Why WASP isn't free
The good
I'm receiving tons of positive feedback about WASP, the community of over 10,000 users is providing great ideas and suggestions which I'm carefully taking into consideration. I'm very proud of this tool. I've spent countless nights and weekends working on it over a period of 18 months.But WASP isn't just the result of this hard work, it's also the culmination of over 20 years of experience ranging from development, system administration, DBA, web development, analytics, and about every aspects of launching a business.
The bad
Over the years I've been known to be very "verbal" about my opinions. I have matured and grown some (a lot!) of gray hair. I think my temper is much better than it was years ago, but when I receive something like this... it hurts:My suggestion is to take WASP extension off your "Free Ressources" (sic) page, or perhaps change the name of that page.I wish I could talk to this person, who knows, maybe he or she will read this and get in touch?
It's a shame you no longer offer a free version that doesn't time-out since it's clearly the crawler that is the power-tool aimed at WDAs. We have a bunch of staff who every now-and-again need to check an Omniture variable or two to help in locating reports, but will never require a crawler.
Oh well, bon chance!
Did you know?
Lots of people think there's a whole business behind WASP. In fact, it's the result of a single person's dedication and passion for web analytics: me! I'm doing a mix of consulting, teaching and developing WASP because I like what I do, working 40, 50, 60 hours a week. I'm a strong advocate of sharing and collaboration. But I'm not stupid either.My take
Here's what comes to mind:- 20 minutes is plenty of time for occasional use and seeing if WASP is useful, clearly, this person wants to use WASP for professional purposes, and he or she is not alone, there's also a 'bunch of staff" using WASP...
- If $49 USD is too much for you, than stick to a manual method, use debuggers and proxies (the license of most of those tools isn't free, btw), or use the free Omniture JavaScript debugger
- WASP ROI is pretty straightforward: save time, eliminate non-value added activities, increase your knowledge. And that person tells me it's not worth 49$!? The crawler including in WASP Pro, at $499, is a tiny fraction of the cost of alternative solutions...
I'm not selling a software, I'm selling my knowledge.If you use WASP and find it useful, please consider purchasing a license!
3 comments:
well said Mr. Hamel. Always surprised at what people want for free. You have put an amazing product out there, no reason for people to not pay. Have you considered getting rid of the free version?
I do not understand why some folks are still grumbling that WASP is no longer free. It looks like that they are living on an other planet.
In a market economy, there's nothing free. Google is giving you Google Analytics for free because you're giving back your web site data, so that Google is now going to make millions of profits by selling behavorial targeting. You're getting a free newspaper in the subway, because you're giving back your time and attention, so that newspapers can sell advertising.
We have all been very fortunate to benefit from Stephane's tremendous expertise and knowledge for NOTHING during 2 years,and we should all be thankful to Stephane for this.
Now, it's time to stop complaining and to go back to reality.
In the traditional software model, you're getting a 30-day trial and that's it. If you're not paying the license, then you're out and you have to go look for something else.
Even if Stephane has switched to the paid model, he is still kind enough to let us use his tool for NOTHING during 20 minutes, which is a lot of time if you need to perform some basic tasks.
Let's say that the average Web analyst earns 4 000 dollars per month (50 K$ a year). Then the hourly cost for a web analyst is about $25 (extra employer and social charges may apply depending on the country). Consequently, a WASP license is worth 2 hours of a web analyst's time.
If some people do not think that WASP is worth 2 hours of their time, that's totally their right. But, in this case, they should move on and look somewhere else instead of disturbing Stephane with shameful Emails.
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