Let’s talk about the new pricing

I agree with Nico. I use ArchiCAD 18 which is more or less obsolete. However, it does precisely what I need to do. So there’s no reason to keep upgrading. I much prefer to buy the application and upgrade as I need rather than pay a huge license fee every year. And what if one year I’ve had enough? Can I continue to use the application and not be charged yearly?

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Dear All. Frankly I’m a big fan of Sahpr3D. i have learned the world of 3D construction by this amazing tool.
Nevertheless, for me the pricing of 499 Euro is totally unacceptable. And it makes me sad due to I will not rent the software for such an incredible high price again! OK, there is a version for Hobbyist. But there is NO Possibility for STP File import / export! Really?
Responsible management should really reconsider he ridiculous price policy! 499€ will kill Business, not expand.
Regards Lorenz

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@Lorenz
It’s understandable because STL are mostly used for 3D printers.

I did not encounter a 3D printer nor a slicer which use a STEP format.

STP or STEP are used by plastic mold manufacturers, Which they use to prepare a mold of the parts included.

So STEP mostly meant for business. From my understanding.

@Mrjack88
Sorry, I’m not with you at all!
STP is meanwhile the same as DXF / DWG etc. How will you share a drawing?
How will you import drawings made by friends?
Everybody should understand: here are NOT only 3D printer people!
The price of 499 Euro is ridiculous, even for companies!
I’m a big fan of Shapr. But Hobbyist Version is too low in performance, Professional is too high in price!

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I truly admire the work that the Shapr team is doing on the iPad but they are doing a misleading price comparison between Shapr and other solutions that cost thousands more. The fact is that that price reality is changing quite fast and they cannot fairly put Shapr on the same league just because the app uses the same kernel of SolidWorks.
Let me give you a very specific example… When you start charging $499 per year I can’t avoid a direct comparison with the CAD software that I use for my professional work, Autodesk Fusion 360, which currently cost me $295 per year and $495 for a new user.

Yes, Fusion 360 only has a visualization app for iPad, but since Shapr is about to be released for Mac, for that annual fee, you will immediately enter in collision course with a software that offers way much more than Shapr.

I will not do an exhaustive comparison with Fusion 360 but just the fact that you still don’t have surface modeling and photorealistic rendering kills Shapr for me at that annual fee.

But I sincerely wish the Shapr team all the success and hope they are able to build a loyal user base.

Me too.

Not only has my nephew lost interest, I actually wanted to trigger a subscription for myself.

I’ve lost interest too.

In all honesty, the full version of Sharp3D has the level of a CAD hobby at this point in time.

Even for me as a CAD program collector, the upper limit of pain is already reached at 240, 500 is simply unrealistic.

It was nice to see you for a moment, goodbye.

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I am very sorry to hear that. :wave:

Hi @Istvan
Frankly speaking:
Make it sense to scare your users away by such price policy?
I mean: 250 Euro for those who love shapr3D as I do is a acceptbale price. Quite high but acceptable.
I guess it is time to reconsider your policy and deeply hope that Shapr3D team find an acceptable solution.
Hope you hear to your customers voice!
Regards Lorenz

Hello all,
I couldn’t agree more with Lorenz, and all what have been said in that sense.
As many others, I really love this app, and it is a great help in my teaching job (jewellery).
A few weeks ago, my edu subscription ended (funnily) the 8th of March, not knowing about the new pricing policy, I was decided, in order to support the development, to pay the annual 240 € and not even asking for an edu license renewal (though I don’t make any profit at all with the app), then came this new pricing ! I find it not reasonable, overpriced for what we get : last exemple, I had to design the head of a ring for an oval stone…no way to make an ellispoid (at least I don’t know how), I ended up modelling the ellipsoid in Fusion and exporting the stp.
Like so many have said here, don’t get me wrong, I love the app, I intend to keep going with it, and also I am very grateful that I still can use the edu license, but I hope you will rethink your tarification.
Best regards
Greg.

Hello again @Istvan.

I haven’t weighed in on this topic as yet, but I’ve been following carefully and am starting to get a little worried about the investment I have made over the last several years into Shapr 3D. This is mainly because I cant understand the business model and how Shapr can become a world conquering app when not yet equipped to win the current battle. Its therefore not so much about coding or logic, its more about human psychology.

Pause… I wish I could be brief because I guess that the long posts don’t always get read in detail, but here goes:

I say “Investment” because Shapr hasn’t been useable in a professional way until very recently for us.

My worry is this: What if this pricing gamble fails to pay off and the whole Shapr edifice comes crashing down due to poor finances? People seem to be angry from where Im sitting; not just priced out of the game.
Is that a good way to sell a product - to get people speaking negatively about it? I don’t think this is a case of “all publicity is good publicity”.

If the foregoing happens, I’ll have then lost all the time Ive spent learning (and relearning as the app changes) as well as the subscription. I’d put that down to experience as no doubt would you.

As it happens I have a year to decide, because Ive just last month paid up my business sub. But (and please believe this is not a threat or an emotional low blow) will Shapr be there in a useful form in the future with so many walking away, and with probably even more not even trying it out because of the pricing and consequent bad press? Why not just sell at the original price or even slightly higher and sell twice as many by improving the app and advertising the progress? You’ll get the same immediate income, but much better press and compound goodwill as the word spreads.

Some of the paranoid (or maybe they are prophetic) among us have said it even smacks a little bit of the practise of inflating financial value before a sale. Is Shapr staying with you Istvan, or will its original features soon get subsumed into one of the CAD behemoths out there? Or perhaps someone on the board has a house or a yacht they want to buy?

I hope not, because I like catching up with drawings in a cafe, on my sofa and when I having a lay in, and even on site. So much promise!

Well that’s my 2p worth; at least I can say I passed on the message…

Best regards

The people on the forum are not representative to our entire customer base, and those who complain about pricing tend to be a very vocal minority. We listen to our customers, measure the performance of our pricing, and make decisions accordingly. We are well funded, backed by world class investors, we are basically not burning any money, and we are the fastest growing CAD company in the last 30 years. Nothing to be worried about. Due to the ease of use of the application and our freemium model we have a lot of hobby users who would prefer the application to be completely free or a $10 one time purchase.

Why not restrict it by actually making money above some Indie threshold vs not making money above that threshold like Unity3d does? That seems like a better division between getting significant commercial value from the product or not.

Good points.

Propose that your next pricing challenge is to find a price-point for the Indie or very small business market for whom Hobby functionality is insufficient and Pro/Business pricing is too steep. These represent future pro customers who will be loyal to the company that supported them as they grew revenue/employees/… to become large enough to be Pro customers.

My gut feel is that the Hobby pricing stays the same and the Indie price is what your old pro tier was - $25/month or $240/year.

I’m not sure if Hobby level would work for me personally though without being able to export shapr3d files (but not import) so that I can migrate my models as I migrate from Hobby to Indie.

This feature addition to Hobby tier (export Shapr3d files), and pricing for Indie tier (<$100K in revenue), is my suggestion and request as a hobbyist with visions of growing to be a pro customer by growing a business.

Thanks for reading.

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(I found how to set notifications for a forum category and set that to watching for the announcements category on the forum. Discourse newb; apologies).

We communicate in email (register on the website or in the app), on social https://instagram.com/shapr3dapp

And here on the forum.

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Thank you for the reply.

Decided to post my humble opinion.

I was very pleased to see new Hobby plan. I think it is a long awaited gap filler in price range.
Also I was really looking forward to the appearance of 2D drawing feature. I was planning to upgrade my free plan after release of this feature. You just released this cool feature, also you have a great plan with fair price for hobbyists like me… but unfortunately this plan doesn’t have ability to export drawings.

I totally understand your intention to separate pro and amateur users. I’m sure that development of this feature required a lot of efforts. Also it was one of the main selling points of your new Business plan. The only thing I disagree with is that only pro users might need it. Actually dimensioned drawings are very essential in woodworking. It is very useful to print it on paper, take it with you at workshop and use it as a reference. That is why I was waiting for it so much. It has nothing to do with the complexity of the project or your level (pro vs hobby). DWG or DXF export are not required, just PDF would be fine, so it can be printed.

As for Business plan. I’m here not to judge $500 price tag. Probably it is fine for people who are making money on it. But realistically speaking I might work on 10 projects during a year on my spare time. So each project’s drawing will cost me $50. Wood required by project can cost me less. At least this price tag is not fair in relation to other expenses in the workshop. So Business plan is not an option to me.

Just letting you know, probably you missed hobby wordworking use case during thinking about new pricing policy.

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This x1000.

I’ve just seen the new “standard” plan described here (in the Mac section for some reason). I just wanted to mention that this is great news and is quite attractive for hobbyists in my opinion.

The Standard plan has a much more reasonable feature set than the Hobbyist subscription did and it costs the same as my subscription did when I bought it. Of course, I’ll be staying in the Business plan because I’m grandfathered in.

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