I have a few questions about your software, bulk pricing, and what services you can provide.
My company operates 48 web forums. Right now we are using modified SOOP Portal for all of our websites. We have a lot of custom features built into the site that would need to be ported over to your software should we choose to go with you. I do have a few questions that need to be answered in a very timely manor. I need to have all of the facts to present to the rest of the partners in the company before the end of the week. We are going to migrate away from SOOP portal and the answers and willingness of the company will be the deciding factor in who we choose to migrate to.
My first question: You list the advanced version at $297.00/License. We currently operate 48 websites (although only 21 are operational right now and the rest will become operational within the next year). There is 100% no way we can justify your current price if we purchased 48 licenses. We can hire a professional development firm to write our own custom forums and website at well below half of this cost with the functionality pretty much the same. You should also take into consideration return business when we need to upgrade our sites to newer versions of your software, monthly support contracts, etc. We need to know what the best deal you can give us is. This figure needs to be the bottom line and the absolute best you can do. We will then compare your price and forum features and functionality to that of quotes we have for custom development and quotes from other forum vendors.
My second question: We have a lot of unique features built into our existing website. One of these features we named "Global Forums" or "Cross Forum Posting". This is essentially a copy of the existing forum code that reads/writes to a different database with only a slightly altered table and code scheme. All 48 websites have this exact same code and are able to see these "global forums" and this allows everyone from all 48 websites to come together and read posts and write posts in these global forums. I need to know if your company provides custom development and what your price for custom development is. We will need a few key features that are used in our current site reprogrammed to work with your portal software. We will also need migration scripts programmed to help migrate from SOOP portal to your portal software.
If you do provide these services I will need a basic quote from you on adding these custom features. This quote will of course affect the bottom line.
My Third Question: Do you provide website/forum customization and design work? If you do please quote us the price for developing a custom design/layout that all 48 sites would use.
If you can not provide any custom programming and or design work then please take into consideration that we will have to outsource all of this out and it will effect the overall cost of migrating to your forum software. I like all of your features and your software does get high ratings, but you are going to certainly have to work with us on the pricing. We are looking forward to building a long term relationship with whatever company it is we choose to do business with.
You may reply in here or send an e-mail to me directly at brian (at) md-poker (dot) com. I would also like to talk to a sales rep and or developer on the phone before I made any kind of final decision.
Thanks,
Brian Clark
President
MDP Enterprises, LLC