[Ethan Schoonover]

First, I thank everyone for their comments and want to encourage our customers to continue to let us know how they feel about pricing. Normally I like to keep business issues "in house" but I think this warrants a public post and overall Omni likes to err on the side of open-communication. So, in the interest of transparency, I'll go over some of the factors that contribute to the pricing of OmniFocus.

Just like any form of manufacturing, we have production costs. These are part of the final product price as they are in any form of manufacturing, be it tractors or software (the Wisconsin farm boy in me reveals himself). There is a popular misconception that, once the initial development is "done", selling software is like printing money because "it's just bits". In fact, just the opposite is the case. Every unit we sell incurs a cost in the form of support and it's no small cost: we have some of the best live support of any independent Mac developer in the business and are committed to keeping it best-in-class. Support isn't just our live support team, however, it's also constant upgrades. Right now we have four developers working on just OmniFocus 1.0.1. This is part of what you get for the purchase price: a guarantee that we won't abandon development and that you can rely on constant improvement and innovation. It really is a lot like growing corn, actually. While the corn "grows itself" in some respects, in reality it needs a lot of care, tending and even after harvest there's a lot of work to be done (and, just like our release cycles, once one harvest is done the next cycle begins).

However, the most important thing that you get with the purchase of any Omni product is the creativity and technical skill of our team here. I joined Omni because they were some of the brightest and most technically skilled developers I've ever seen. There are so many great things in store for OmniFocus (and all our apps). When you buy an Omni app, you're getting our full commitment to ongoing development, new features, new add ons, etc.

Selling an application too cheaply may see higher short term sales volume (units) and may also make some people happier (only in the short term however) but we'd then either collapse under the increased support volume (and the responsiveness of our support teams would decrease) or we'd end up with not enough cash flow to pay engineers to develop the next point release. Those that were happy about saving a few dollar at purchase time would be very, very disappointed with the end result.

So there you have the basics. We have to charge enough to stay in business, provide support, develop fixes and the next release and allow us to develop new, cool apps at the same time. $50 for OmniFocus doesn't get us there. I wish it did, but it doesn't.

If you perceive the quality of engineering inside the application, if you know the value of live support, if you value the ongoing development, I think that you'll support us with your purchase. If you don't then either we need to do a better job of communicating our quality and commitment or it's just not what you're in the market for. Personally, I think it's the former issue most of the time. I firmly believe that most people want quality, support, etc. We'll continue to work on communicating the quality and benefits of purchasing Omni products effectively to our current and future customers.

I hope this longish post helps clarify the factors that contribute to our pricing. Again, I want to emphasize how seriously we take the pricing of the applications and user feedback on this issue. Please let us know how you'd like to see the value of the applications better communicated and I'll be taking notes :)

Thanks,
Ethan