Re: Zend hit (Encoder price)

You are entirely correct. However, I (personally) feel that by pricing it so high you're targeting a very small niche market at a higher rate. Pricing it in the "$300.00" range would not cost you that niche - but it would gain you the "x-million" users/freelance developers. Sure, $6,000 is 20x $300, but it's ONLY x20. When you're talking about a userbase on the 'net, x20 is NOTHING. "Go big and expensive" seems the "old way" and "go small and dominate the market" seems the new...um, paradigm. (Yes, I just wanted to say that word. For all it's overuse, I think it just looks neat.) If it's available, what is Zend's sales projection for this thing? And has Zend acknowledged the possibility that by pricing it so high they're ENCOURAGING competition/extensions from the Open crowd? Price it lower and people who would otherwise balk and write their own would just buy it. Like me. I don't have a viable use for it atm, but the possibility's there. So what're my options? Pay you 6k, or code one? Encoding modules aren't rocket science, but I'd have to learn the Zend plugin/module API. Company 1 wants it, pays 3k for a coder, and then releases it. *blink* Now Company 1 has saved/invested 3k, and the Open community has the tool. Maybe Company1 charges $50.00 for it to recover costs. Now the vaunted Zend Encoder's trying to compete and is still priced at $6,000. Sure, you may get a few sales before someone drops a replacement but you'd get a whole lot more by lowering the price, claiming market share and then you'd be better positioned when the (obviously in the works) Open community spits one out. Just some thoughts.... -Szii At 12:09 PM 1/25/2001 -0500, Jim Jagielski wrote: >szii@sziisoft.com wrote: >> >> But I do know that for $6,000 I sure as hell am not buying it. >> Maybe for a couple hundred...but $6,000? No way. I'd have to have >> some seriously proprietary kickass scripts that cost me a huge investment >> in time/money to develop to blow $6,000 just on keeping people from >> copying/tweaking them. Even then, they're just scripts. It'd be nice for >> some encapsulated functionality, say, for database access, but >> still, for $6,000 + runtime client? Nah, PHP code's just not that complex >> and for $6,000 I can set up a number of unique users in the database. >> >> -Szii >> > >Well, without the Encoder the entire *possibility* of "seriously proprietary >kickass scripts" that people distribute and sell is out of the question. >Who said it was for the small developer? For them, there's the >Commercial Subscription plan. The Encoder is for companies whose >business is selling such PHP apps (among other good solutions >as well). > >And the Encoder allows for better separation of business and >presentation logic... hell, you could even implement a sort >of business logic PHP "servlet". >-- >=========================================================================== > Jim Jagielski [|] jim@jaguNET.com [|] > http://www.jaguNET.com/ > "Casanova will have many weapons; To beat him you will > have to have more than forks and flatulence." >