Alright, for a while now I've been trying to figure out a good way for us to offer our products to small software development teams at a price they can afford.  I think this past weekend, with a little help from friends at The Business of Software, I've finally come up with a good solution to the pricing problem for small software development and test teams.

The bulk of our revenue comes from larger teams of 20, 50 or 100 team members, but often times the small software teams of 5 or 6 people have really tight budgets to work with.  The OnTime 2005 Mixed Mode licenses for 5 users normally runs at about $1,000 and add to that the new OnTime 2005 Customer Portal and bam, you're already talking about a $1,500 purchase for a 5-member team.  This pricing is actually extremely competitive and in some cases costs thousands less than our competition, however, when it comes to small teams, they often don't care.  They either make due without expensive software or they think writing their own is cheaper than buying a $1,500 product.

So tomorrow, we are releasing the OnTime 2005 Small Team Edition. This product is essentially the same as the OnTime 2005 standard product and includes the most attractive, “mixed-mode” license as well as the OnTime 2005 Customer Portal.  The cost?  Only $395 for up to 5 users and $895 for up to 10 users.

So if all the features and functionality of the OnTime product is in the OnTime 2005 Small Team Edition, then what's the catch? There is a catch.  The OnTime 2005 Small Team Edition can not be expanded beyond 10 users (at least not without first upgrading it to a standard version of OnTime). I suspect that many small teams will find this new pricing for the OnTime Small Team Edition very attractive.  We'll have to wait and see.