Just wanted to point out a few things for folks wondering about Prosoft pricing and attitude. Prosoft has been in business supporting the mac faithful since 1984. Novell was planning on not supporting the Macs and that's when Prosoft stepped in and provided a much-needed product for folks out there running NetWare. The market to sell NetWare for Mac is indeed small (much smaller than, say, the marketplace to sell OS X or other mass market products). So what is lacked in size, is unfortunately made up for in costs to those that need this software. We'd love to sell the product for much less, but with a small market to sell into, the numbers just don't add up..
Also, and you might not be aware of this, but Prosoft also pays a license fee for every copy sold.. That's right, a royalty for each license sold...
Another thing that folks don't realize, is the high cost of support.. A great deal of companies will do one of the following:
1) Charge for support calls
2) Only offer Support for a short time (first 30 days)
3) Only provide FAQs or email support
Prosoft provides free support for as long as you own the product, or even during the demo phase.. Support calls on a network app can sometimes be time-consuming and take days to wrestle (if the IT person isn't too helpful for the lone Mac user for instance), but we at Prosoft always endeavor to help as much as possible. I've even seen our support team help customers online after hours and on the weekends and holidays in some cases... You just don't get that with most companies..
Just wanted to point out that we're not your typcial company, out to gouge the customers any time we can, etc.. When pricing a product one must take into considereation development costs, support costs, licensing costs and then see what the marketplace is like for that product, and how one can begin to recoup the money invested into making that product..
We could perhaps lower the costs of this product if we started charging for every little support call, and somehow didn't pay a royalty to Novell, and also somehow increased the market for who needs this product, but all those things are not possible (well, we could start charging for support, but that's just not our style.. we pride ourselves on free support, should you ever need it)--
Thanks for the forum to respond to the comments. Our website has a free demo you can try for yourself to see if it's something you want/need for the associated costs. We'll be here, should anyone need support...
Gordon from Prosoft
NetWare Client X IP
Validate and use NetWare natively using the IP protocol.
Version: 2.0.1
Hi there
Feedback Type: Commentary
Contributed by: Prosoft Tuesday, July 18 2006 @ 04:50 PM PDT
Product Platform: MacOSX
Used Product For: Over One Year
Comments
Thanks for the support - Prosoft
Hi Scott,Thanks for the supportive words here. I do indeed feel customer's frustration and wish there were ways to develop and support products easier/cheaper. It's good to point out that Prosoft prides itself on both the free support we give out as well as keeping both development AND support here, instead of offshoring those. Thanks for the support!
Gordon
Wednesday, July 19 2006 @ 12:09 PM PDT
Hi there - frank174
I need your product and can't upgrade to Leopard until you make it compatable with Leopard. Right now I'd pay another 149. to get this working.Wednesday, December 05 2007 @ 06:18 PM PST
Thanks! - slboettcher
Thanks for posting, Gordon.Sadly, some Mac users are rude and clueless.
I have to admit that I have not nearly enjoyed the Mac Novell Client in OS X as I did in the Classic OSes. Not sure if that's because of Novell or the Mac OS, but it's just been a royal PITA to make it work reliably.
I have to say that now my company will be off of Novell completely by year's end, and I'm happy.
You guys have done a great job over the years, and I hope you don't think we're all ButtPods like some of the posters here.
Scott
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Wednesday, July 19 2006 @ 11:01 AM PDT