Pricing Rationale behind 3.0 for 2.5 customers...
Can someone @ Resharper explain why customers who bought v2.5 a few short months ago are getting stiffed when it comes to receiving 3.0? Only purchasers of 2.5.2+ will get the update to 3.0 for free. 2.5.2 was a maintenance release, not a major release. This policy seems backwards and will only serve to upset and alienate people and look for alternatives (i.e. we still won't pay for 3.0)
I'm 99% sure this post will be blown off with a response such as "please contact sales@jetbrains.com for additional information", but I wanted to pose the question in a public forum anyway.
It seems very inconsistent of JetBrains to do this sort of thing. I love Resharper, but I'm not going to pay again for effectively VB.NET support + minor bugfixes, a few months after buying 2.5.
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I completely agree. The 2.5 release is so unstable, they should allow
everyone who purchased that product to upgrade for free. I have currently
completely uninstalled Resharper due to the instability and am learning to
live without it. I have sent an email to their sales department but I have
yet to get a response. Hopefully, if enough people complain, they will
reconsider their policy. If not, I will not be expanding our pilot to my
full department.
Bob
"Giorgio Galante" <no_reply@jetbrains.com> wrote in message
news:18337541.1180958654179.JavaMail.itn@is.intellij.net...
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I too would like to see 2.5 made more stable, but I allow for the fact that
R# does lots of sophisticated stuff in a competitive market that requires
funding to fuel future improvement. Again, I would love to see 2.5 made more
stable (R# can help you do that, right?), but I am also willing to stick
around for 3.0 if the R# team reveals their commitment and plan to fix many/most/all
of the performance problems that plagued 2.5.
Right now, 2.5 works on class libraries and WinForms projects without too
much slow down. WebForms projects with strongly-typed datasets are still
hit or miss, depending on the age of each project and the amount of cruft
accumulated over time.
>but I allow for the fact that R# does lots of sophisticated stuff in a competitive >market that requires funding to fuel future improvement.
With all due respect to you (and JetBrains), that sounds like it's their business problem, not our (customers) problem.
I think it comes down to poor version/release/sales management myself. Specifically, why was 2.5.X touted as a major release, when 3.0 was around the corner (6 months?) Then compound the problem by only allowing customers of your maintenance release (same version, different build) to upgrade for free. Adding insult to injury, the focus of 3.0 is VB.NET support - definitely not worth paying for, for existing C# developer/customers.
I've also sent a follow-up to sales@jetbrains.com asking them to explain themselves directly in this forum/thread.
Those are all good points, but I think it is a business problem that plagues
the software industry as a whole: software engineering has simply not caught
up to other engineering industries where sophisticated, high quality, continuously
improving product cycles are economically realistic and realized.
I'm just saying I sympathize with JetBrains. As a consumer, you are perfectly
within your rights to demand more.
I would sympathize with them too...but we've got our own issues to deal with ;)
Here's what I got back from JetBrains Sales (and my response below):
From: Lucie Morawiecova
Sent: Monday, June 04, 2007 3:53 PM
To: 'Giorgio Galante'
Subject: RE: Resharper 2.5 customers left in the dust...
Hello Georgio,
Thank you for your email, i will also responde on the forum, but first your email...
ReSharper v 3.0 will come out this month, beta version has already been released but the full version will be out mid-end of June.
There will be:
ReSharper for C#
ReSharper for VB
ReSharper that supports both C# and VB
Upgrade:
All licenses purchased 15th of April or later will quilify for free upgrade.
Licenses purchased before 15th of April 2007 will be required to purchase an upgrade if they wish to use v 3.0 of ReSharper, there will be:
Personal upgrades
Upgrades to ReSharper for C#
Upgrades to ReSharper for VB
Upgrades to ReSharper that supports both C# and VB
The upgrades prices will be from $89 to $199
If you have any other questions, feel free to contact me.
With best regards,
Lucie Morawiecova
JetBrains, Inc.
Tel. +420 241 722 501
Mob. +420 602 433 171
Fax. +420 261 711 724
www.jetbrains.com
"Develop with pleasure"
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End of JetBrains Sales' Response -
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Begin My Reply To Above Message -
Lucie,
I appreciate your prompt response. What you’ve given me is effectively your pricing information, not the rationale behind the arbitrary decision to cut off v2.5 customers from the 3.0 upgrade (for free.) While it may seem advantageous to JetBrains to do this from a short-term financial perspective, it will have long term effects on your existing customer-base. You can opt to offer an upgrade for $89-199, but I can bet you that few, if any will actually take it (given that many of us have purchased Resharper 2.5 with the promise that it would be more stable (and it isn’t.) Either way (by offering it for free, or by trying to make us purchase it), you will not get anyone who bought 2.5 to upgrade. Not only that, you will have these customers looking at your competitors instead (DevExpress offers their products with a 1-year maintenance agreement, you do not, and Resharper 3.0 offers little more than bug fixes + VB.NET support) In the end, you stand to lose business by this action and gain little financial benefit. Please send this up the chain of command at JetBrains as it is painfully obvious to customers that this is a bad business move.
Sincerely,
Giorgio Galante
Lucie's response (and my response below):
Hello Georgio,
The first release of ReSharper was in 2004 and since then all customers have been upgrading for free up until now, this is 3 years of free upgrades, not to mention that the start up price for ReSharper was only $99...
And now our policy also allows anybody who purchased ReSharper shortly before the release to upgrade for free.
I can see that you purchased ReSharper in December 2006. Do you think that ReSharper 2.5 has no value and that it hasn‘t helped you in any way? Is it so unstable that you didn’t get any value out of the software? If so, please specify the issues in detail and i will be happy to ask our technical support for an advice.
With best regards,
Lucie Morawiecova
JetBrains, Inc.
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End of JetBrains Sales' Response -
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Begin My Reply To Above Message -
? The first release of ReSharper was in 2004 and since then all customers have been upgrading for free up until now, this is 3 years of free upgrades, not to mention that the start up price for ReSharper was only $99...
Maybe so, but I didn’t purchase it in 2004 ;) I purchased it at v2.5 (as many others did) which is still not stable. Now you’re saying that customers from 2004 got 2+ years of updates and it’s time to make them pay up. Fine, but I (and I'm sure many others) purchased it less than 6 months ago at v2.5 – do you think that’s a fair and consistent policy? I think not. In the end it comes down to this: Is it worth upsetting customers that won't pay for the upgrade anyway? The answer is no. Your company may dig in its heels and not change the policy. Fair enough, you'll have shown me that it is not in either of our best interest to continue this business-client relationship.
Sure Resharper provides value - so does an unreliable car – would you prefer to have it fixed shortly after purchasing it or pay for the next model year?
? Is it so unstable that you didn’t get any value out of the software?
Is this how you measure your customer’s satisfaction? "Well, it crashes alot, and our customers aren't quite so happy, but it helps them, so it's good enough." That's what I'm hearing.
? If so, please specify the issues in detail and i will be happy to ask our technical support for an advice.
Their advice will be "upgrade to 3.0, since the majority of bugfixes will not make it into 2.5.X".
Respectfully,
Giorgio Galante
Dear Giorgio,
First of all, I must thank you for pointing out to us the drawback that
caused your reaction.
When publishing the Beta release, we were especially interested in the
feedback from VB.NET users, as they represent our new audience, and we are
just learning to communicate with them for our mutual benefit.
This is most likely the only reason why your (and others') impression of the
novelties introduced in version 3.0 concern only the VB features.
In reality, this is absolutely not true, and the C# accents are simplly not
set intensively enough.
So, let me please thank you once again for this valuable feedback.
We will work thoroughly on the representational part of the web-site, so
that you and users like you can easily find and see all the important new
features aimed at C# developers who have always been our main and valued
audience.
I only wondered, when reading your post, whether you tried at all to see
what has been added. To list just a few noticeable updates for C#:
- Extensive code analysis. I'm not sure whether I should explain what a huge
step forward it is, and how important it is to analyze your code. With that
in mind, I believe that you as a professional developer, will definitely
appreciate what a huge amount of time is saved when you have a whole arsenal
of code analysis tools automated.
- Numerous automatic quick-fixes and other coding helpers
- Absolutely new enhanced Generics support, fully functional through all the
refactorings
- A whole bunch of code navigation and search features that speed up your
analytical work when you need to realize what your code does on a global
level
- Support for ToDo lists
- Totally rewritten Unit Test Explorer
- XML support
- and other functionality
You might call all this just a dozen of usability improvements, but
ReSharper is all about usability. It's also about code quality and saving
your time. Each release is aimed at improvements and new features that will
increase these three aspects of your work. And version 3.0, in its turn,
excels at all of them.
And please note, I'm still talking about C# development.
Your complaints are absolutely understandable when taken out of the context.
But if you take all the above into consideration, I'm sure you will
reconsider your position.
As for the pricing policy, hey! we do not have a "one-year-maintenance"
option, and we have never claimed to offer it. So, it is not fair from your
side to call this unfair.
I will repeat once again that we do appreciate all of your feedback, and
will address this "Misunderstanding" issue by the time of the release as
well.
Thank you, and hope you will develop with pleasure using ReSharper 3.0.
Kind regards.
--
Ann Oreshnikova
JetBrains, Inc
http://www.jetbrains.com
"Develop with pleasure!"
"Giorgio Galante" <no_reply@jetbrains.com> wrote in message
news:18337541.1180958654179.JavaMail.itn@is.intellij.net...
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Hi Ann
Basically, I'm paying for the upgrade, and I'm very happy to do so. On my
recommendation, we are going to upgrade all the licences where I work too.
I haven't paid for an upgrade since I bought the first version, after folowing
the first EAP. This is excellent value for money for a professional tool
that I rely upon each day of my working life and one that is one of the
few products that really 'does what it says on the tin' - helps me to 'develop
with pleasure'. I can't remember precisely, but I've had a good three years
of 'maintenance' for my money.
Thanks for pointing out the numerous additions for C# in 3.0. I think that
these are worth highlighting as they definitely make 3.0 noticably superior
in use to 2.5.x versions, especially the analysis and 'quick fix' enhancements.
Ilya's blog (http://resharper.blogspot.com/) is a good source of the real
power of R# and is well worth a read.
I have to say that I still haven't noticed the generics enhancements you've
made, despite having reported a good number of shortcomings in this area
in the past! I guess this goes to show that you sometimes don't notice something
that 'just works' as you expect it to be. 3.0 is even more fluid in use
than 2.5 - probably because there are more things 'just working'!
Also, the fact that you guys are now supporting Orcas is a great boon as
I won't have to use Orcas without R# as I did with 2005, which was painful
to say the least. Sure, I know that there are a raft of new features in C#
3.0 that are not likely supported as we speak (the LINQ enhancements, etc.),
but having used your product since it was first available, I'm confident
that you are going to be bringing these features on line with the 3.x releases.
I do look at the competition occasionally, and have to say that there is
nothing that comes even close to R# as far as I'm concerned. If other tools
work better for others, then fine, but for me you guys have got it right
in so many ways.
Just in case anyone is wondering, I have no connection with Jetbrains other
than I would not want to have to write code C# without it. It's just that
Resharper is so good that I'm more than happy to sit here late at night and
wax lyrical about it!
Regards
Sean
Hi Georgio
It's a shame that you feel this way. Speaking (respectfully too) from the
point of view of soomeone who has benefited from not having paid for an upgrade
since the first release, I can understand you might feel less happy about
having to upgrade again. However, I simply cannot imagine how you think
that R# does not give superb value for money. Using it every day, I wouldn't
want to live without it as it makes my life so much easier in so many ways.
Simply put, it makes my code better than it would be without it!
As for stability - sure I get failures and annoyances from time to time,
but I have never had anything major and I have rarely had VS crash due to
R#, despite the fact that I am always using the EAP versions if available.
I know that others have had problems with ASP.Net code, so maybe I'm lucky
as I tend to do little of this sort of work. However, is this not much improved
in the 2.5.x versions and beyond? I certainly can't say that R# 'crashes
a lot' - I have more frequent problems with VS 2005 and there's only been
one service release for that!
I think it's unfair to say that Jetbrains treat their customers poorly or
that their product is poor - and your analogy of the unreliable car seems
to say this. Working for a large government organisation, I see software
companies trying to sell very poor software and charging big money for it
regularly. I think that Jetbrains have a policy that is far more ethical
- even if late adopters of 2.5 feel some pain when having to upgrade to 3.0
(or not!).
Sorry to have to dissent to your view!
Kind regards
Sean
I still have stability issues in 2.5.2 in VS.NET 2005 SP1 (XP SP2 & Vista) in solutions that are fairly large (200k+ lines of code/40 projects.) Having multiple instances of VS.NET open aggrevates the issue.
There are two things that need to be cleared up, since I may have muddy'd the water a bit:
1. Yes, I believe R# provides good value for developers
2. Does it mean I think I should have to pay for it twice in a ~6 month period?
My concern is more of a lack of consistency on JetBrains' part. Clearly those who purchased v1 got the most bang for their buck (getting a 'free ride' up to v2.5.2.) At the other end of the spectrum is those of us who purchased v2.5 in hopes that we would be grandfathered into the v3 release.
In the end, I hope that JetBrains learns their lesson (probably not) and either:
A) Be more clear, consistent & forthcoming (had I known I wouldn't have gotten 3.0 free, I would have waited another 4 months (until April) to make my purchase.)
B) Offer maintenance plans/agreements.
I'm not asking for anything that isn't well established in the software industry. In the end this discussion benefits JetBrains, as well as their customers.
Ann,
I'm sure 3.0 will be another good product from JetBrains, but after installing the beta, I had to revert back to 2.5.2 since it was quite unstable (and therefore unusable) in my environment.
To that end, I can't really evaluate any of the new features beyond my 30 minute frustration/crash-filled experience (I didn't see anything new during that time.)
Beyond that, see my post above regarding my main issue with the whole thing...
Dear Georgio,
Thank you for your feedback on our pricing and upgrade policy.
RE: Can someone @ Resharper explain why customers who bought v2.5 a few short >>months ago are getting stiffed when it comes to receiving 3.0? Only purchasers of >>2.5.2+ will get the update to 3.0 for free. 2.5.2 was a maintenance release, not a >>major release. This policy seems backwards and will only serve to upset and alienate >>people and look for alternatives (i.e. we still won't pay for 3.0).
ReSharper licenses qualify customers for free upgrades to maintenance releases of ReSharper and technical support. Our release cycle for major releases is approx.12 months, and upgrades to our major release are paid. Customers who have obtained our product 30 days before the new major product release can benefit from free upgrades. For ReSharper 3.0, we have extended the free upgrade period to 60 days. I hope this answers your question.
RE: 1-year maintenance agreement
Good point, but a 1-year maintenance agreement is normally provided at an additional cost and requires annual renewal. A 1-year maintenance agreement is basically a prepayment for new releases which are supposed to become available within a 1- year period. If you prepaid for upgrades, would you be happy to upgrade to a new version that does not meet your needs or that is not stable enough?
We provide optional upgrades to both maintenance and major releases of our products. This means that you as a software user decide yourself what new version of ReSharper you would like to upgrade to, and what would be the best time for you to do so- right upon on the new version availability or thereafter. Does the “optional” upgrade policy still sound less attractive to you than a 1-year maintenance agreement? If so, we will be happy to send you an offer for an individual 1-year maintenance agreement.
RE: While it may seem advantageous to JetBrains to do this from a short-term financial >>perspective, it will have long term effects on your existing customer-base.
I hope you will agree that in a long-term perspective the cost of the ReSharper ownership is pretty the same for all customers regardless of the purchase date.
Best regards,
Natalie Yaremych
Sales Manager- EMEA