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Need one more camera

edited February 2017 in SecuritySpy
Am I right that if I need just 1 more camera licence it's still going to cost me £299 as I have 8 now. I'm sorry to keep harping on about it but it just does not sit well with me as an existing user when a first time purchaser has the option of paying only £29.90 to buy 1 licence.

Seriously - when are you going to allow users to buy (add) the exact number of licenses they need.

Comments

  • Ditto. I have 5 cameras and a 4-camera license so that 5th camera won't ever get added because the price would double and I don't forsee ever having 8 cameras. Why not just charge for the extra camera and take my smaller amount of money!?
  • I feel the same way. It would be nice if there were a smaller price increase per camera.
  • I agree, that would be wonderful- If for no other reason than 9 cameras fill up a screen so much better than 8 :)

    I have a Synology NAS that has Surveillance Station software and I've offloaded some of my less critical cameras to that system (it came with 2 free camera licenses) so that I can stay within my 8 camera license. I plan to stick with Security Spy, because it integrates fairly well with my home automation system (indigo) and I admire Ben's responsiveness and engagement with his users, but surveillance station has been useful for the extra cameras, for redundancy, and for determining if a problem is camera/network related or software related.
  • Thank you all for your feedback. The current system, where there are set tiers based on the number of cameras, has several advantages - mainly its simplicity which makes it easy to understand and administer. However I do understand that it's not ideal for those users who want just one or two more cameras beyond their current license. This is the down side of the system.

    It's been working well for such a long time so we have no immediate plans to change it, but we may do so in the future, as I'm sure it does put some users off from upgrading in certain circumstances. However we would have to look at this very carefully and may have to adjust the per-camera price if we change the whole structure.
  • Would it not be possible to retain the block sizes for licences but instead of replacing a 4 with an 8 and an 8 with a 16, why not have a cumulative licence scheme so a user with an 8 could purchase an additional licence with a 4 camera licence. This would retain the current licence pricing schema. You would need to allow multiple licences to be registered instead of just one.
  • Hi Dave, that is one possibility. It has advantages, though it does complicate the system, with both the customer and ourselves potentially having to keep track of multiple license codes for the same SecuritySpy installation. We will consider all possibilities for the future.
  • edited February 2017
    I would advocate for some more granularity between steps. I greatly delayed going up from 8 cameras because of the large incremental cost of adding 2 or 3 more cameras.
    I now have a 16 camera license, but will never be able to use all those camera slots because my iMac CPU simply won't handle more than 12 cameras. I don't think many of us have a heavy enough a Mac to handle 32 or 64 cameras.

    That leaves levels 1, 4, 8, 16 as the only actual choices for us mortals. The start of each level is expensive/camera for the user. The end of the level feels a bargain provided by the developer. The problem is the increment for going beyond the last camera of a level is geometrically higher and nearly always going to be on the lower end of the next level - the expensive/camera end. Coupled with the geometric rather than linear progression between levels and you really discourage users from upgrading unless really forced by circumstances.

    I would be happy buying up from level to level if the steps were closer together even if the progression was still geometric.

    1, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, 24, 32

    Even more palatable to move up, if steps were more linear
    1, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32

    Basically, get the steps small enough that each increment stays below the threshold that one thinks whether it is worth the cost. Painless gets the buy click before one gets a chance to vacillate.
  • Thanks for the feedback @guykuo - it's useful for us to know that customers delay their upgrades due to the larger steps between the higher license levels; we want to avoid this as much as possible. Your proposed solution would work well (though it's more complicated than the current one), however as I mentioned we would have to be very careful about any change - it's difficult to know what the effects will be in terms of sales. We'll have a look at, at least, adding more steps so that the jumps aren't so big for the larger licenses.
  • More steps would be great, the current jumps are pretty big. As they are now I'd likely never go above 8 cameras, but if there was a 10 or 12 option cheaper than 16 it would be more likely to happen (in my case it would be at least a year because of other expenses before I'd be adding more cameras)
  • when you have an 8 camera licence and the iOS/tvOS app has a 9 camera multiplex view... is it worth $200USD to fill that last black square? I'm surely considering it...
  • edited March 2017
    I'm sure the OCD compulsion is fill the last square is compelling, but it would no doubt be nicer to be able to do it for an additional single camera licence rather than a 16 camera one.

    :-)
  • agreed, or just up the 8 camera licence to a 9 camera licence to suit the multiplex view of the ios/tvos apps
  • Agreed. I have a need for 9 cameras, but I won't be paying for a 16 camera license for that 1 camera. Hopefully this can be figured out. I really like SS, and don't like using other solutions. Most people don't start with a lot of cameras. Usually get a few, and overtime add additional cameras. I would assume the pay as you need solution would be best for the majority, and would likely bring in more money. People usually only need to add 1 or 2 cameras to their already 4 or 8 license.
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