I’m considering a change to Liberation’s pricing structure to make it more affordable for beginners and offer a more gradual path as you upgrade.
A reminder of the current pricing :
Hobbyist
Professional
Unlimited
Price*
£20 / €25 / $25
£40 / €45 / $50
£80 / €90 / $100
Lasers
2
8
Unlimited
DMX
2
8
Unlimited
Machines
1
2
3
What I’m thinking:
The current £20/$25 tier would be upgraded from 2 lasers to 4 lasers and 1 additional machine authorisation.
A new, cheaper Hobby tier would be introduced: £10/$15 for 2 lasers but no DMX capability.
Anyone on the current Hobbyist tier would be automatically upgraded to Pro 4 at no extra cost.
Here’s the proposed new structure:
Hobby
Pro 4
Pro 8
Unlimited
Price*
£10 / €15 / $15
£20 / €25 / $25
£40 / €45 / $50
£80 / €90 / $100
Lasers
2
4
8
Unlimited
DMX
0
4
8
Unlimited
Machines
1
2
2
3
One-to-one
✗
✗
✓
✓
*Prices exclude local sales tax.
I’ll be honest - this is a bit of a risk for me. I could take quite a financial hit, especially if lots of you downgrade! But I believe making it more accessible is the right thing for the long run, so I’m seriously considering it.
[UPDATE] the new Pro 4 tier will initially only have 1 machine to authorise, although I may change this in future.
I’d love your input:
It’s a great idea – do it!
Don’t do it!
I have no strong opinion either way
0voters
If you’re currently on Hobbyist or Professional, could you also answer this poll so I know what to expect?
I’m currently Hobbyist and I would stay with Pro 4
I’m currently Hobbyist and would downgrade to new Hobby tier
I’m currently Professional and would stay with Pro 8
I’m currently Professional and would downgrade to Pro 4
0voters
Any questions or concerns? Feel free to PM me if you’d rather chat privately.
Purely from financial point of view I would downgrade and that’s how I answered to the poll, but probably in reality will not downgrade cause I love the software just too damn much and oh, the 1-to-1 is actually a very nice thing I would then lose. You’re such a nice fellow I would miss those calls instantly.
Anyhows I think the new tiers do make a lot of sense for new users. Pretty sure there are quite a bit of 4 laser users out there who don’t have a large budget and/or a ton of gigs. Based on nothing really haha. I should sleep more.
The newly proposed Hobby tier perfectly matches my hobbyist use-case.
I’ve been thinking about temporarilly unsubscribing when I’m into other hobbies for a longer periods of time. In the new pricing structure I would subscribe to the Hobby tier permanently and upgrade to pro 4 when I’d go lasering at a party.
Like Patrick I had also considered unsubscribing between big events but would retain hobbyist all year for a reduced price instead to support the project.
I’m a 4 laser hobbyist who has been paying for professional. I don’t do paid shows, I just use it for in-house (my actual house) shows. I got interested in watching the light guys do lasers at shows in Colorado and I was doing stuff with DMX lights in LightJams so I got a starter set of lasers and have been learning my way around. (Thanks to Seb and everyone else for helping me sort out what needs to be done to get things working, ILDA is a very different beast than DMX.)
While don’t see myself adding more or needing more lasers at the moment, I do use quite a few DMX fixtures, right now in LightJams and I’d like to learn how to migrate those to Liberation so that I can use the APC controller to play with them. That said, 4 or even 8 DMX fixtures seems a little slim, given how many DMX devices I have vs. lasers. I’d appreciate the numbers doubling for each tier, but perhaps I can simply have half of them on the same address to work around the limitation. I started in lighting with DMX devices (to play a video game called Pulsar), so I have ~32 of them, for context. Perhaps I leave this workload in LightJams for now. That license was ~$125 perpetual for comparison. (It doesn’t do anything as cool as Liberation does with ILDA lasers and it’s focus is DMX.)
I really do appreciate you making the 4 laser tier, because at ~1k a laser, it will be some time until I can upgrade all of my lasers to the better units from the stuff I started with from shehds. (I have 1 unity laser, and 3 shesds lasers.) Once I upgrade all 3 of the lower end lasers, I’ll start buying more, but the Pro4 tier may cause me to just stick with 4, tbh. In any case, this will allow me to not discontinue or cancel, as for a home user, this is one of my larger “entertainment” expenses and with this economy being all chaotic, I’m going to have to start cutting stuff somewhere. I also think that more people will be buying the pro4 tier which should make up for those of us who downgrade.
We have 6 lasers (4x 10W, 2x 5W) but only 4 DACs (2x Helios + 2x Etherdream) and really only use 3 beamers most of the time. Current schedule is 1-3 events per month… I’d happily take the pro 4 “downgrade”.
I like the idea. It benefits my current setup more accurately. I’m having minor growth issues with acquiring more lasers and the storage, cabling and logistics part of the trade. Had you not done this, I would have suggested maybe allowing pro users to convert unused laser outputs to Dmx outputs, so we get max value from the license. This is perfect.
I have a few thoughts…
For me personally - I would initially downgrade to the Pro 4, but will likely go back up to the Pro 8 this summer assuming a couple of opportunities to work with more lasers play out. I have 3 lasers and over the winter/spring am averaging 1-2 gigs a month, so the license fee is a big chunk of what I’m charging and reducing that makes a real impact for me.
Additionally I’m working with one particular producer/collective that is looking at investing into their own setup so they can have lasers at all their events even after I leave the area. They will likely end up with 2-3 units that they would only use for themselves 0-1 times a month in the winter and 1-2 times a month in the summer, so the Pro 4 tier would be much more palatable for them.
Finally in anecdotal conversations I’ve had with other laserists & LD’s that are not familiar with Liberation, they invariably compare it to QuickShow and Beyond, which like it or not is your “competitor”…Beyond has both a monthly (expensive) license or a lifetime (even more expensive) license. I have heard a couple people swear off software they can’t “buy once cry once,” and I’ve also heard a couple people do the math on the current monthly tiers and say that’s hard to swallow to try out for a year if they’re already invested in the Pangolin ecosystem.
All of which is to say yes I think this is a good move, you may lose revenue from some existing folks but I think it will get the barriers to entry lower and make up for it in acquiring new users.
I am currently on Professional and would stay on Pro 8. I have several friends who are former subscribers that are still playing with the demo without output. I think at least 3 of them would resubscribe on the new Hobby plan and upgrade/downgrade between that and Pro 4 as needed. I think this is a good idea to grow the active user base.
I’m with Pro, but struggling to afford, so likely going to downgrade to a $25 option either way. This would allow me to still use 4 lasers, and upgrade if I ever get a gig with more.
I’m currently hobbyist 25Eur. and will continue with new pro 4 for same price to support this project. I think new pricing idea will be good opportunity for new users to try this software and for those who are already use it will be more flexibility how to do that… without unsubscribing.
I’m currently on the Pro plan and would stick with Pro 8 even though the Hobbyist tier, as it stands today, meets my needs as a way to support you and Liberation’s continued development. The amount of info I’ve learned from the forums, you responding to my many, many surely annoying noob emails, the active community and the need for another laser software compatible with Mac alone are enough for me to justify the Pro plan.
I was hesitant when I first signed up because of the pricing model and I have a few friends in the same boat so a lower cost entry tier seems like a no brainer to grow the community/userbase.
Was at 25$ level but opted out as couldn’t justify cost of subscription and new interface, (I have FB4) and needed Capture connection. Would get back on at 15$ and maybe Pro4 when needed when Capture connection est. Great Software!
I really like this. As a hobbyist, the $25 a month wasn’t worth it to learn / test the system with output, especially since I already have (2) FB4 and QS.
But at $15, I think that’s great, and I personally don’t need DMX in Liberation (as you know I have a whole other specific system for that).
So I think this is really cool.
And my 2 cents? I do not think this hurts you, as long as you get the word out that LBN exists and people can try / use it for such a low entry cost.
Thanks once again everyone for your feedback, I’ve now implemented this change. For those of you on the Hobby tier, you’ve been automatically upgraded to Pro 4. To make the change happen, just run Liberation while connected to the internet.
Please can you let me know if you find any weirdness with the website or things that I may have broken!
Maybe this is controversial, but I feel like 1 computer is very restrictive.
2 computer installs should be IMO the bare minimum - I personally prepare my show offline on my desktop, but then I will be unable to have Liberation on my laptop for use elsewhere (even inside my home downstairs).
Maybe Pro 4 can have 2 installs just like Pro 8?
Personally upgraded to Pro 4 from Hobby, I can’t wait to test DMX
