SQLyog Pricing

[Anonymous]

I understand that you must pay the bills – this is fair, especially considering the performance/feature set that your product holds.

My concern is that your $49 price is “introductory.” I've seen the bait-and-switch by too many software companies in my time, where the price starts out small in order to gain a strong market following, and then the company releases the next major version costing $249 or more…

Please tell us that you plan on keeping the pricing reasonable. Nobody needs another Microsoft or Adobe. We need competant programmers creating solid products at reasonable prices. Even companies such as EMS and Navicat charge too much for programs that fall far short on their promises.

Look to the revenue model MySQL AB uses: revenues based on solid support services with modest (or free) prices for their products. Or as Redhat does: a reasonable/free entry-level product, with more advanced products and services for mission critical systems costing more. Just don't water down the standard version too much.

Thank you for your consideration,

S

[Anonymous]

I have been a user of your MySQL tool for a while, it is a great product. However I don't think you price, introductory or not, is out of line with other tools available for free and commerically. I think you will make a lot more money and support from existing users if your price was around $10 including 1 year of upgrades for free. Then upgrades/support would be $10 per year thereafter.

For instance the lastest version of MySQL has a freely available tool that is similar to your tool although it is not as easy to use or functional.

Or an existing and excellent commerical tool that ranges from $85 to $135 http://ems-hitech.com/mymanager

No offense but EMS MyManager is more polished and has a few more features than your v3.5.

I hope you will reconder your lincensing pricing, especially considering you intially made this product freely available.

Best Regards,

Brian

[Ritesh]

Hello Brain,

Thanks for the suggestions.

Let me try to address some of the issues that you have raised.

Firstly, like MySQL, SQLyog is not participating in the “feature race”. We have taken a conscious decision for not allowing SQLyog to become a bloatware like other competing products. At the same time, we strongly believe that you can do 99% of you daily work with MySQL using SQLyog. SQLyog will always remain the fastest and simplest GUI to MySQL.

Secondly, we believe that the pricing of SQLyog is quite reasonable. At a registered user, you get:

– Unlimited premier support at [email protected]

– Substantial discounts ( around 50% ) in the next release of SQLyog Max ( 4.x ). All 3.x upgrades are free.

– Priority bug-fixes – If you come across a bug that is critical for you business, we would make sure that our developers look into in immediately and post a fix at soon as possible.

We don’t plan to increase or decrease the price of SQLyog in the near future. We would be offering substantial discounts on site licenses for “Educational and Non/Profit organizations”.

Thirdly, the response for SQLyog 3.5 has been overwhelming, and the no. of downloads have actually increased after going commercial. Thousands of existing users of SQLyog are more comfortable with the fact that SQLyog is now a well supported product. It is not going to disappear into oblivion like other promising freeware products.

Regards,

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the response to Brian, Ritesh. It definitely instills more confidence in your company's position. As I stated before, we would hate to lock into a solution that soars in price with each new release. I'm glad you addressed this in response.

You mentioned Sqlyog Max (4.x). How about some hints at the feature-set? Will you be incorporating some sort of forms capability for data entry? (i.e. similar to MS Access forms) How about an roughly estimated release schedule for 4.x? I won't hold you to it, but our company and our customers are starving for more information!

I know you probably can't discuss these topics in detail, but it would be great to give your users hints at what is to come from time to time on the web site.

Thanks! 😀

S

[Anonymous]

OH this really chaps me big time! I am writing a book for Sybex publishing and I wrote about half of the chapter about using third-party MySQL applications such as SQLYog. I gave examples how to use the program and etc, mainly because it was FREEWARE.

Now that the application has gone shareware, EXPENSIVE shareware I might add, I think I am going to have to scratch it from my book that is going to be printed this December.

Sad state of affairs.

Eric 'phpfreak' Rosebrock

http://www.phpfreaks.com

[Anonymous]

Also, this quote is what gets me: “we strongly believe that you can do 99% of you daily work with MySQL using SQLyog. SQLyog will always remain the fastest and simplest GUI to MySQL”

You can do the same with phpMyAdmin from ANY operating system using a simple web browser: http://phpMyAdmin.net and for FREE.

Still irritated at this whole deal. Greed is starting to play a toll here.

Eric Rosebrock

http://www.phpfreaks.com

[Anonymous]

Well all I can say is that it's a little disappointing – I was attracted to the product because it's free, and this was quite obviously shown on the website when downloading – almost as if it was a selling feature.

To suddenly start charging just reminds me of countless companies which do the same – draw you in, then slap a charge on any upgrades.

I'm glad I've kept a copy of the 3.51 exe.

On a more positive note, the software is excellent, it's just a pity our directors don't see that and give us money to upgrade it. Being a non-profit outfit, even your rates for that business type are too high.

🙁

[MysqlPhpDev]

You big bunch of complaining babies. Hello, my name is Earth. Have we met? You want a fantastic product built by these guys but, you don't want them to become successful at it, or even feed their families. Ever heard of Free Enterprise? Oh yea, you guys don't live in the land of the free, do you?

More power to you Webyog. I hope you guys get rich and buy expensive sports cars. I and the others here wish we had come up with the idea first and could make money at it too.

As for the competitors. They have some really powerful stuff, huh? Lots of gizmo's and gadget's, huh? Give me a break, and give me something I can get the job done with quickly, without balloons and streamers. SQLyog has all the power and punch a heavy hitter needs to win. Yes, it would be nice if it stayed free but, I sure as hell didn't PLAN on designing websites free forever, either.

A Fan

[Darwin101]

I just have to wonder if Mr Rosebock is going to give his book away for free??? If not will he give all of his royalties to charity? Maybe he has bills to pay and needs the money just like the folks at sqlyog.

😮

[Victor]

I've just been looking at Navicat, which does a similar job. It is neat, well-produced, has a query builder and a lot of import/export options, and has a well-written local Help.

But it is $88.

Now, Ritesh, if you can build in those features for $49 you'll have a winner! Otherwise I will probably stick with 3.11 (or the Lite version when it arrives).

By the way, 3.11 remembered my server password, whereas 3.51 makes me go and look the damn thing up every time I start it! <_< Was this deliberate? I was very glad to find SQLyog when I was a raw beginner (about a month ago!). I wouldn't have known then how to get phpMyAdmin running, and SQLyog was an essential help in getting my first PHP/MySQL pages up and running. It's still where I go to test bits of SQL. But the next raw beginner won't want to risk $49 on the unknown, or be stuck with half a program. Wouldn't it be better to issue a 30-day trial of the full version rather than a Lite?

[Ritesh]

Quote:

By the way, 3.11 remembered my server password, whereas 3.51 makes me go and look the damn thing up every time I start it!  Was this deliberate?

Did you press the Save… button in the Connection Window… after giving in the details?

[Dilbert]

Comparing Navicat to SQLyog is like comparing a Ferrari to a truck and pointing out that truck can also transport livestock. Come on Victor – if you had mentioned MyCC or MySQL-Front, it would made sense. Navicat is a 11 MB bloatware that has got lot of features that you are never going to use.

Quote:

and a lot of import/export options,

Ever tried importing a MS-SQL, Oracle, Access database into MySQL using Navicat? Please try it and post your experience in this thread. I am curious to know what you think!

[Shadow]

Quote:

a lot of import/export options

Even SQLyog 3.11 has import/export functions (sometimes buggy a bit :P) and this feature has been particularly improved in v3.5.

Quote:

and has a well-written local Help

Well, that's truly a feature that is missing from SQLyog, although I should say, it is not too difficult to use SQLyog, that is way I don't consider the lack of built-in help such an important issue.

[SSS]

When will we know more about future development? What about the pro version? What will the “regular” price be as compared to the “introductory” price?

My company will not make any purchase decisions and I am afraid that we might go with another vendor or keep the old 3.11 until we know more about your product plans.

I think answering these questions would also curb the flame posts on this topic.

Thanks!! 😀

[Dilbert]

phpfreak wrote on Jun 27 2003, 08:13 AM:

Also, this quote is what gets me: “we strongly believe that you can do 99% of you daily work with MySQL using SQLyog. SQLyog will always remain the fastest and simplest GUI to MySQL”

You can do the same with phpMyAdmin from ANY operating system using a simple web browser: http://phpMyAdmin.net and for FREE.

Still irritated at this whole deal. Greed is starting to play a toll here.

Eric Rosebrock

http://www.phpfreaks.com

Hey, it seem like Mr. PhpFreak has started selling SQLyog! at http://www.phpfreaks.com/sqlyog

It seems like he has become greedy too !!!!

Well done SQLyoggers….I love your product, and I want you to be successful. Dont listen to these hypocrites…

[Ritesh]

SSS wrote on Jul 7 2003, 07:23 PM:

When will we know more about future development? What about the pro version? What will the “regular” price be as compared to the “introductory” price?

My company will not make any purchase decisions and I am afraid that we might go with another vendor or keep the old 3.11 until we know more about your product plans.

I think answering these questions would also curb the flame posts on this topic.

Thanks!! 😀

The prices will not be increased for the current version of SQLyog i.e. 3.x . All registered users will get FREE upgrades to SQLyog 3.x.

Roadmap of SQLyog can be found here

HTH

[SSS]

Thank you, Ritesh for giving us a roadmap! I know this will help us all understand the direction of the product. One last question: When the Max version comes out sometime in December, will the “regular” (i.e. 3.x) series continue? Or will it just be Lite and Max versions at that point?

Thanks!! 😀

[Ritesh]

It is too early to provide specific answers on this issue.

[Anonymous]

In defense of phpfreak, I think he fired before he had thought through the issue sufficiently. His site has probably generated a good deal of traffic towards this product with several articles, and mods in the forums recommending it on a consistent basis. I know that everyone was kinda surprised that the product was taken commercial with such little notice. It seems to me, that one day it was free and the next day: boom it's $49.

Now here's my take on your pricing. Certainly you are entitled to price it any way you want, and I would love to see you be able to make money with it. However, I feel you've made a substantial error with your pricepoint. There are issues with the use of your product in hosted environments… although it's no fault of SQLyog, we all know that most hosting environments won't allow any connections other than via localhost.

SQLyog has no “killer” feature that warrants it's current pricetag. Yes it has a nice interface, but it also has some bugs. It's greatest value presently is as a learning tool, since it nicely logs all the sql it's sending to the database in a window. What it does it does well, but MySQL is still a rudimentary RDBMS in many ways and there's no real black magic in SQLyog. As was pointed out previously in the thread you *are* competing with alternatives, and we all know how pervasive phpMyAdmin is.

My opinion is that SQLyog should be priced under $20. To put it in perspective, compare the engineering, complexity and capabilites to something like Paintshop Pro which can be obtained for anywhere from $70 to $100 (boxed with a manual). Certainly I could be wrong, and if your licensing goes through the roof, I'd be the last to begrudge you your success. As it stand now, being a longtime database developer with experience with database from DB2 to oracle, to sybase to postgresql, I no longer feel I can recommend your product to people, because I don't feel the cost is inline with it's value.

As someone who has consistently recommended it in the past, I simply wanted to throw in my two cents. Best of luck.

[Ritesh]

🙂 Thanks Gizmola for your suggestions.

I would like to clarify some of the issues that you have raised.

I believe it is unfair to compare the prices based on engineering and complexity alone. Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition retails for $169 and a .NET graphing component having 2000 lines of high level C# code retails for $250 or more. Can we compare the prices based on engineering complexity? We really need to look at the volumes that a paricular market segment can generate. How many industrial-strength MySQL GUI clients are priced below $49?

SQLyog is not competing with phpMyAdmin. In fact SQLyog ( or any of the MySQL clients ) wont even work in environments where only localhost is allowed to connect. However, if remote connection is allowed then there is no competition at all! You simply cant match the efficiency that a fast and intuitive client-server application provides as compared to a web based application. phpMyAdmin is a cool app – but any web-based application can't be as responsive as a client-server app. doing the same thing.

Regarding competition – some of the features of SQLyog are really unique. Its blazing speed, small footprint, uncluttered and intuitive interface, robust ODBC support, DB Sync Tool, Relationship Manager, Schema Generator, multi-query, importing of very large batch scripts ( in GBs), etc are unparalled by any other MySQL front-end in the market.

[FutureShock]

This is the first I have even read about SQLyog and I can see the definate advatage in using it over the phpMyAdmin.

Now it may have been free at one time or other, but myself coming in after the fact have no problems paying a simple $50. I am sure my time saved saved in backups and syncronization alone is worth it.

For those who complain about being charged, I bet they work for free at their jobs too..NOT!

[Author]

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