I was having a good discussion recently with an old friend of mine regarding a software project I’m working on in my spare time. It’s purely at the concept/planning stage - I think I have the basic idea mapped out, but collecting features, and in this process, my friend has a clear idea of what I’m going for. It’s software aimed, primarily, at the church/ministry market. In many cases, my target market will have a limited budget, and have lots of audio/video equipment to purchase.
In the conversation, he indicates in the direction of other “church-focused” applications, though not in the same market - MediaShout, for one. “Look! They charge $400! You could still charge $300 and be competitive!” (I’m paraphrasing, but you get the idea)
I had thought about that, and looked at some other software out there - Final Cut Pro, Adobe applications, even MS Office - which all fall into a similar “vertical” class (though for different markets/purposes). I pondered over this, asking myself how much I think the support costs will be, and what it will take to recoup costs of working on this, as opposed to freelance work.
But, really, for the feature set I’m planning, I don’t think I could do it. First of all, I don’t have the same number of features as some of those other applications, and MediaShout isn’t even worth the $400 they charge. How could I justify that cost? I’m still mulling over it, but this is clearly something that I feel strongly about, and will continue to debate - even if not that much, where can I price it?
It’s evident that even companies like Panic struggle with this; I still have a lot of development to do, so things could change before I really have to decide.