Comments on: First Look: Daylite Touch

By: iPhone App Roundup: Corporate Use

iPhone App Roundup: Corporate Use — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 16:35:00 +0000

[...] Marketcircle released this app last week. For more information about Daylite Touch, please read my First Look [...]

By: It’s the Dawn of a New Daylite

It’s the Dawn of a New Daylite — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:01:38 +0000

[...] written about Daylite Touch before — back in January. The big news is that Daylite Touch is now available in the Apple App [...]

By: Daylite Productivity Suite | M Group Daylite | M Group

Daylite Productivity Suite | M Group Daylite | M Group — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 16:11:53 +0000

[...] your Daylite information with you on the iPhone. I have written about Daylite Touch before here and here. When Daylite Touch launches, I will write a complete review of it on [...]

By: Scott

Scott — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 23:16:01 +0000

Rumor:
“The iPhone is likely to get a premium App Store if rumors from Wired are true…
They put the $20 price point as the barrier for entry into the new “velvet rope area” premium App Store.”

There you go.

By: Rich

Rich — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 15:38:50 +0000

“Nothing of value is ever free or $0.99″ That’s a very old-school mindset and I don’t know if it will serve you very well in the App Store. If it was a standalone, non-ad supported app, I could see your point. However, seeing as it requires a regular Daylite license, one could reasonably assume that you would use the app to drive sales of the desktop and server products to a new market.

Demand in the App Store has been shown to be highly elastic. By charging somewhere between $30 and $99 in the App Store, for an App that would require someone to buy another piece or two of software, you are probably limiting your realistic market exposure to persons who already own Daylite – a $30+ app is unlikely to prompt people to check out the regular program – they will simply dismiss it. At a $189 entry point for Daylite (and possibly more for the server) you have significant barriers to adoption on both sides of your equation.

Moreover, people who have already invested $189 per seat indicate here that they will not pay that much more for the iPhone app – so your conversion rate (already limited to the subset of Daylite users who also one an iPhone or iTouch) may not be very high. I suppose you could respond to that by just raising the price for those who are on the largely inelastic side of your customer base and will pay anything for the app, but that seems to drive your sales in the wrong direction.

If you make Daylite Touch or a lite version of it free, but unable to sync, send or share data until you upgrade or buy the desktop version of Daylite, you might find that it would hook users and drive your sales revenues far beyond what you would get from selling a relatively pricey app to a subset of your existing customer base.

By: AJ

AJ — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:36:41 +0000

@Jessica – I forgot to mention – it is a companion app that synchronizes over the air with the upcoming Daylite Server. It is not a standalone app. So you can get your data out so to speak. You can even schedule meetings from the phone while offline (you can’t even do that with Exchange, MobileMe or anything else!).

By: AJ

AJ — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:33:17 +0000

@Jessica – if we had to sell Daylite at $0.99 or even $29.99, we simply wouldn’t have built it. We simply can’t recoup the investment (exactly one year in development with a number of engineers) at those types of price points. If you don’t like the price (when we come out with it), you can always use Daylite with MobileMe via SyncServices (remember you pay Apple $99 per year for that). Nothing of value is ever free or $0.99.

By: Jessica

Jessica — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:19:20 +0000

I love working with Daylite and I’m never without my iPhone, but I’d rather switch to iCal or work with Entourage again than have to pay $99 to get an application on my phone. I already purchased Daylite, and the iPhone and my Mac, I think that Daylite should either include this application in the packaged deal or price it at 99 cents like the rest of the apps. I know I’d be telling all of my friends about it and fellow business owners and I can’t think of one of them who would be willing to pay $99 for something they can have that is slightly better than what’s already there. I can get Daylite on my iPhone, I just can’t get it to put the data I input onto my computer. I suppose I can just do that by hand. Sounds like a promising app…the price is far too high for me though!

By: Greg

Greg — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 22:59:05 +0000

I have been using Daylite since version one. Marketcircle has been great about adding features to this product over the years. I have saved thousands of hours on the email (DMI solution) integration alone. The Daylite Touch app might not be perfect right out of the gate and the price won’t be perfect either. One thing I do know is Marketcircle and AJ will continue to make this a great product, as they have done with Daylite. I wouldn’t wait to start using Daylite, the sooner you get set-up the sooner you will see major productivity benefits. Anyway, AJ has said it won’t be $99.00. So now you have no excuse.

By: AJ

AJ — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:42:58 +0000

Don’t worry gang – it will not be $99. We are still ironing out a few things.

By: Rubin

Rubin — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:23:05 +0000

I’m a serious Daylite/Billings addict, and I couldn’t work without them. But while the iPhone app seems fantastic, I really don’t know if I’d be ready to spend close to a hundred bucks for it.

Marketcircle has to remember that users can already enjoy some mobility thanks to iCal/AddressBook sync. I would gladly pay anything from 25 or even maybe 50 bucks for the app, but not $100.

By: Dirk

Dirk — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 10:26:43 +0000

I was seriously considering moving my company over to Daylight. Reading this article gave me another reason UNTILL I read the possible price point. With a license of de desktop costing approx. $250, I would say that a possible price point of $99 is prohibitive for the Touch app.

It actually makes me rethink my whole take on standardizing on Daylight all together. I would say that the Touch app is a companion product. Nothing more, nothing less. It is en extension of the Desktop product. You will never use both at the same time. So for me a fair and just price point would be $15-$20.

But one thing I know is that until I know the final price of the Touch app, I won’t buy the Desktop app. The risk is too high to get stuck with a prohibitively expensive Software Solution.

I know you are talking about a between the lines price point, but I am disappointed. What disappoints me also is the fact that there is still confusion about the price of the Touch app. Why can’t they be clear and straight about it? Why is this a decision which has to be made at the last moment? I don’t think that shows customer understanding nor respect.

As I said, as good as the app looks, I am disappointed by the whole approach around the pricing.

By: SJS

SJS — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 04:39:34 +0000

Don’t know how many people will make it down the comments to here, but I hope some do. I setup Daylite in my office of five and we use it all day everyday. I do not agree with most of the criticism.

This is a very deep app and it does take some learning, that’s true. But if you’ll exercise some patience you will be well-rewarded by the value it adds to operating an efficient and effective office. The key to Daylite is the “linking” concept, and until you get that you miss its greatest asset.

True, its not a fully modern product with respect to the latest Apple technologies such as Core, and I trust that it will get better. For example, Contactizer Pro is more up to date, but is in not fully comparable. And CP places a separate database on each user’s computer and allows a very little bit of sharing, such as addresses. Daylite however uses one database and keeps everyone in the office on the same page for Projects, Opportunities, Contacts and Calendars.

The price is not $250 but $189 per license (US). The tech support has been very good. Syncing can be an issue, but 3.9 should help.

And finally, to answer the question: I will buy the Daylite Touch app the day it comes out. To have the functionality of Daylite on my iPhone would be an unparalleled business advantage compared to anything else I have seen.

By: Jorge

Jorge — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 02:37:08 +0000

People – remember the first part before those “prices” – ‘Reading between the lines…’ and ‘At a possible ~$99 price point…’ really means:

“I don’t know anything, so I’ll just pull these guestimated numbers out of my a$$”

Wait until official word.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 02:11:41 +0000

I agree with the other comments that if they were to ask $99 for the iPhone app it would be too much. For a comparison, I recently paid $25 for a 1-year subscription for Remember the Milk’s “pro” service which includes the iPhone app functionality. The service was otherwise free so paying an “extra” $25 for the year seemed worth it to me.

If I were already paying for Daylite, I might be willing to pay a similar amount extra to use the iPhone version but not much more (maybe $35-$40).

I wonder how worried Marketcircle is about Google Apps moving in on their turf assuming Google improves the company-wide management of contacts and their task-tracking functionality.

By: Matthew Bookspan

Matthew Bookspan — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:56:54 +0000

@John, @Jim – we aren’t certain what the pricing will be. The folks at Marketcircle are still working it out. We believe that it could be as high as $99/license. However, it could also be less (or much less). This is a very rich companion app. Marketcircle has spent quite a bit of time ensuring they built the right product for their customers (at the expense of perception around delays). I think that speaks volumes.

By: Jim

Jim — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:31:26 +0000

That predicted price point will be a big mistake. We currently have 6 licenses & 6 iphones. One of the main reasons we made the decision to go with daylite was the iphone component they kept over promising and under delivering on. A full daylite license is around $250. The iphone app should be a driver to switch to daylite rather than a revenue driver itself. If I have to pay that much for it, I begin to look around for what else is available to see if I’m getting value. You already have me as a customer Market circle, all you have to do is keep me. If I’m happy I don’t look around for what else is out there.

By: john

john — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 22:22:21 +0000

Daylite lacks basic mac functionality, such as auto complete and some drag and drop. It has a learning curve so steep, and its operation is so non intuitive, that I ended up dropping it in my busines. Its pricing is already high. It can’t really compete even with Microsoft Office calendar suite for mac for small businesses at least. Syncing is awkward. The support seems to be a pyramid selling scheme.

To make this an additional $99 per device is not competiive for the amount of functionality it provides over mobile me. Contactizer Pro is a much better app for contact management and general office organisation tasks. My business switched entitrely to Contactizer Pro and it blows Daylite away.

The disappointing thing here is that development on Daylite stopped while thye added this app, which they are selling for a huge price, while Daylite itself remains unfinished and not ready for prime time. Without auto-complete, it is almost unusable. These developers have their priorities wrong and this iphone app is a good example of pigging at the trough instead of improving their product.

By: Weldon Dodd

Weldon Dodd — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 22:01:08 +0000

Daylite Touch is pretty close to being the mother of all apps. ;)

The price does seem high, but it is in line with similar solutions. For comparison, ACT! Mobile for Palm is $99.99 and Salesforce Mobile for BlackBerry or iPhone is available for an additional $50/user/month fee if you are using Salesforce.com Professional at $65/user/month.

By: Randy Dunning

Randy Dunning — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 21:05:09 +0000

I don’t use Daylite currently but have been intrigued by it of late. It looks like a tremendous product and it carries a corresponding price point. Perhaps it is well worth it for a full-fledged desktop application.

But considering that Daylite Touch will not be a stand-alone app, and that you need the desktop side installed as well, that gets to be an expensive package were it sold at $99. In fact, I would think an app on any handheld device that sold for $99 today would need to be the mother of all apps! That, or a user is so tied in to Daylite that they’ll pay a premium to have it on their iPhone or iPod Touch.

From my outsider’s perspective, $99 is quite high.