Prices set to increase ?

[Synth Master Jedi]

But the truth is - their plugins are good. Some better than others, true enough. But they are 3 for 60 bucks.

(Not to start a Waves discussion)

I agree. I'm not interested in starting a Waves discussion either and I know that many people constantly complain about WUP and other things, but the bottom line is that Waves makes many good plugins, and I'm glad to own and use all of the ones that I do.

[Synth Master Jedi]

but plug in devs need to pay staff more to buy eggs.

yes, we can do without plugins, they are luxury items, totally unnecessary.
yet people seem to expect them for peanuts.
bit weird really.

Unofrtunately, not all of them will be able to buy eggs. Most will probably, but not all.

There are so many plugin companies, large, small, and others in between. Like with all businesses, some will do better than others. Some will even disappear. Different plugin companies have different business models and not everybody will be successful.

As for the prices, yes, people do seem to expect them for peanuts, but whose fault is that? It is the companies that have conditioned the people with never ending perpetual sales and the people have gotten used to that.

[dionenoid]

like Waves or PA, with their 30 dollar plugins.

Obviously you didn't look at the recent sales prices.

True - if you buy 2 for thirty bucks each you'll get another one for free at Waves.

Only the plugins that were on sale for 25 or less last year (also with 'get one free' discount), are now on sale for 35 or 39. Their prices already increased, including personal upgrade offers.

PA latest sales had no 29 bucks plugins anymore, they were 31 to 39 bucks, for the same plugins that were 29 before. Plus their minimum spend for voucher use has increased.

Point is, prices already went up.

[noiseboyuk]

Waves prices and deals change daily.

[rezoneight]

All this talk about 'support' is laughable - if you run a software company, you are in control of your software, right? i.e. YOU have to fix bugs in it, and make it work. Yes, some people will have problems, I bet it's a tiny percentage, and you can easily - easily - just give them a refund if you think it's going to cost you more in support time to help them, than you made selling the software to them in the first place.
We get this comment EVERY single time somebody either suggests reducing the price of a VST or VSTs, or talks about sales.

Spoken by someone who apparently has never run a business, especially a software business, or ever had to provide support for any sort of software

[Synth Master Jedi]

Only the plugins that were on sale for 25 or less last year (also with 'get one free' discount), are now on sale for 35 or 39. Their prices already increased, including personal upgrade offers.

PA latest sales had no 29 bucks plugins anymore, they were 31 to 39 bucks, for the same plugins that were 29 before. Plus their minimum spend for voucher use has increased.

Point is, prices already went up.

It depends how somebody sees things.

In the case of PA, there were always certain newer plugins, the ones that everybody wanted, newer releases that were always priced higher.

And now, somebody can buy any plugin they want from them for $31, including the new ones, that would never be on sale before.

Now, I don't have to wait a year or more to own a certain plugin for a reasonable price. I can buy it whenever I want now, no waiting at all.

So the current situation is better in my opinion than the way it used to be.

[mixyguy2]

yes, we can do without plugins, they are luxury items, totally unnecessary.

Speak for yourself. To those of us living exclusively in the MIDI controller world, they are totally necessary. (Unless you mean unnecessary in life in general vs unnecessary to make music)

yet people seem to expect them for peanuts.

I don't, but am glad I can get so many good ones inexpensively or even free. But yeah anyone complaining about the price of plugins is tragically clueless. Or just riding the "I'm entitled" train full speed ahead. Or both.

[vurt]

yes, we can do without plugins, they are luxury items, totally unnecessary.

Speak for yourself. To those of us living exclusively in the MIDI controller world, they are totally necessary. (Unless you mean unnecessary in life in general vs unnecessary to make music)

yet people seem to expect them for peanuts.

I don't, but am glad I can get so many good ones inexpensively or even free. But yeah anyone complaining about the price of plugins is tragically clueless. Or just riding the "I'm entitled" train full speed ahead. Or both.

yes, sorry, unnecessary in general, not the thing you'll be looking for in an apocalypse situation
obviously hardware is in the same camp there, not a life necessity.

and of course, not "all people" just "some people" and i wasn't pointing fingers anywhere, just a general comment.

[LeVzi]

like Waves or PA, with their 30 dollar plugins.

Obviously you didn't look at the recent sales prices.

True - if you buy 2 for thirty bucks each you'll get another one for free at Waves.

Only the plugins that were on sale for 25 or less last year (also with 'get one free' discount), are now on sale for 35 or 39. Their prices already increased, including personal upgrade offers.

PA latest sales had no 29 bucks plugins anymore, they were 31 to 39 bucks, for the same plugins that were 29 before. Plus their minimum spend for voucher use has increased.

Point is, prices already went up.

From 29.99 to 31 dollars is almost an acceptable increase really, but increasing minimum spend on the vouchers probably is the kiss of death for them. tbh I think i've used 1 voucher in all the time i've been receiving them because I refuse to keep buying that tuner just to get a plugin I don't really need anyway.

[Synth Master Jedi]

From 29.99 to 31 dollars is almost an acceptable increase really, but increasing minimum spend on the vouchers probably is the kiss of death for them. tbh I think i've used 1 voucher in all the time i've been receiving them because I refuse to keep buying that tuner just to get a plugin I don't really need anyway.

I don't think that increasing the minimum spend on the vouchers will change much.

I think that things are much simpler now. Before, I barely even used my vouchers, and I would have to add silly plugins that I already owned to meet the threshold and play all sort of games when I wanted something.

Now, if I see that they release something new and if I like it, then I'll just buy it for $31.

I downloaded their newest EQ today to test out, and that's exactly what I intend to do if I decide to get it, I'll just pay $31 for it and I'm done. No vouchers, no more tuner plugins, no silly games.

I think that PA will continue to do fine.

[sin night]

Disclaimer: I speak as someone who makes a living as an employee by providing technical support (ie: bug fixes) on some custom business software. I don't know the plugin market from the inside (that's not my kind of software!), but I have a vague idea of how software development works...

All this talk about 'support' is laughable - if you run a software company, you are in control of your software, right? i.e. YOU have to fix bugs in it, and make it work. Yes, some people will have problems, I bet it's a tiny percentage, and you can easily - easily - just give them a refund if you think it's going to cost you more in support time to help them, than you made selling the software to them in the first place.
We get this comment EVERY single time somebody either suggests reducing the price of a VST or VSTs, or talks about sales.

Unfortunately, it's not that simple...

- You are in control of your software... up to a certain point, because the environment (the operating system and, speaking of plugins, the host) may change and may break a software that was perfectly working: then you need to spend maintenance time to keep your software running.

- There may be bugs staying silent for years that come to light because of a particular usage by one or two users. And they may have used for a long time before experiencing the bug. As a developer, you are supposed to find a solution (and that's also maintenance time).

- Giving a refund is not a good thing from a PR perspective. It may be only solution in a few situations when the customer can't get the software to work even after a huge effort by the support team, but as a rule of thumb you want to be known as someone who solves the problems and does whatever he can to solve them, not as someone who gives up quickly and rather gives you a refund. That's bad PR, you will be known as a lazy developer who doesn't care much (it doesn't matter if you are actually a good dev, you don't want such rumors to spread around). Also, if that customer has actually found a rare bug and you fix it, your customer base will probably benefit from a better software.

- Support is not just fixing bugs, it's also supporting users on how to use the software. People makes mistakes, uses the software in ways that are not intended, have strange configurations on their machines... Those are not bugs, but you need to take care of them nonetheless. On big companies, usually the support team has multiple layers and there are even groups dedicated to specific areas of the products. If the support is organized with three layers, most requests won't go past (shouldn't go past!) the first level (which means, they are not defects/incidents/things than need to be fixed, just general requests of help - speaking of software, the devs of the maintenance team is the third and final level of support and they are engaged only if there's an actual bug).


When you write software, it's your job also to maintain it and to provide support. But that time has to be paid somehow (my job has to be paid, so I can buy more plugins, you know! )

On "consumer-oriented" software, usually it's a cost taken into account when deciding the license price (so you pay upfront and, if you need support, you receive it "for free" - of course this works when just a fraction of the customers actually need help).
On some "professional" software, your license may include a limited amount of hours of support (maybe enough to provide help with the initial setup, in case you need it?), then you need to purchase some support hours (and those are not cheap!!!).
On custom written business software, companies pay for software development, which includes a limited support after the software has been delivered (just to fix any major bug which managed to escape the development/test/certification process), and then there's a separate contract for maintenance.

Time is well spent when fixing bugs that affect multiple users, while providing one-to-one support is not an effective way to use your resources (of course your customers deserve that time if they need it, but it's a cost that you have to cover somehow).
If you have a sale and you lower your prices in order to expand your user base, your new users may find new bugs (not very likely, if the software is mature / well written) and may ask for general help. The later will happen at least with the same percentage of your current user base (that would be a good scenario!), possibly even more (because, by lowering the price, you may enable "less trained" users to buy your software, so they need more after sale training/care). So, there's a tradeoff between lowering your prices / expanding your user base and the actual returns (at a certain point it may be not profitable anymore)...


Also, getting a bunch of new customers at the same moment will have probably have this effect on your organization:
- you wont's probably need more developers, if the software is already good/mature (new users may find some new bugs, but hopefully the number of bugs won't increase in a linear - or even worse - way in comparison to the customers)
- you may need new hosting space / bandwidth, especially when there's a sale / new release going on, but that just grows in a linear way compared to your customers (and you can rent extra resources for a limited time, so it's not a big deal)
- your support team will experience a period of huge workload, because the amount of help requests (anything else than bugs) will grow in a linear way, at least at the same rate of your current user base (but the rate may be higher, if lower prices enables "less trained" people to buy your product and then they need your help) and they will need it at the same time, so you may need some extra staff... except that you can't really think of adding people to a support team for a month or two untill a sale is over, people needs to be trained (If you want to provide some meaningful support!), which costs money and takes time... and in the meantime your new customers need help and they can't wait a long time.


When lowering the price (for a sale or forever), these things have to be taken into account... prices can be lowered, but it's not as easy as in "just cut the prices"...


And let me stress it enough: don't understimate the support requirements. I don't want to go into details of my job, but through the years I've even seen bug reports with a scan or a photo of the screen of a pc, or with the scan of a whole tablet, or with a screenshot printed on paper in b/w and then scanned and attached to the report... that should give you an idea... and I'm talking about users making a living sitting in front of a pc in a office. What can you expect when selling music software to people that, maybe, use a computer only in their free time to make music and do something else (not involving a computer) in their work time? Some of them may be skilled, but some may have an hard time doing even basic things... I'm not judging them, but that's just the way it is...
Not all the users are techy-savy. When providing a software solution, you have to acknowledge that part of the deal includes providing them help on thing that are "routine tasks" (at least for more skilled users) and you need to have the resources (both as in "money" and as in actual support people) to provide that help. You can't just lower the prices without taking those resources into account. Unfortunately.

[noiseboyuk]

Yours for $49:

1. iZotope RX Elements
2. iZotope Ozone Elements
3. iZotope Neutron Elements
4. iZotope Nectar Elements
5. iZotope VocalSynth 2
6. iZotope Trash 2
7. iZotope NIMBUS
8. iZotope R4
9. Native Instruments MASSIVE
10. Native Instruments GUITAR RIG 6 LE
11. Brainworx bx_console N
12. Brainworx bx_delay 2500
13. Brainworx bx_digital V3
14. Brainworx bx_stereomaker
15. Brainworx bx_subsynth

I don't think crazy-cheap deals are going anywhere.

[Synth Master Jedi]

I don't think crazy-cheap deals are going anywhere.

Neither do I. There are more deals than ever before and there is a ton of competition and the world economy is a mess.

As for the $49 deal, it is a great deal, especially if somebody doesn't have most of those plugins from before. I have 12 of them already I think, so I'm probably going to have to pass.

[teilo]

Hardware already is getting more and more expensive. Which is something I don't really understand though, because, online stores like Thomann surely make a good living, as do manufacturers like Sequential, Moog, or whoever.

Umm. Not really. That's just not the way business works. Especially the hardware business.

Businesses operate at the margin by which they can compete as well as pay their expenses. If they can lower their prices while still making a net profit after payroll and overhead, then they do so. The market pretty much guarantees that they are not making significantly more money than their competitors. And in hardware, they have plenty of competitors. For hardware resellers, the cost of goods is set by the manufacturer, and the profit margin you can set while still staying competitive, is low.

When inflation goes crazy, all their costs go up, and their profit goes down. Even the cost of keeping employees goes up, because the cost of living for their employees is also going up. Eventually, someone else is paying better, and so the employees change jobs. To replace that employee, the company has to pay more.

Furthermore, the cost of acquiring hardware has gone nuts with the chip shortage.

So yeah, they have to raise prices, or go out of business.