SQA Mate has got a price tag of a coffee cup
SQA Mate — Software Quality Assurance’s Mate — simple and easy to use test case management tool with Jira-like markup language for test cases design and Jira-like pseudo-SQL query language for test cases search, has got a price tag of $29/month (flat rate) this May.
Since SQA Mate started to host test cases from more than 10 companies, hitting the total number of 15000 test cases from them, I decided to apply a price tag for all new registrations. All existing users got the system for free — as my payoff for them being early adopters.
SQA Mate has proved many times already, that it makes value, that it helps QA to be more happy and thus more productive at their daily work. And I want to do more for them! And better! That’s why I am looking for the ways to quit my job and start working on the project for the full time — so I could bring much more joy and value for SQA Mate customers.
I thought what pricing model to choose, what a price tag to apply — and decided to do as 37signals (now Basecamp) taught me from their books: just put a price tag and see if people buy it. So, I did.
Why I’ve chosen $29/month? Several reasons.
- I am sure, that SQA Mate generates $1/day value for everyone who uses the system. And $1— is a price for a cup of coffee in Russia. I used to ask myself this way: is the tool generates me a value of a small cup of coffee each day? And the answer is: Yes!
- I am sure, that $29/month is not that much and even a single engineer, a self-employed person can afford such price just to make his and his team work more happier and thus better. Because SQM Mate is a mate, is your helping hand — it must be near!
- And I’ve chosen a flat rate — no matter how many users you have, you just pay that price — because I wanted SQA Mate to be independent from feature creep that comes with customers with huge number of seats. I want SQA Mate to be the same simple and easy to use tool, that just helps QA Engineers to make their job done.
Current version of SQA Mate costs $29/month. But I am going to release a new version during summer months — and it will cost a bit more: $49/month. Just because it will be better and be able to generate even more value for the customers. But everyone who bought the system for $29/month will continue to pay that price, even for a new system.
Comment me what do you think about this pricing model? Did you try SQA Mate in your projects? And how was that experience?
Thanks!
