I’m in the privileged position that my business is successful enough for the price to not be an issue, however I do still object to the methods utilised by DxO to increase the average sale per customer.
From a business perspective I feel it does not engender trust and empathy with a brand (from a user’s point of view), causing some current users to look elsewhere and those on the outside (prospective customers) to be confused by the pricing structure.
But this thread topic is a recurring theme. It’s not my business and as long as DxO has enough people paying them money I’m sure they will continue in this vein. My concern is that should it back-fire on them, they won’t be able to pivot quickly enough and have enough loyal users left to continue (I’m saying this from the point of view that I love PL and I do wish for it to be around and in active development for a long time to come).
Or make those who are waiting to know if they abandon ship or not, to come back.
As @Joanna said, in the end this is not really a matter of few euros (*), but I would say a matter of respect. Are we seen as fools ?
DxO should at least not have communicate for months ! on this as a function of photolab (which is not).
And OF COURSE not have put this greyed not usable button in front of the nose of those who do not want filmpack.
But, hey, photolab users asked for this function; not filmpack users, isn’t it ?
Never seen a company dare to do things like that. I’m fed up with all these twisted attitudes (it’s not the first time they’ve played this kind of game).
(*) ok it depends. Other tools are needed to get a real “end to end” - as DxO says in its ads - solution, so in the end it coasts lot more than photolab price to use photolab.
how many users needs to buy DxO product every year to support one FTE ( in France ) ?
I say no less than ~1000 users per FTE ( assuming salary, benefits, taxes, various business expenses per head, etc ) per head in France ( more if it is somebody in a senior role that DxO can’t afford to leave - there I say ~2000-3000 users to keep ) … what is the size of DxO ? clearly >> 10 and I think less than 100 ? so how many users DxO needs to live ? they are clearly not Adobe, so they don’t have a million+ of them and they clearly can’t survive on <= 10K users … so I think they have high tens of thousand users … that need to buy a new product every year
[quote=“platypus, post:14, topic:37176, full:true”]
I feel I have to cite the following again:
Make your choice Pay your price …and stop complaining.
[/q]
These two quotes pretty well sum up my feelings about this subject. DxO has a perfect right to choose which features go into which product and the pricing of each product that will best meet THEIR needs. It is the potential customers’ responsibility to decide which(if any) of these products to buy, not to bitterly complain about these policies
I get the distinct impression that some of you(not all) just love to bash DxO(for whatever reason) or you simply want more for less. I personally would like to see DxO succeed and take over the #1 spot for the photo-finishing product market. Yes, the entire Photolab suite is quite expensive, but look what it is capable of doing for your pictures(and if you didn’t think your photos didn’t benefit, then you wouldn’t be here). I myself bought all 5 DxO products(PL 7+VP 4+NC 6 +FP 7+PR 3) . I had no need for PR 3 but bought it just because it is a very cool program. The other 4 I use extensively almost every day. so the bottom line is: If you think that a product is worth it’s price then buy it, otherwise don’t but there is no need to complain.
This has been an interesting thread to read and reflects many of my thoughts. PL and Nik have been my tools of choice for RAW photo processing for the last 6+ years predating Photo Lab in fact. I stopped my subscription to Adobe 3 years ago, however, unless DxO comes up with something special in PL8 and Nik7 I’ll stick with what I’ve got and spend my money elsewhere and gradually migrate I guess, just like I did with Adobe to DxO.
I do sense desperation with the number of “buy XXX” and get this free training worth $YYY and I question why the company cannot just offer the product with the price of the product minus the cost of the training; I think I know why.
I shall reserve judgement until PL8/Nik7 come out when my upgrade from PL6/Nik5 remains at below full price. I would argue that the company needs to reduce their costs (management, marketing and software team size I guess) and maintain what they’ve got better resulting in a maintenance fee of perhaps 10-20% of current purchase price. Also consolidate the product range into maybe 3 products.
coming up w/ something special does not work … there are very limited amount something special stuff to come up with every version … DxO needs to move to subscription model, wrap everything that matters into DxP PL plus have a separate plug-in suite for PS which combines Nik, VP, FP and have PureRaw for those who want to drone on autopilot - and be done ( 3 products : full everything included in one app PL + plugin suite that includes all from (Nik, VP, FP) for PS and alike users + PR, → subscription payments, → no more BS )…
I also would like to see DxO succeed, and this is why I have been supporting them for years.
It’s not a matter of complaining, but I’m afraid that their shady marketing tactics, as demonstrated with the artificial integration of Luminosity Masks in FilmPack instead of the core PL as it should logically be (Of course, feel free to correct me if there is a reason for this) to force buying a 129€ add on to get the full functionalities, will prevent customers from supporting them anymore.
I sincerely hope they will hear this alert and stop those unfair practices.
Yes, as far as resentment is concerned, that’s exactly how I see it
NO more upgrades for barely recognizable improvements. I had already commented on this with the NIK tools. Actually, it’s still what Nikon designed “20 years” ago…
You can complain as much as you want. No one is stopping you. To me it seems like all this complaining is just a fruitless waste of time and effort, but it is your time, not mine.
I realized the other day that you can’t even flip an image inside of Photolab without owning Viewpoint, which is absolutely ridiculous. I think it’s time to switch to Lightroom.
