Small jobs

[Anonymous]

i was disappointed at the pricing structure for your project point setup. I used your trial period with an overseas client to work on the project, and found it to be a very convenient means to share drawings.
However, we small (3 person) firms have no use for a 50 mb storage, or the $500 monthly fee.
How about 5 MB storage and about a fifty dollar a month fee.(one tenth the storage, one tenth the fee).
Tom

[Anonymous]

I am not in sales, so I am not qualified to cover
pricing issues. I can tell you that the hardware, power, and monitoring costs do
require a certain size / dollar amount to be recouped in order to make
maintaining a site viable. A long time ago we experimented with 25 meg and 100
meg sites and it was not cost effective. The cost of collecting the money starts
to cut into the actual profit when the amounts get below $500 per month.
Sorry.

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"wkarch" <
href="mailto:walshkrowkaassoc@sc.rr.com">walshkrowkaassoc@sc.rr.com>
wrote in message
href="news:f0d81ce.-1@WebX.maYIadrTaRb">news:f0d81ce.-1@WebX.maYIadrTaRb...

was
disappointed at the pricing structure for your project point setup. I used
your trial period with an overseas client to work on the project, and found it
to be a very convenient means to share drawings. However, we small (3
person) firms have no use for a 50 mb storage, or the $500 monthly fee.

How about 5 MB storage and about a fifty dollar a month fee.(one tenth the
storage, one tenth the fee).
Tom

[JMoore]

Tom, being in sales I can understand why autodesk has to charge so much in order to make up for the program they have created. However, in light of the thousands of users whom need a very minimal amount of storage it is brobably best to look for a company offering collaboration of drawings at a cheaper price. But, with the lower price you would have less features (management, webcams, netmeetings). I think Project Point is such a rebust system that it is geared intentionally or otherwise at the large commercial market. Just my thoughts. - J.

[JMoore]

Tom, what all features of the program did you use or not use? Management, webcams, change tracking, etc. or did you just use it to view and print your files across regions (along with some possible mark-ups)? Thanks,J.

[vdesigns]

I would like to second wkarch's about the dissapointment with the starting point for the pricing structure. I was waiting to hear back from my e-mail to sales but reading the above posts it does not seem like that is going to happen. I was also one of the original people to sign up and demo PP when it started but when they were giving everyone opportunity to update to the new pricing I had no clients interested. Now I do have a client that is interested there is no way that I'm going to get them to start at 500. Especially when they will probably use a total of 30-50 megs of space. I just can't believe that there is not some way they can fit in a lower price scale for smaller firms. Even if they were prepaid annually or something.

Also, one thing I really dislike seeing is poor customer service for any reason. This is how I see this lack of returning sales calls and e-mails on the basis of not wanting to have that info 'out there'. Makes me second guess my decision to want to use PP in the first place. (This is just the fustration in the pricing talking. I just e-mailed them this weekend so do not know if I will get an answer or not. 🙂 )

Anyway, if anyone finds anything comparable that hosts to smaller clients then please e-mail me. vdesigns@attbi.com.
My budget is 50-100 mthly.
Cheers,
Marc

[Anonymous]

Our Customer Care gets high marks from anyone who
contacts them. They are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Even when
you call at night, you can leave a voicemail and a customer care guy will get
paged. So we do value customer service. The sales team is also really busy. They
work hard to close as many $500 per month deals (and higher) that they can get.
I understand what you are saying about cost. We did try 25 meg sites for a
while, but the cost of collecting the money and processing the orders soon
gobbled up all of the profit. I think is people prepay for an annual
subscription, they do get it for less than $6000 ($500 times 12). We are adding
value to ProjectPoint with each release and hopefully one day, there will be
enough there for you to justify the $500 per month.

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"vdesigns" <
href="mailto:vdesigns@attbi.com">vdesigns@attbi.com> wrote in message

href="news:f0d81ce.3@WebX.maYIadrTaRb">news:f0d81ce.3@WebX.maYIadrTaRb...

I
would like to second wkarch's about the dissapointment with the starting point
for the pricing structure. I was waiting to hear back from my e-mail to sales
but reading the above posts it does not seem like that is going to happen. I
was also one of the original people to sign up and demo PP when it started but
when they were giving everyone opportunity to update to the new pricing I had
no clients interested. Now I do have a client that is interested there is no
way that I'm going to get them to start at 500. Especially when they will
probably use a total of 30-50 megs of space. I just can't believe that there
is not some way they can fit in a lower price scale for smaller firms. Even if
they were prepaid annually or something.

Also, one thing I really dislike seeing is poor customer service for any
reason. This is how I see this lack of returning sales calls and e-mails on
the basis of not wanting to have that info 'out there'. Makes me second guess
my decision to want to use PP in the first place. (This is just the fustration
in the pricing talking. I just e-mailed them this weekend so do not know if I
will get an answer or not. 🙂 )

Anyway, if anyone finds anything comparable that hosts to smaller clients
then please e-mail me. vdesigns@attbi.com.
My budget is 50-100 mthly.

Cheers,
Marc

[JMoore]

Scott, I don't think that is it is a question of there being enough features in PP for most users but that there are almost too many features. It is a very robust system but for most potential clients out of the large commercial building sector it is almost overkill. I tend to think a great majority of the people who are critical of PP are only that way because they really only are wanting to view, print and possible mark-up documents through the internet. Since PP started with such a robust feature listing you have to keep your costs up very high due to the tremendous amount of features. I just don't think that the market that is critical of PP and other large collaboration sites would ever find it in themselves to justify $500.00 per month no matter how much more you build into it. I think the PP market is relegated to only large commercial and architectural firms. My 2 cents. - J.

[vdesigns]

J-
That is exactly right. Not that Scott can do anything about it though. All I want is a well designed, SECURE host to be able to view, edit, markup CADs and Docs in a collaboration type environment. Again if anyone knows of a more affordable one for small companies please e-mail me. vdesigns@attbi.com. I think I can get my client that is interested to go as high as 150 per mth. Thanks

Also, I need to apologize for my earlier comment about customer service. I did have a voice mail from Autodesk when I got home last night. Like I said though, my comment was made more out of frustration about the pricing than anything. I am a one man design firm in a home business and obviously this is not the customer PP is intended for anymore. 😞

Cheers,
Marc

[Anonymous]

Just so you know -- ProjectPoint gets its high
costs because it is a SECURE, MONITORED, and BACKED UP host to be able to
view, edit, markup drawings and other documents in a
collaboration type environment. The fact that ProejctPoint has drag and drop,
XREF upload, XREF download, etc. is not what drives up the costs. Our team is
about the size of the Volo View Express team and Volo View Express is free. What
drives up the host is the hardware we buy, the fees we pay to our ISP, and the
cost of having an IT staff and Customer Care department who are available 24
hours a day, 7 days a week. ProjectPoint is like electricity. If you're
going to use it, you need it to be available.

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"JMoore" <
href="mailto:jay@americadinc.com">jay@americadinc.com> wrote in message

href="news:f0d81ce.5@WebX.maYIadrTaRb">news:f0d81ce.5@WebX.maYIadrTaRb...

Scott,
I don't think that is it is a question of there being enough features in PP
for most users but that there are almost too many features. It is a very
robust system but for most potential clients out of the large commercial
building sector it is almost overkill. I tend to think a great majority of the
people who are critical of PP are only that way because they really only are
wanting to view, print and possible mark-up documents through the internet.
Since PP started with such a robust feature listing you have to keep your
costs up very high due to the tremendous amount of features. I just don't
think that the market that is critical of PP and other large collaboration
sites would ever find it in themselves to justify $500.00 per month no matter
how much more you build into it. I think the PP market is relegated to only
large commercial and architectural firms. My 2 cents. -
J.

[Anonymous]

If you could find three clients that want to spend
$150 a month, you could host the files on one site. Based on the permissions of
ProjectPoint (can set as low as per user per file), you could host different
projects and the sets of users would never have to interact. Maybe the
contributors to this thread want to pool their money and buy one
site.

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"vdesigns" <
href="mailto:vdesigns@attbi.com">vdesigns@attbi.com> wrote in message

href="news:f0d81ce.6@WebX.maYIadrTaRb">news:f0d81ce.6@WebX.maYIadrTaRb...

J-

That is exactly right. Not that Scott can do anything about it though. All
I want is a well designed, SECURE host to be able to view, edit, markup CADs
and Docs in a collaboration type environment. Again if anyone knows of a more
affordable one for small companies please e-mail me. vdesigns@attbi.com. I
think I can get my client that is interested to go as high as 150 per mth.
Thanks

Also, I need to apologize for my earlier comment about customer service. I
did have a voice mail from Autodesk when I got home last night. Like I said
though, my comment was made more out of frustration about the pricing than
anything. I am a one man design firm in a home business and obviously this is
not the customer PP is intended for anymore. 😞

Cheers,
Marc