Alibre To Increase Prices
After slashing the prices of all levels of Alibre Design to ridiculously low levels, starting May 1st 2011 Alibre has decided to increase prices back to the levels that they initiallywere. Here are the old and new prices:
- Alibre Design Personal Edition: $99 -> $199
- Alibre Design Personal Edition Maintenance: $99 -> $199
- Alibre Design Professional: $699 -> $999
- Alibre Design Professional Maintenance: $199 -> $299
- Alibre Design Expert: $1399 -> $1999
- Alibre Design Expert Maintenance: $299 -> $399
About a year ago I spoke to Alibre CEO Paul Grayson on the $99 offer (see “Paul Grayson on the Dynamics of the $99 Offer“). Here is part of the post:
I asked Paul what he had to say to people who thought that the $99 offer was a ploy to get a bunch of people interested and then fleece them later on. Paul replied:
“Ha! Ha! I must tell you that people who are ready to spend only $99 are kind of hard to fleece. It’s far easier to fleece people who can afford to pay $5000 on a MCAD system. No, this is not a ploy in the way you put it. I mean every business wants to up sell customers. Do you consider that as a ploy? We were very clear with what we were offering for $99 and are very clear with what you get for the $197 Alibre Design Standard plus Maintenance. Our customers know exactly what they are getting and are slowly move up to other more capable versions. This is all part of the plan and it is working. It’s really that simple.”
More than a year ago, in a post titled “Alibre Design Standard For $97“, I wrote:
“…starting February 1st Alibre has decided to permanently (I repeat, PERMANENTLY) drop the price of Alibre Design Standard to $97. Alibre has also permanently dropped the price on Alibre Design Professional to $497 and Alibre Design Expert to $997. No more offers. These are the new prices. Period.”
It appears to me that in Alibre’s dictionary the word “permanent” is synonymous to “stretched temporary” or something. The logic of lowering prices back then was to lower the cost of entry. I am curious to know why raising the cost of entry makes sense to Alibre now. Alibre’s VP of Marketing Max Freeman tells me that the company has increased its customer base by tens of thousands during this period of slashed prices. So I guess this “permanent” price reduction worked pretty well for Alibre.
Frankly, I am quite happy at this development. I never liked these crazy low prices anyways. I had to reduce the price of my Alibre Design add-ons because of them.