Now Google Calendars, videos and images are pay-to-play?
Please correct me if I am wrong, but it would now appear that using the Google Calendar widget, slideshows, video playback and other widgets - all of which were formerly $0 - are now only available in the paid-tiers of service? And only for 3, 11, or 70 screens per tier, or $9, $8, or $7 per screen at each tier?
A company like mine, a nonprofit, that has invested years in RISE - now has dozens of players out there, all around the nation using these capabilities. ACS will really, REALLY be kicked in the teeth if come renewal time none of my screens do what I need them to do unless I cough up a few grand I didn't budget for.
I elected to use your software based on the services you provided, and at a cost that was stated up-front. This would be like me purchasing a car, and then having the manufacturer lock me out of going faster than 35 mph unless I pay them an additional $5,000 - 3 years after I bought it.
I have to keep coming back here and re-editing my post to take the venom out of it, but it's hard. This will take a lot to fix on our end.
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Official comment
Dan,
Thanks for the feedback. I manage the team that is responsible for reviewing and making our pricing decisions and wanted to personally reply to your concerns.
First let me address your specific question about having to pay for using the Google Calendar widget, slideshows, video playback and other widgets. The short answer is yes you will have to pay if using Google Calendar or our unlimited Storage to do image or video slideshows. We still have our Free offering that allows you to host your own images for videos and use our entire content management system to run your multi-display network for Free. We feel this is still a very robust set of functionality that we offer for Free.
As for your comparison of us to ransomware. I have to respectfully and strongly disagree. You have choices, we aren’t holding anything hostage. You have a choice to use our Free offering as described above. You have a choice to use our paid services for a very competitive price. And most importantly you have a choice to not use Rise. We don’t hold our users to any long term contracts and services can be cancelled at anytime.
We offer a comprehensive product for a very competitive price. To continue to do this we are always reviewing and evaluating how we can keep our services at the most competitive price point for our users. As part of this most recent review we made the choice to continue to simplify our pricing, move to per display pricing, and include all our paid functionality across all paid plans. We also made the choice to move some of our free content into paid plans as well. With that said we are now focusing on how we can add more functionality and value to our paid plans.
Again, thanks for the feedback. We are continuously learning from our feedback loop with users to make better product, pricing, etc.
We are happy to talk one-on-one to go through your specific account, the impact of the changes, and help in anyway we can.
Brian
Comment actions -
Brian, I respectfully disagree with your respectful disagreement.
How - and be specific - is this any different from the car-scenario I've presented above? We signed up for a product that had XYZ capability. Years down the road, that capability is killed and only made available with additional payment. Its not like RISE added anything new to the video or calendar widget. They're exactly the same as before. So how - and again, be specific - is RISE not holding the calendar widget (for example) hostage here? Something that was previously free and widely used? -
Dan, well said. I just wanted to add something. It would be great to see some major requested (and promised!) improvements for the system. How about that White Labeling for the PRO players? I hate to be the one who recruits new customers for RV and also pays for that. I lost some smart-ass clients as soon as they learned what RV was, and decided to do it on their own. Now I am testing a new similar system that lets your own branding for paid customers. It is only fair.
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