Lower pricing/renewal structure: Feedback

[bart nathan]

website credit card feature

The credit card feature should be included in the basic xsite plan.

My other website is only 40 bucks a years and does about the same thing.

 

[dbiggers]

The credit card feature should be included in the basic xsite plan.

My other website is only 40 bucks a years and does about the same thing.

Thanks -- but to be clear, an XSite is not in the $349 package we're talking about here.

Can you point me at that website and website provider? I'm unaware of any website at $40 with the features of an XSite for appraisers, so I'd really like to dig in to that and see what we need to do.

 

[Diane Lagrou]

I see that Mercury Desktop is free, but there is an additional charge for Mercury Direct which has the most used plug ins needed? What is the additional charge for Mercury Direct?

 

[dbiggers]

I see that Mercury Desktop is free, but there is an additional charge for Mercury Direct which has the most used plug ins needed? What is the additional charge for Mercury Direct?

Mercury Direct is simply a new name (and new design) for the long-standing XSite Order Manager, and the price is unchanged. It's $299 a year.

Note that the most-used plugins, by far, are Mercury Network and DataCourier, and those are free, along with several specialized plugins.

Previously, of course, paying $299 was required in order to use Mercury Network in any form or fashion. So while the price is unchanged, the number of appraisers who have to buy it has been reduced by several thousand users per year. It's a big chunk of money that we gave up in order to allow any appraiser to get on Mercury as a vendor, with no barrier. We of course make money on the transaction fees, but we used to charge for both. Big difference.

 

[Dale Floyd]

My recent renewal changed several things, saving me around $500 when all was said and done... I don't mind paying for a good platform and good service, but I had a package that was more than I needed.... Went from $1,499 to $998 annually for the things I need... That doesn't include the annual fee for my trainee, but it's in the right direction..

The trouble for me, was a misunderstanding of the multiple components and what they actually included.... (Mercury Desktop has plugins, but so does xSite - Vault subscription requirements for Exact - Gold/Silver/Platinum/Copper/Aluminum - Those kinds of things....)

But Wes walked me through it all, and many things have changed over the years.... Thankful and done.....

By the way Dave - I still have to close Total 2013 after using it for several hours on the same report, because of the way it hordes memory... If I don't, pictures will be missing in the final transmitted report... Your tech guys say they are still working through that, but always suggest closing the program and reopening in that case to empty out the memory grab.... Since there's no way to tell is it is goofed up or not until producing the report, it's easier to shut down and restart every time.... I know this isn't the right thread for the suggestion, but that really needs to get fixed.... You da man...

 

[dbiggers]

My recent renewal changed several things, saving me around $500 when all was said and done… …

By the way Dave - I still have to close Total 2013 after using it for several hours on the same report, because of the way it hordes memory... If I don't, pictures will be missing in the final transmitted report... Your tech guys say they are still working through that, but always suggest closing the program and reopening in that case to empty out the memory grab.... Since there's no way to tell is it is goofed up or not until producing the report, it's easier to shut down and restart every time.... I know this isn't the right thread for the suggestion, but that really needs to get fixed.... You da man...

Glad you got things worked out! Never pay for stuff you don't use, especially when business is tight like it is now.

The memory issues are almost all already fixed, but not yet deployed. We found multiple conditions under which memory could be locked and not freed back up, and have fixed the ones we could identify (Microsoft .NET will do it period under some conditions we can't control, but most conditions were of our own doing).

We're pretty confident we've knocked out the biggies. Obviously, that's such a low level change that we want to really bang the crap out of the engine in thorough testing, and won't be rushing it out till we're sure it's good to go.

If you can replicate the memory problems, and you want to see if it works on your PC as we hope, let me know (email me at dave at alamode.com) and I'll get the developers to shoot you an alpha that you can install. It might be something you do on a Saturday just as a test, then roll back to the regular version on Sunday before you get busy again.

Thanks again and keep in touch.

 

[TennMan]

Thanks Pat! There's a lot more on the way. Real low-level stuff.

As for complaints, there's a rule of thumb... Knock out the top 10 items and there's always a new top 10 below that. It's just a fact of life if you develop software! Lol. The calls never decrease.

Dave:
I have misplaced your email info. Can you reach out to me regarding the CE stuff?

Woody Fincham