Let’s do a little math here.
As of today $19.99 USD = $25 Canadian (CAD) after conversion.
That’s $300 CAD annually.
I am so disappointed in Zach and Inventables right now.
Who can afford this? And compared to Aspire Vcarve you get more features that a “pro” would be looking for.
Did I mention, I’m so disappointed right now.
I feel your pain I really do
but I have been told that there is a small business plan in the works so maybe thats something to look forward to …maybe
Hey @RobertMitchell I’m sorry you can’t afford the price.
You can use it for free 4 days per month 48 days per year. If you need additional days and can’t afford 12.99 paid in advance or 19.99 with the ability to cancel any time you can buy additional days for 2.99.
This is only for carving. Design time is free every day.
There are other free software tools like Fusion 360 and F engrave I’d encourage you to check out if you find ours to be too expensive.
Also I want to make it clear Easel is free and we made improvements to it.
Thanks Zach… I feel each parties pain as well.
as I am also Canadian, but other than the vcarving I am happy with the regular Easel. The problem is that many people like myself have bought an xcarve as a an opportunity to subsidize there income and do not use it as there main source of income. I think you have done one hell of a job, I am certain you as well as your great team have put many hours and money into making Easel Pro a reality. Thanks again Zach
$25 a month, ha I wish. I’m in Australia. Trust me it costs more here.
I thank inventables they are a company who need to make money, they offer their tool for free and at some point if they want to keep improving it need to make money.
That’s simple math. Developers cost money if they make none how do they improve. Logic.
But I think you would get more than double the paid members at 10$ a month.
I also feel they needed more features to actually get people to join.
Hi, just want to know if it is (Easel Pro) the response to all those people that were asking to have a vcarve capability in Easel.
Thank god I live in europe.
Let’s do the math here:
$19.99 = 17.21€.
206,52€ anually.
So lucky I do not have to pay $300 here!
…
When this sort of pricing discussion has come up in the past for similar tools there have been a couple of considerations:
Arguably these are two sides of the same argument — perhaps one could address both by:
@RobertMitchell — as Zach noted, there are a number of other software options. The free/opensource ones should be listed at:
and various commercial, and not truly free as in speech or beer options are listed at: Shapeoko CNC Router, Rigid, Accurate, Reliable, and Affordable
And what about exporting g code. Are you considering that carving? Because some of us don’t have WiFi in our shops, so we use universal g code sender. It takes a lot more time to design than to create g code.
I like inventables so I hate to say this but you are 100% correct with this post! I am also Canadian and even if it worked out to 20$ Canadian it is still crazy expensive. And the fact that inventables is marketing this as a tool for businesses is crazy. I don’t see any features that easel has that vcarve doesn’t. In fact vcarve has a large list of things that easel doesn’t have. With the math you’ve done 1 year of easel pretty much pays for a lifetime of vcarve. And even then if your doing this as a business then there is no reason at all on why you shouldn’t be able to invest in a good program. Sorry inventables I will always be a loyal customer for the xcarve but this has lost me. I just hope all of this doesn’t affect me importing gcode. As it’s the only thing I use easel for and enjoy using it that way.
Show me just one company that has a pricing structure like this. There are so many companies with software like this and all are moving toward pricing structures like Inventables is looking at. Just look at Adobe with the introduction of CC. Everything is monthly/annual for their design software. Well over $300 CAD annually, (Which I don’t agree with, gone are the days of flat rate software!). Having a dynamic pricing structure as you suggest is not even feasible in my opinion, way too many logistics and too easy to circumvent.
I for one don’t believe Easel Pro is worth the money they’re ask…YET. But I have no doubt they are furiously working on upgrades as we speak and I’m sure the money they’re asking is going towards this.
Regards…
Creature House Design did such a pricing structure, but w/o the limitation of folks only doing work w/in their country, which as I noted, I misliked, since it facilitated folks competing unfairly.
The following is pure speculation based on nothing but my opinion, which is basically worthless.
I think that the “free days” are nothing more than a marketing strategy to allow people to use Easel PRO, somewhat like a demo version, in order to encourage those people to sign up for the subscription. If Easel PRO turns out to be something of value to those using the “free days” then they will pay.
In this scenario the customer does not have to pay up front for something they want to try to see if they would like to have the service.
Each individual will decide whether or not the service is worth the price and in the long run will vote with their money.
If you are a business and Easel PRO saves you one hour per month then you will have covered the cost of the service.
So, now I have to send a check to Home Depot to pay my monthly subscription for the hammer and screw driver that I “bought” there.
I think the way Inventables handled the whole Easel Pro debacle on the forum was quite inventive lol
thats all I am gunna say 
They way inventables has handled this new product introduction will be a case studied by other online startups as an example of what NOT to do I’m afraid.
I’ll say what I posted on the old forum a few hours before they “archived” it. Inventables started out by appealing to hobbyists and makers and created a machine that fit that budget - lots of us wouldn’t have a CNC if they hadn’t done that. Then they found out that people were starting businesses around little more than the X-Carve, so they decided they wanted a part of that action.
I think things started going wrong with the approach they took from there. They started to brainstorm about what usage could possibly be a business customer and made sure they’d catch all the possible business usage models. The hobby users were considered as the exception left over after all possible business usage was covered. They say that 4 days/month catches the majority of hobby usage, but also makes it clear they’ve decided to error on the side of charging a hobbyist before they’d risk not charging a business user.
I think they should have started from the perspective of the hobbyist and explored the reasonable extent of that, left a margin, then started the fee above that.
There is a business model that has been in play for a long time which seems to benefit both the hobbyist/student and the company producing software as a product.
The company will offer a version of software to the public at a price point (and some these days to a subscription) . Any takers can buy it at that price.
They then offer the product (or portion of the product) to hobbyist for free (educational at a highly reduced price).
The idea behind this is, once familiar with a product a student may go into a profession where they become influential in the purchase of products where they will pick the product that are familiar with.
For the hobbyist - maybe they will move up to a full version which they would not have purchased had they not be able to use the lower function package to get familiar with the product and realize that the full version would be worth the price to therm.
Easel and Easel PRO seem to fit in here somewhere.
Hook 'em, and reel 'em in .
SaaS (Software as a Service) is really where the future of software revenue is. It’s a great model in most cases for vendor and customer.
But by comparison, I pay $50USD per month per Adobe CC license. That is $50 for the full suite of Adobe products:
Creative Cloud Photoshop Lightroom CC Illustrator InDesign Adobe XD CC Adobe Premiere Pro After Effects Dimension Acrobat Pro Dreamweaver Adobe Muse Animate Adobe Audition Lightroom Classic CC Character Animator Adobe Spark Bridge Media Encoder InCopy Prelude Story Plus Fuse (Beta) PhoneGap Build Scout ExtendScript Toolkit Flash Builder
For a little less than half that per month, Easel gives you rudimentary v-carving and free Google fonts. I don’t think anyone really can make a case that a subscription license model is horribly onerous, but compare what you get with Easel Pro to any one Adobe product. It’s nothing but disparate pricing. That’s what makes me feel that Easel Pro should be about $5/month. That’s like $7 Canadian (I’m up here too!)
I think you are on to something here. I would be willing to pay tiered pricing for features that I feel benefit me (e.g. similar to in-app purchases). I don’t believe a vcarve feature is worth the $25/month CAD subscription cost. There is an opportunity to eat cake, step back and do whats right for their loyal fans.
