DTO Vendor Tools pricing - Page 2 - Drive Thru Online - Support

Nathan · #11 (**permalink**) 08-24-2009, 05:00 PM

We've had quite the conversation internally about the pricing structure. We are seeing how we need to be a bit more flexible and would like to discuss with each of you how we can move forward. MGSteve has my contact info. roberth, I'll be sending you that information in a minute.

Mark · #12 (**permalink**) 08-24-2009, 05:06 PM

Rather than beating this to death over how we currently have pricing is there a way we can get to a constructive conversation where we can support the following goals?

use our software and experience to help the community owner to create new revenue opportunities with vendors and secure their long-term participation as an advertiser.
provide a return on investment to the advertiser
price it so that we can continue to provide a dedicated team toward building professional quality software, support, and services

If you are both open to participating in working with us to come up with a solution that would meet these needs let's take this conversation offline and put our heads together. If we can come up with something that will support each of your sites, different sized sites of varying interests, and we can build our company it would be a win-win for everyone.

If you are interested in taking this discussion to another level please PM me and I'll set something up where we can discuss how to best achieve the above goals.

Thanks!

Mark

MGSteve · #13 (**permalink**) 08-24-2009, 05:09 PM

I'll give you a call Tomorrow Nathan, I'm sure we can sort something out.

I appreciate its a new product, DTO is a new company really, although your experience in the field goes back a way. In a way we've very similar, my business was borne out of my forum where as you went software for VB route, I went general websites for people - starting off with car dealerships!

New products and new things in general can often have a bumpy start. But a quality product like VT will succeed, even if it does need a revised price list ;)

Mark - just noticed your post appeared whilst I was typing. At the end of the day, we're your customers (or at least I am!, don't know if Robert's bought anything yet) and VT is perfect for the market, as I said above its superb. I've put my 'would be customer of VT' point above, imo the pricing needs addressing for it to take off.

Mark, you've got my email address, feel free to drop me & robert an email. At the end of the day every forum owner runs their site with different goals. Some will want to make money, some will want to build a community and as long as it pays its way that's fine, obviously a way needs to be found to make it work for both types.

I'm on MSN as well if you want to add me, I'll add my contact details into the profile.

At the end of the day, anything I can do to help make VT work for us both is for both of our benefits.

Mark · #14 (**permalink**) 08-24-2009, 05:20 PM

Agreed.

I'll also add that all of the DTO software started from the community I built from the ground up. When it was sold in early 2008 I had used "beta" versions of all of the products here to build a membership of 45,000 users, 80 paying advertisers, and more than 300 premium memberships (after just launching that program a year earlier). Once I sold the site I moved to "productizing" the software for use by other sites in all types of vertical markets.

I appreciate your willingness to participate in this type of discussion. I'm confident that we can come up with something that will meet all of our needs.

Thanks!

Mark

MGSteve · #15 (**permalink**) 08-24-2009, 05:23 PM

to be honest Mark, if I hadn't have gone the website route, I'd have probably done exactly the same as you - although the products would not probably be as well refined and polished as yours are! lol ;)

Mark · #16 (**permalink**) 08-24-2009, 05:34 PM

I still am working on a few sites as well though that isn't our primary focus at the moment.

Haywire · #17 (**permalink**) 08-28-2009, 10:35 AM

A friend of mine just told me that you guys changed your pricing structure... that really makes this product a lot more interesting.

I think my only hesitation how is how quickly you guys will get ported over to vBulletin 4. I'm excited by this option now.

Thanks for flexing on the price... I'm sure it was a hard thing to do.

Mark · #18 (**permalink**) 08-28-2009, 11:19 AM

Nathan - welcome to the site!

As I mentioned to you some time ago there are a lot of questions about vB4 that remain to be answered. While I've applied for the beta program I've received no response and therefore have not had any opportunity to view what's under the hood relative to how bolting in products and extensions will be handled. I know that a lot of things will have changed so we'll have to explore what will be required.

In general our products have a number of touch points that we'll have to port but I hope that the majority of code will come over without issue. In the case of ShowCase the functionality that supports the ability to build different showcase types has very little, if any, dependency on vBulletin so that should migrate quickly.

The other thing that we will be looking for is how quickly site owners will transition to vB4. If they use any plugins, addons, or modifications I suspect that all of these will need to be ported to work with vB4. This could take some significant time depending on how quickly the authors of those mods migrate. With most of the sites that we are working with I've been surprised with how many mods they are using. To see these sites quickly migrate to vB4 will be a challenge because of these.

Obviously I want to see our products quickly be supported on vB4 for those customers that do migrate or start new communities. The only problem I see with getting there quickly is how active Internet Brands is in getting a beta or release version out there so we can start working with it. Right now with no information forthcoming on getting access to the new version I can only guess at what will be involved. If we can get access to vB4 and dig into it I suspect that our products will be some of the first to support it.

As for Vendor Tools pricing I think it is the right change to make. Until we had the product ready to release, our video demo online, and potential customers checking it out we were only running on the data that I had available to us...my experience in building the revenue streams on my site with the product. In the feedback received, not only in my calls with site owners but here in this thread, it became apparent that the way I leveraged the product and my business practices was somewhat different and not representative of the market as a whole. Going forward we still want to share our experiences so that owners can get the most out of the potential of the software. That said we realize that each site will use our products in different ways and we want to support them however we can.

I'll also note that this pricing strategy change came about through our interest in trying to fit the customer needs with our needs to support and grow our business. This was accomplished with some offline conversations with other members of the site, existing customers, and a LOT of internal conversation around Vendor Tools.

While never pleasant for either us or the potential customer I have an appreciation for the process and that we all are working to something that works for all parties. Hopefully most people will find the new pricing structure more workable.

Thanks again for joining the site and I hope we can work together soon!

Best regards,

Mark