Is msmac3D an annual maintenance/subscription?

[MSI]

Q:(email) Is msmac3D an annual maintenance/subscription?

A: Our pricing quote is for the first year license includes first year annual maintenance/subscription and which means we provide our users each and every update, extension, corrections, enhancement are included.

• Sept 2020: see new info below for new pricing information, etc.

• After a year we do require an annual renewal/maintenance fee to support our continuing research and development of all improvements, extensions, refinements, updates, corrections and enhancements.
  This is mainly so we as a company are not only driven by new sales.
  We will not come out with new products or new versions and try to make you upgrade. We believe in providing all our users with the latest and greatest technologies.

Some software companies claim “no annual maintenance” and then never update or enhance the product and either rename it or change the version number or drop the product support.

• Any of those ways essentially hiding the fact that their users need to pay annually to keep current (aka maintenance) or work with older unsupported programs.

We want to be up front and honest about our belief that it is important that all scientific crash reconstruction and simulation software users immediately have access to any and all improvements, updates, enhancements, extensions and/or corrections.
We also do not want to waste your time or our time trying to support multiple older versions of our product.

• The folks who don’t charge maintence fees no doubt will have as their first question when you call for support ‘what version are you using’ and then say ‘oh that is in the upgrade’ which will then cost you $1000 to $3000 or more to ‘upgrade’.

• For a comparison, see what some others software vendors in the AR field charge for updates/renewals:
  • Engineering Dynamics (EDC) with their HVE) charge $2000-$6000 per year for their annual renewal and
    • EDC advertise 30+ year old McHenry enhancements and extensions as "Advanced"
    • So recognize it is an advertisement that for advancements in simulation technology come to McHenry Software!
  • PC-CRASH, which is a momentum based collision program, hide their renewal fee in annual updates that cost $750-$1000 (think about it, if you are using an older version in litigation against someone with a newer version, who will prevail? What will you HAVE to do? UPDATE of course! So why not simply call it an annual renewal fee?)
  • Other software vendors ‘never charge an update fee’ however they then change the name/verison of the program and don’t support/update or simply drop the program
• msmac3D and msmac2D will be the main two products we sell and market. No new and improved products to make you buy something new.
• Each and every update, enhancement and extension, both of the simulation and the graphics will be included in the active license fee.

We will only ever charge $1000 per year annual maintenance ($800 if paid within 30 days of renewal date) after the first year. We are considering allowing monthly or quarterly maintenance payments to spread the cost over the year (and again maintenance fees do not start until after the first year)

Hope that answers your question and you understand why we believe it is important to have annual maintenance fees.
Thank you for your interest in McHenry Software.
Please let us know if you have any additional questions.

The following link also covers the topic and was from a question posted a few years ago:

• How much will 1-year msmac3D licensing be and will you still have mSMAC2D as a product?

Please let us know if you have any additional questions or would like further clarification

[MSI]

Here's an example of the 'annual update fee' for Pc-Crash.

• If you are faced with an opponent, would you DARE use an older version of the software and wonder/worry whether the results remain the same?
• each of the updates have come out approximately annually.
• NOTE: other vendors like Engineering Dynamics and Virtual Crash, do not post up their pricing (for version changes, etc) or renewal/maintenance costs. All pricing posted is based on amounts quoted from existing/former users.

pc-crash pricing aug 2020.jpg (45.6 KiB) Viewed 287 times

[MSI]

Aug 2020: We are considering new Pricing:

• A fixed annual license/maintenance fee of $1200 to $1500 per year for the first 3 or 4 years
• Then the annual license/maintenance would drop to $1000 per year ($800 per year if paid in 30 days of renewal date)
• This would be a pay over time option.

We expect an announcement on this in early September 2020.

• Main point of new pricing is:
  • we want all users to stay for many years.
  • we want all users to have and use the latest version/technologies/science.
  • we do not want to have to support older versions.
  • we want to mainly support existing users and not desperately need to seek NEW SALES all the time.

Please also let us know if you have any additional questions and check out our FAQ