Happy New Year!
It’s a brand-new year – in fact, it’s a brand-new decade – and we’re starting 2020 with an update to the pricing model for new cloud hosted editions of our MIDAS room booking and resource scheduling software.
We’ll explain more about that in a moment, but first a little background into the history of our pricing structure…
A Brief History of MIDAS Pricing…
When we launched the first versions of MIDAS way back in 2005, “hosted” applications (also known as “SaaS” or “Software as a Service”) were few and far between.
Initially, in the very early planning stages of MIDAS, we envisaged our software being something that customers could download and run on their own web servers.
In those days, our software was charged at a one-off fixed price for everyone. It quickly became clear however that there was also a demand for a “hosted” MIDAS solution in addition to a “downloadable” one.
Introduction of a “cloud hosted” software solution
We subsequently introduced a “remotely hosted” option. This was charged at the same one-off initial price as the “downloadable” version, but with an additional small “annual subscription” element. The subscription element covered the cost of hosting.
This worked well for the first five years. We were always conscious though that larger organizations, such universities with dozens – if not hundreds – of users and rooms were paying the same price for our software as the smallest of Churches with just a handful of rooms and a single administrator.
We didn’t think this was very fair. In an effort to address this in 2011 we introduced a “lite” version of MIDAS. This cut-down budget version didn’t include many of the advanced features – such as invoicing – that the full version had.
MIDAS “Lite”
MIDAS “lite” partially addressed this imbalance, but we still didn’t feel it went quite far enough. There were still some small organizations who didn’t have many rooms or users. But because they still wanted to use the invoicing features of MIDAS, they were forced to go with the “full” version of MIDAS.
That’s why in August 2012, we completely reworked our pricing structure. Gone was the “lite” version of MIDAS. Instead, we offered only the “full” version, but with a tiered pricing structure based on the number of “venues” (rooms/bookable spaces) to be managed and number of user accounts required. This went on to make MIDAS far more accessible to organizations of all shapes and sizes, and has served us well for over 7 years.
Throughout this time, the cost of MIDAS – whether “cloud” hosted or “self” hosted – still consisted of an initial one-off cost (i.e. “buying” the software), and an annual subscription element. The subscription element covering software updates and priority support was optional for “self hosted” customers. For “cloud hosted” customers, the subscription covered hosting, software updates, and support.
However, the rise of SaaS applications has sky-rocketed over the past 7 years. It’s now common place to find businesses which offer access to their application(s) for a flat monthly or an annual subscription fee, without having to ever “buy” the software itself.
We’ve also heard from our own customers, some of whom were put off by the initial high “one off” cost element when “buying” a cloud-hosted edition. Some of our customers would instead prefer to pay a simple monthly or annual subscription fee.
We’ve listened and that’s why from 1st January 2020 our pricing structure for new customers is as follows:
New & Existing Self-Hosted Customers:
There is no change to the pricing model for new or existing self-hosted customers. Pricing remains an initial “one time” cost (i.e. you’re “purchasing” the software). We still offer an entirely optional Annual Support Subscription, which provides access to software updates and Priority Support.
Existing self-hosted customers who wish to migrate over to a cloud-hosted system, would need to purchase a new cloud-hosted subscription, and contact us to arrange for existing data/settings from their previous self-hosted system to be migrated across.
New Cloud-Hosted Customers:
The cost of MIDAS no longer includes an initial “one time” cost element. Instead, simply priced monthly and annual subscription plans are now offered.
In essence, new cloud-hosted customers are no longer “buying” MIDAS, but rather “renting” it on a monthly/annual basis.
Comparative illustrative USD pricing example for a Cloud-Hosted MIDAS system (1 user / 10 venues) over 3 years:
| …if purchased before 2020: Initial Cost: $868 ($639 (one time) + $229) 2nd Year Cost: $229 3rd Year Cost: $229 Total paid after 3 years: $1,326 | …if purchased from 2020 onwards: Initial Cost: $339 2nd Year Cost: $339 3rd Year Cost: $339 Total paid after 3 years: £1,017 |
Addons & Upgrades for new Cloud-Hosted Customers:
Under the previous pricing model (pre 2020), optional addons and upgrades for cloud-hosted customers typically involved a single one-time cost. Under the new pricing model (2020 onwards), upgrading your license or adding addons will affect your subsequent monthly/annual subscription price. A small pro-rata charge would be levied in the interim.
Existing Cloud-Hosted Customers:
We greatly value our existing and loyal customers, many of whom have been with us for years. We have no plans to move existing cloud customers onto the new cloud pricing structure.
Cloud-hosted customers who purchased MIDAS prior to 1st January 2020 will continue to see familiar Annual Hosting + Support renewal prices. These will in most cases work out lower than annual subscription prices for comparable new systems purchased from 2020 onwards.
There are no changes to addon/upgrade pricing for existing Cloud-Hosted customers who purchased MIDAS before 2020.
In summary, we hope that these improvements to our cloud-hosted MIDAS pricing structure will help make our software accessible to even more businesses and organizations, even those on the tightest of budgets. Gone is the initial high “one time” cost outlay, and instead we’ve introduced simple and straight forward low monthly and annual subscription pricing.
If you have any questions over the new cloud-hosted pricing model, please feel free to reach out to us, and we’ll be happy to assist!
In the meantime, we’d like to wish you a very happy and prosperous 2020!