You’re swimming against the tide of software as a service business models, which makes your value proposition appear to be unsupportable.
Your software, while not web based, operates like a service (and is in fact installed as one on Windows PC’s).
You will (most likely) continue to improve and expand the functionality of this service, and expect customers to pay for these improvements/enhancements.
Almost all new software vendors sell their product via subscriptions, not licenses. Increasingly, the major established software vendors are following suit (Microsoft, Adobe, Intuit, etc.).
When I can get Microsoft Office (including Exchange as a Service, Sharepoint as a Service, Outlook, Excel, Powerpoint, and Word) for $10/month and installable on up to 5 PC’s, or Adobe Creative Cloud (including Acrobat, Photoshop, Dreamweaver and a dozen plus additional apps) for $40/month and installable on multiple PC’s, or Dropbox for $10/month, installable on multiple PC’s, or Google Apps for $10/month, etc. BUT, Glasswire costs $50 per version per PC and we believe you will upgrade versions at least once a year (whether true or not, we have been conditioned by the software industry to believe it b/c that’s what they do), THEN your value proposition FAILS to measure up.
Instead, you most likely compare the value of your service versus other network monitoring software vendors that sell strictly to network operators, ISP’s, and enterprises. If you were only selling your software to that market, your pricing might be ok, but you are not. You have from the get-go positioned Glasswire as a consumer (i.e., professional consumers) and small business product offering. Consequently, your value proposition is entirely wrongheaded.
You should instead segment your market into individual subscribers (with a more affordable option installable on multiple PC’s) and business subscribers (with a minimum # of subscribers), with Dropbox providing a good example.
Let’s be real - the marginal cost/additional unit sold of Glasswire approximates zero, excluding sales and support costs. So structure your offerings to 1) position yourselves appropriately with your target market, and 2) to fully absorb sales/support costs and provide a reasonable return on your fixed costs of development. Otherwise, you will fail to gain significant market traction. There is and will be too much valid resistance to your current exorbitant pricing scheme.
Thank you for your feedback. Our team has almost two decades of software sales experience and we understand how different software sales models work.
It’s possible we may someday switch to a subscription model but our company is a year old and forcing sales isn’t our top priority. Right now our top priority is to improve GlassWire and to leave beta.
Also I personally hate subscription business models and I prefer to buy software that’s a one time fee. I think the majority of software sold today is not a subscription, luckily for me.
If you don’t feel the paid versions of GlassWire have any value you’re welcome to continue to use our free software indefinitely.
I didn’t say that your software has no value. It does, but your value proposition sucks, no matter how well you think you understand business models. (From a business model perspective, SaaS will always trump licensing due to its financial characteristics: steady, predictable recurring revenue stream, lower barrier to completing a sale, more consistent rate of software improvement, etc
Until/unless the value proposition improves, I’ll stick with the free version. Thanks for making it available.
The Glasswire folks have repeatedly stated that you are welcome to stay with the free version as long as you like. So why pressure for the ability to buy a subscription?
IMO, Glasswire is very reasonably priced for what it provides and I personally would not consider buying it as a subscription. It is not web software, it is network software. I see several people saying that there are cheaper or free offerings that do the same or more, yet no one has yet named even one product. Yes, there are many network managers with clumsy table-based interfaces that may or may not provide more function – and almost all are “free” trial versions with variously high subscriptions or they start at double the price of Glasswire. I have yet to find a usable graphical interface that provides the function I get with Glasswire – and I’ve tried many.
I run the free version on three remote machines… I bought Basic for my primary machine. I find that the ability to monitor all systems on my network and have a complete picture to be Glasswire’s major function. I essentially do not use the firewall options at all except for occasional reference. For anyone to say I can get this function cheaper and better with other products is ludicrous. Please prove it!
(Be careful that those “free” trials don’t dump unwanted crap onto your machine or leave difficult to find and remove modules when you uninstall. Something (I have no idea what) loaded nicely onto my machine last month and proceeded to damage unrelated functions which eventually necessitated a complete OS re-install. No virus or Trojan was involved as far as I could ever determine. Through it all, Glasswire continued to operate properly and continued collecting its data and providing the info I needed to help recover. None of my other network machines was affected, but the problem disrupted my operations for several days and caused the continuing usual “new machine” type issues.)
If you find Glasswire to be useful and functional, then the small cost is well worth supporting it’s “beta” releases. One of the best things I can do now, is to provide good and detailed feedback on any problems or on suggestions to improve it.
We sent out the Cyber Monday sale to our email list you can join on our download page here https://www.glasswire.com/download/. It’s over now unfortunately.
The Elite version you show is our 10 user pack. You may want to consider our Basic version which is lower priced and is not a subscription.
Not trying to subvert Glasswire, but another alternative until you can get that lower cost is to buy the basic and rotate the activation if you want to use a different machine as your main Glasswire client. Otherwise, you can use the free version on two machines and change the machines you monitor with that free version.
All of that is quite inconvenient and I doubt anyone wants to run like that for very long, but it is a workaround until you either decide the value is there at any price, save enough to make the payment, or catch a good deal.
You can move your code between computers. Go to the top left GlassWire menu and choose “deactivate” to release the code before moving it, otherwise you may be asked to contact the helpdesk for help.
well while the price does look high at first glance it seems reasonable. (Disclaimer I got a License free of charge)
while the Basic License clocks in with a 50$ which certainly is not cheap, you are still on a one-time payment. with the Pro you have 100$ for 3 machines, lowering it to 33$ per machine and with the Elite which certainly isnt cheap in general with a 200$ you have to consider it’s for 10 machines, meaning you have a price of just 20$ per machine, so from that perspective the pricing seems fairly valid in my opinion.
While I do have to agree that subscriptions generate a more steady flow of income, I think a lot of people dont like to pay for subscriptions and I am really thankful that GW isnt subscription based.
I will be sticking to the free version here. Even though I would need it for multiple machines the Pro version would be $145 CDN vs the Basic version of $72 CDN. The Elite at $292 is way the heck out of my ballpark even though I could make use of 5 connections as it stands now.
If you’re using the free version then why not do a YouTube video on those features? Why not let people know how great it is? Who knows, maybe you’ll get some further benefit if the GlassWire people are appreciative of the effort and a good review. Personally, I’d appreciate a good video about GlassWire specifically looking at it from a gamer’s perspective.
(Edit) Apparently, this guy got a key to try it out for his review:
I’m not sure that your desire for a lower price should be used to “force” a price drop in the manner of “if you don’t give me what I want then I won’t do anything to help you.” At best you appear controlling and ungrateful; at worst you come across as resentful and spiteful. Think about it. You’re not only using GlassWire for free but you’re now promoting your own website in their forum.
I’m not saying this because I disagree that the prices should be lower - I said this many times myself.
You can wait for a special and eventually got it a lot cheaper as I did. There have been a few sales in the last two years so it is worth getting on the mailing list if you’re not already:
It’s more a Information Security/I.T. Professional Aspect vs Gaming aspect (point of view)
I am not knocking the product. I have a fairly complex network and I think it does what it is suppose to do on top of other hardware software I run.
Again, the pricing needs to get fixed permanently. If they are doing fine financially that’s great! I am sure they don’t need the revenue. However in this day and age it wouldn’t take much to make something similar at a discounted rate and knock them off permanently.
FYI, there is a competing product which suggests that GlassWire pricing is competitive. I forgot about it because it focuses on network monitoring and bandwidth quotas. GlassWire is primarily a security program with network monitoring which is what makes it rather unique.
Networx, which was free, became a paid product last month, December 2016. It costs USD29 on a single device but only has one year of updates and support. GlassWire’s price of USD49 for a lifetime of support and updates appear much more reasonable in comparison.
Edit: Actually, the Networx price page says USD29 for a single home license so business users pay USD49 but when you look at the license it is for five devices (but still only one year of updates and support). My overall assessment doesn’t change because I should have added that GlassWire allows up to three remote devices to be monitored and there are unlimited free installs.
I’d still like GlassWire Basic to have a cheaper option for home users.
Ok, sorry to just come in on this thread, but have to agree pricing is way out in my opinion. It’s not that your product is not worth this much, it’s more that it’s considerably more than I’m prepared to pay. Perhaps your sales figures don’t agree, and all is good your end. It is after all your company, but for such a useful and well reviewed product I can’t help thinking you’re losing huge potential sales.
I buy plenty of software. I have a $20 lifetime VPN, I buy occasional wordpress plugins for $5-20 if they will save me time, and have good reviews, and work! But I also have Adobe Suite, and Ableton Live, but these provide me with income, not something to just give me peace of mind and security when I need it. Its about the comparable value. free network tools exist and I’ve always had an extra free firewall. I actually think your product is good, I’ve used ot for 9 months on free level and there’s reasons why I would upgrade to pro. But $99 (for pro) is definitely too much for me. And in fact having been holding on for some sort of sale (like there was this time last year, where you could get it for $29) it looks like that’s not going to happen again,and I need to look elsewhere to do some of the things I need. I can’t help thinking you’re missing out on revenue and publicity by having an occasional sale, or permanently reducing your pricing to what I believe is a better market level for people to use on their home pc’s…
So, I’m now about to uninstall Glasswire, which I liked, and would have upgraded to pro for a fee I can warrant, and try out the latest free offering from, most likely comodo. (though issues I had last year with them are why I ended up trying your software, as well as liking your monitoring views). Maybe my smaller $$ not important to you, which may be true, and your market research might be spot on, but something, including this thread, makes me wonder if you’re not missing something, I feel I am by not being able to warrant buying your pro product
Anyway, thanks for providing a free version, I thought it was a good product. I just need that little bit more…
Also, I just looked into Comodo and it costs $40 per year, so I have trouble understanding why it would make more sense to switch to them for financial reasons. But if you like Comodo more it’s OK. We will try to improve more so you’ll consider GlassWire in the future.
GlassWire 2.0 will be a big improvement and I hope you’ll consider trying it.
