Hi Pierre - SketchUp was not originally free - it only became free after it was purchased by Google and they wanted it to be used to generate content for Google Earth.

As you may be aware, Google is a mega-billion dollar company and so they are able to use their vast quantity of other income to offset anything like a reduction in income that would happen by giving away SketchUp for free.

On the other hand, I'm just a single person working on MoI - I don't have the billions and billions of dollars that Google has to work with, so the approach that Google uses for making its software free just simply does not apply to my vastly different situation.

So I do not plan on making a free MoI version available - in fact having a huge number of users who will all need a lot of help learning how to use the software and meanwhile not wanting to pay anything for it would actually be a very bad situation for me, I would basically have to withdraw from doing support and interacting with users directly myself as I do now.

It works far better for me to charge for MoI and to be able to work with people who can recognize its value enough to know that they're actually getting a bargain at its current price which is quite low in comparsion to the majority of CAD applications that are out there.

In the future at some point when things reach a certain maturity level, I might do a "lite" version that has some subset of functionality but even at that time I would not plan on it being free. The model of making it free just does not work well with the kind of business that I want to run, I actually much prefer having a smaller user base that I can interact more directly with.

I probably have more of the reverse problem - instead of making it free I should probably be charging more money for it than I am doing right now. The main reason I don't do that is to try and make it more accessible to artists who don't have a particularly big budget to spend on software. It's one of the things that has helped some people be able to get into using CAD to help with their artwork.

- Michael

Also that's not to say that I don't want the MoI community to grow - I do want it to grow but just not necessarily at some kind of breakneck disruptive pace.

Also I should mention that I definitely appreciate you mentioning MoI on other forums and trying to get people to use it - since I don't do regular advertising for MoI, that's basically how people find out about it at all, so that is certainly helpful for growth, thank you!

Eventually some of the people who hear about it will try it and realize how effective MoI will be for their particular work and want to use it to help them get stuff done.

So it's not like I want to actually discourage you from promoting it on other forums, that's certainly a big help for you to do that!

I'm sure that there will be some people that will benefit from you pointing them towards it. The people who refuse to use anything that might cost money despite it actually benefiting them will just lose out.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

I actually think what you have in the way of a 30 day trial and a no save version is great. Being retired, I hardly ever use CAD. The no save version is perfect to play with MoI, in my opinion. The 30 day trail is good too. Like when I did the demo, I had to install the 30 day trial so that you guys could help me get through my issues. I have since reverted back to the no save version.

I tried MoI and loved it. I recommend it to users of PROP_DESIGN. I think your program is great, your support is even better, your existing trials and such are perfect as is, and your prices are way better than anything else out there. Given the quality of the product and support, MoI is a value like no other.

I hope you won't change a thing. I agree that unless you become independently wealthy a completely free version of MoI does not make sense. Perhaps, on your death bed, you can open source it or something.

Sincerely,

Anthony Falzone

http://propdesign.weebly.com/

Grandpi,

Michael is much nicer than I would be. You should be embarrassed by this request. How do you expect a one man operation to just give away all his hard work and thousands of hours of r&d? MoI3d is a brilliant package which is way underpriced and I don't think you can find better product support. If you don't feel compelled to help support MoI3d maybe you should just stick with sketchup. I really don't understand the mentality of people who can so easily diminish the value of talent and hard work.

Hi. I do not know why people think Sketchup is free. They havent read the license agreement. SKetchup is NOT FREE product for commercial use. I dont think those people use that just for fun. And comparing Sketchup with Moi is not applicable at all. Sketchup cannot handle NURBS and Moi has not got some of those powerful feature which Skp has as well as Moi is still young compared to matured Skp. So If someone likes Skp. use that If someone likes Moi use. but Skp. users will never create accurate geometries on the basis of facet 3d engine.

I believe that Sketchup community knows Moi : I have made some regular publicity on it forum! :D
(near 100 000 members at http://forums.sketchucation.com/ ;)

I agree with Michael's comments.

IMHO, if the trial version does not convert a prospect into a customer, then why would a limited free version convert someone into a customer?

Only the largest companies can afford to provide fee support for free software. If a lite version of MoI were given out freely, the users would be on their own. Without "factory support", many would become frustrated (who reads the manual?) and MoI would get a bad name. This is a counter-productive strategy.

Better to let people try it, and if they see the value, become customers who benefit from the free support. MoI is not expensive, especially spread over the time period in which you plan to benefit from it. From my personal experience, it's best to skip the freebies and jump straight to the software that you know is going to get the job done. Learning curves cost time and money - I'd rather do it once than twice.

Ed

Hi all.
Thank you Michael for your reply, i understand.
My question was to find new way of meeting new users following replies i had on the forum with a lite version ... and not to forget to pay for MOI standard package ... i understand very well work hours spent to make this piece of software a reality...

At $295, and with that level of support, MOI is a bargain... most of us know that...

I only recently came across a pricing model for software that seemed convincing to me: Older versions (= less features) are less expensive than the most current version. If the case is well presented, then people could decide whether or not a certain feature-set is necessary for them - and get a "better" price if not.

That made sense to me. It extended the life cycle of older versions, lowered the entry price and made a good fit between needs and price.

If curious, check out here: http://www.supermemo.com/english/which.htm

Hi Pierre,

> My question was to find new way of meeting new users
> following replies i had on the forum with a lite version ...

I think at some point there could be a lite version at a lower price point that has some subset of functionality in it.

But I don't want to try to develop a lite version and a "pro" version with both actively being changed at the same time since it takes additional work for me to maintain multiple active development streams. So to make things easier for me I would only make a lite version at the time that I can kind of peel it off from the main version and call it done. Right now there are still features that I want to develop which would still need to go into the lite version, things like progress bars on file loading and some various things like that.

So maybe that would be possible more around the MoI v4 timeframe when there is just a little bit more maturity in a few more areas.

But I'm still not entirely sure that will happen - in order to maintain productivity with just a single person working on stuff I try to keep things simple and one thing that helps keep things simple is just focusing on working on one core version of the software.

- Michael