who have invested so much of there time to have it fail.
Dave
Ariel, WA
Has anyone else be been approached about this subject.
Graham
Dave
Ariel, WA
For licensing, it was clear to me from the beginning that at some early point I will get Pro just to learn how to handle longer list of active documents and how to decide whether to have a lot of tabs vs creating a lot of documents. I'm still in the process and will probably change my mind every week for a long time.
About changes to the free version, I think it will still be a pretty good deal for being actually FREE of charge without time limit. I suppose there is no identity check so you can have as many accounts as you have emails.
One more approach to pricing could be $100 / month for first year and lower down for the hobbyists after that..
An increase of Private Document to 10, but the facility to make a document Inactive will be removed.
Keep up the Great Work all you guys at Onshape.
Thanks Philip for the very informative chat, next time I will give you my International Dialing Code, as promised I will Share my latest Project with you when it is complete
Even though we may be hobby users or small shop owners that just do not have the money to go pro does not mean that we may have more than 10 projects going at any one time.
What do you do a year from now what happens when you hit 11 projects does one have to get scraped. What happens if you have a very complex project that burns up your storage space and is not complete.
I have said it before and I will say it again. I believe they need a semi pro level that is around $10 per month and 10 gb of storage space
Dave
Ariel, WA
Just make your documents Public if your only using as a Hobbyist. It's that simple.
@ ilya-baran I do not understand why Onshape wants to only have 2 plans that users can choose from. Would it not make it more appealing to have a plan for the small business owner or a hobby user that need more open projects and more storage space.
I am getting the idea that Onshape has discovered that there are one heck of a lot of hobby or small business users taking up tons of storage space and bandwidth. Onshape is not making any money from these users so why not put in place limits that make Onshape only appealing to the big business owners that are paying thousands of dollars in maintenance costs per year and would save money using Onshape.
Dave
Ariel, WA
But if you do represent a sizable group, then I would expect that a business culture as responsive as Onshape has so far proved, operating in a free market, would accommodate (in your words) a "heck of a lot of..." users.
You are, of course, free to speculate that they would turn their back on them.
If there wasn't Alibre/Geomagic, $1200 / year without the need to puchase a license in the beginning is pretty sweet deal compared to SW, SE, etc..
I have decent pc and can get web images out in 5 minutes / piece (best quality), but for paper brochure I need to let it run in the background and do something else.
I would love to see integrated powerful cloud rendering in Onshape tab with automatic update if model is changed.
The dials are:
- actual use time within the model by hour.
- size of model data store.
- processing capacity...how many CPU cycles and how many cores are available to you and you are using.
This model would adjust your cost based on your actual use and not based on system availability. Customers will love this especially the ones with fluctuating CAD needs. And the heavy duty users would still get a better deal than with the traditional annual or monthly licensing models.Plus you can now add additional for pay services such as dedicated CPUs and machines. That option will also help with specifically security and privacy sensitive customers like the ones in Germany :-).
Paying by modelling time + number of documents does sound like the fairest method to identify pro or semi pro users. If you work selling software (as i do) then you may have experienced that sadly alot of people will do what they can get away with, I've had people using software commercially openly say things along the lines of "why should i buy it when i have this pirate version for free!" A blind eye is often turned especially in small companies.
This presumes you can accurately detect inactivity but since traditional CAD network licenses based on flexnet can be set to timeout i presume this isn't too tricky? It could also be dual purpose and benefit all users in that you could then track how long a project takes making billing or quoting in future more accurate. I've had this request of traditional CAD software numerous times but don't think we ever found a good way via API etc.
As far as different semi pro levels etc the downside to having multiple versions is consumer confusion over which level to go for. I would see it more along the lines of a phone contract, if you exceed your minutes for this month you could buy more for, $10, $25 etc. Also while having a cheaper version sounds great i wonder how sustainable it is, i suspect human nature would mean many would do everything they can to manage with the cheaper version. I really can't see how Autodesk are going to make money out of their $25 a month package in the long term given the amount of tools in it and the time to develop and maintain and support each of them.
Free seems to make sense to build a user base hopefully a good proportion of whom will do such great things and therefore be able to justify the pro offerings, i suppose Autodesk don't have such pressure as they can afford support it by selling other traditional software.
However, I'm a hobby user for now. If there are too many limitations or changes to the free plan, I'll probably have to bow out and use something like Cubify Invent or Design. I was worried there could be some sort of bait 'n switch.
I think a multi-tier account offering would be very wise.
Perhaps there could simply be a 'per document' monthly fee, in addition to the 5 or 10 or however many free ones you decide upon, for the hobby level person. And then for the pro, they would get unlimited and it wouldn't matter. As for how much per document, I don't know.
I do like the idea of having a $10 or $15 dollar per month option as well.
To have 'free' and then $100 a month as your only choices is a bit limiting.
Final suggestion. To prevent abuse of having free users switching between active and inactive documents, you could install a time delay mechanism, where once you archive a project, it can be read, viewed or downloaded, but not edited for a period of time. Then, after the 'time lock' ( 1 week? 2 weeks? ) you could 'switch' it out of your 'archive' with another 'active' document in order to edit it again.
There is also whole new business idea for anyone to buy a pro and offer space for free users to archive their work since we now have 'remove me from share' possibility. Then just ask to get back on share when you have enough space available. Pricing could be very low, 150 documents archived $1/doc/month and it would be already paying back (please remember 3% for me, business ideas just don't come for free)
I'm sure we will see all kind of interesting solutions as the time goes and masses find this brilliant piece of cloud.. Probably there will be a 'no-cloud crack keygen' in pirate bay to enable Onshape offline use FOR FREE
Hmm, for some reason I highly doubt they would allow sharing of a pro license:
This part alone might prevent that:
2.1 License. Subject to your compliance with the terms of this Agreement, Onshape hereby grants to you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable right to use the Service.
It also says:
You are the only person to whom the license described in Section 2.1 extends, and you therefore are not permitted to allow any other person to use your Passwords to access the Service.