Updated status, prices for Goplan 2

Fred Oliveira on April 22, 2009, Comments (27)

Goplan 2 is now just around the corner. We’re adding the final bits of polish and wiping out the last few bugs, but the product as a whole is done. We’re happy about the feedback we’ve been getting and the excitement that people feel about it being close to release. It makes sense - since we’re about to relaunch the product - to talk about how this will affect paying customers. We have good news.

A little background

There are a whole lot of solutions out there for people who are looking for hassle-free online project management. In fact, since we first started on Goplan (the first version) this market has clearly become saturated with products that do what we are doing too. That is a fact, and there’s no denying it. However, we also believe we do some things better than the rest. One of the reasons why we decided to launch Goplan 2 as a full rewrite was to make that difference stand out.

gp2

That being said, differences must not come only in functionality (although as I’m sure you’ve seen on our GP2 previews, that counts too) but in pricing. We’ve been wondering about the escalating prices for online apps for a while. We won’t name names because it wouldn’t be useful, but there are a few products out there (not necessarily project management apps) that are way too expensive for what they provide and their real cost of operation.

Anyway, enough critic and on to the real stuff. We’re bringing prices down quite a bit. In fact, we’re simplifying by cutting one of our existing plans and adjusting the features/limits for all the others. Here’s how our plans look right now.

Old plans versus the new plans

Here’s the current Goplan:

  • Personal ($10/mn): 12 projects, 8 users, 300mb of file storage
  • Startup ($20/mn): 30 projects, unlimited users, 1.5gb of file storage
  • Professional ($50/mn): 100 projects, unlimited users, 6gb of file storage
  • Unimited ($100/mn): unlimited projects, unlimited users, 25gb of file storage

We actually like these prices, but they have one striking problem - user numbers. This is possibly the one thing that most dramatically differentiates large companies from smaller ones. So it makes sense to bring prices down and scale the plans based on company size. That’s what we did. Here are the new plans (the Personal plan is gone, because we brought the startup price down and features up):

  • Startup ($10/mn): 15 projects, 5 users, 15 external collaborators, 10gb of storage
  • Professional ($35/mn): 40 projects, unlimited users/collaborators, 25gb of storage
  • Unlimited ($80/mn): Everything is unlimited

This makes us even happier. We always wanted to bring all prices down dramatically, and that’s what we’re doing. We hope you’re happy about this too.

Upgrading to Goplan 2

One other thing people have been asking is how we’ll do the upgrade between people and companies who have a Goplan 1 account, into a Goplan 2 account. If you had a Personal or Startup account on GP1, you will be upgraded to the new Goplan 2 Startup plan, which at worst gives you more bang for less buck. If you had a Professional or Unlimited account, you’ll be upgraded to the new Professional and Unlimited accounts, which bring prices down and also pack more features.

The move between Goplan 1 and Goplan 2 will be gradual - this is a complicated move, and we won’t risk your data by doing it automatically for everyone. Come launch, we’ll have Goplan 1 and 2 running side by side, upgrading accounts on a case by case basis. You’ll be able to request the move for your account, and the process shouldn’t take long (our estimate is that with the exception of very large accounts, the migration takes only a few minutes, and you’re ready to go).

We’ll do a post on launch explaining the move, and as always we’ll be available both over email and phone if you have questions or need help. We’re also looking forward to your comments on these plans and updates. Thanks!

Comments:

Great pricing structure. Love it. Will there still be a free trial account?

With all that storage now available, will you be adding the ability to use GoPlan as a Subversion repository? Having this feature would be amazing and would surely steal all of Basecamps customers who also use Beanstalk or other such repositories.

The price changes look great, but what abilities do external collaborators have? How are they different to normal users? :)

You didn’t think the “Everything is unlimited” thing through… How could you offer unlimited hard drive space.

I’m so ready for this to change my (work) life

We did think it through, Chris. There will be an acceptable use policy, but cloud storage is cheap these days - we don’t believe imposing a limit is necessary. Naturally we won’t allow hosting of illegal material, but if your project generates terabytes of data and you’re willing to manage it through Goplan, we’ll accommodate it if you’re in the unlimited plan.

Michael: External collaborators are people who aren’t necessarily in your company but that need to have access to one or more projects. Lets say you’re working on an application development project with your company and you decide to bring someone in to help you on just that project - that would be an external collaborator.

Fred,
Thanks for the reply and clearing that up. Sounds like a great idea and a nice way of undoing the limit of the number of users. :)

Yeah, I’ve had to create some customer profiles that limit their access… I guess they’ll be collaborators on GP2, which makes much sense since we run the show and they should only watch…

By they way when upgrading from GP1 to GP2, will “requesting the move for your account” be a fully automated process or will a human interaction be needed on your part?

Thanks!

Fred wrote: “If you had a Personal or Startup account on GP1, you will be upgraded to the new Goplan 2 Startup plan, which at worst gives you more bang for less buck.”

Actually, in my case, it means less bang for less buck — or about the same bang for more buck. I may not be a typical user, but 15 projects is way too little for me. The 30 projects from the old Startup plan are about right for my needs (50 would be even better). I will have to upgrade to the Professional plan solely because of the smaller number of projects in the new Startup plan. Storage and number of users/collaborators are less important for me.

I can’t imagine my situation is all that uncommon. I’m a self-employed graphic designer, doing lots of small projects. I would occasionally like to give a client access to Goplan. My ideal plan would be: 50 projects, 1 user, 25 external collaborators, 10gb of storage, for something like $20. How about it?

Will there still be a Free plan?

this sounds excellent! :D
and i really dig the look of the new logo.

as a sidenote: i have to agree with sander:
you really should consider to raise the number of projects
how about:
startup 25
professional 50
would be cool to see that webreakstuff is listening… ;)

rock on!

I think adding a Subversion Repository to your site would be the killer feature. Is this a possibility?

Im so stoked to see this bad boy launch to play with it in free mode for a bit. I really do believe this product will bring me over from another provider that we won’t mention ;).

Gus: Yes, there will still be a free plan. I forgot to mention it on my post, but we’ll allow 3 projects, 2 users and 2 external users (100mb of storage) for free.

Sander, Freemind: I should clarify that the project limit never takes archived projects into consideration. What this means is that the limit we impose (of 15 projects for startup, 40 for professional) is for projects running at the same time. You can archive projects at will and they will not count towards your usage limit.

The rationale behind this is that since we brought the prices down considerably, a company that has 15 projects running at the same time is probably using Goplan to an extent that warrants paying $10. I think this is fair, but we’ll definitely adjust if people still believe this is way too tight.

Thanks for your comments, guys. You rock.

Nice… I also think its a fair pricing scheme… Having more than 15 projects live at one time can only mean you must be making some money at least…

Fred, when upgrading from GP1 to GP2, will “requesting the move for your account” be a fully automated process?

Can’t wait for “just around the corner”! This week?

Having a more precise timing is really important since it is a paid product, the “roadmap” link on the website is a dead one and in this blog in october you were talking about a planned release in january. i really appreciate your product and the screenshots showing upcoming features - you guys rock - but “just around the corner”, “shortly” etc. are timings you can’t communicate towards clients. it’s not about getting online as fast as possible, but about knowing when it will happen. in my case i announced the system to several clients and i can’t tell them when they’ll be able to use it. (i don’t want to show them GP1 when GP2 is coming shortly after i told them how to use the tool)

greets to all of you - and go plan the release ;-)

I have to agree with Chris. I’ve been researching new project management services for our company and have told them that GoPlan 2 looks like it has the potential to be our perfect service, but I can’t ask them to wait without any real idea of when it’s coming.

I also agree with Chris & Richard. I have several projects starting, and I really want to take advantage of the new interface and features, but don’t want to make my clients have to learn a new interface mid-project.

Managing expectations with a more defined timetable would go a long way.

Hope the GP2 launch plans are shaping up.

Come on guys, lets have a release date. Your pretty much done so planning a date now should be much easier and accurate than it would have been a few months ago. I just want to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I’ve been researching PM systems for over a year and decided on Go Plan 2 many months ago. I refuse to use anything else until it launches.

We NEED the release dates! @Adam and @Chris are absolutely right.

Not to be rude, but we’ve been hearing “just around the corner” for months now - even a rough timetable is really helpful to your customers. :)

Put another way: A release date at this point is BETTER than just releasing it with little or no no warning, whenever that may be. I thought the latest “just around the corner” meant a matter of days, but it’s been almost a week since the last update…

I totally agree! Please tell us the release date. I´m just another user who is waiting for a while now and I have to know, if can use GOPLAN for my next project or not.

But don´t get me wrong, you guys are doing a great job!

Guys, guys. When we said “around the corner” we did mean “around the corner” ;-) That means within a few days. We don’t want to commit to “friday” or “monday” because we want to make sure that when we do launch we’ll be able to migrate everyone over. Rest assured it will not go past the first two weeks of May. We’ll update this post as soon as we’re absolutely, totally positive about a date.

Thank you… May 15th it is for me then. The sooner the better, but that is the date I’ll tell my customers we’ll be giving them access to a new way of auditing our progress via our Goplan proyect website.

any word on a iphone app following this new GPv2?

That’s what we’re saying - a few days has come and gone (it’s been 6 since the last post). ;) Is May 15th a more or less solid release date?

http://twitter.com/goplan/statuses/1651150341

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