Introducing the Mikogo Freemium Model – Message from Founders
Four years ago, Mikogo was created from an idea by our company, BeamYourScreen which since 2004 has developed and operated business desktop sharing solutions. Numerous private individuals approached our company asking for a free online meeting tool for personal use. None of the big corporations, such as WebEx, were offering free solutions for personal use and we came to strongly believe that the private user was missing out. With this in mind, we decided to create Mikogo, a free desktop sharing tool for private users.
What started as an idea in 2007 has since developed into a service soon to reach 1 million registered users in 180 countries worldwide. We are thrilled at how many people support our work and enjoy our software – thank you!
Today we bring you an important message about how together we will sustain Mikogo as a high-quality desktop sharing program. We will soon introduce a freemium model to Mikogo. This is a big step for us and we ask that you please read the following blog post.
How Can We Sustain Mikogo?
Since releasing Mikogo as a free tool in 2007, we put our own money into Mikogo, including developing the product, building and maintaining the infrastructure, and supporting the community in the best possible way. Moreover, neither BeamYourScreen nor Mikogo are venture capital backed.
At first this was no problem. But over time as more users found us, we were overwhelmed with the large increase in sessions. For a technology company, there is nothing more rewarding than seeing our product being adopted and used regularly by so many people. This is the best proof that we created something meaningful and beneficial, and we are very proud to see our work appreciated.
On the flipside, this massive growth has led to substantial increases in our expenses. Financially speaking, maintaining and developing Mikogo has become a stretch especially since we are still financing Mikogo with our own money. We look forward to bringing you further new features while maintaining the Mikogo infrastructure, but to make this possible we need to consider our future expenses. So how are we going to cover these costs?
Introducing the Freemium Model
Over time, we learned that besides private users a number of businesses were using Mikogo. We talked to these business users and the value of Mikogo to them was clear – companies can significantly reduce their travel expenses while increasing productivity.
So after many long meetings, research, testing alternative revenue options, and of course a lot of careful consideration, we concluded that the best way to cover our increasing costs while continuing to provide and develop Mikogo would be to ask those who benefit the most from Mikogo to support us in sustaining our product by giving a contribution back – something that in the long-term will benefit the Mikogo Community as a whole.
We have hence decided to implement a freemium model, especially because this means we do not lose sight of our initial goal and mission – to provide a free desktop sharing tool for private use. We set out to address this need and we would like to continue this.
Based on the above, this is how we envision the Mikogo freemium model:
- The Mikogo software will remain free for private use – the software can be downloaded and used without any costs. There is no need to neither register an account nor provide personal details.
- Commercial use of Mikogo – So we can sustain our business and our Mikogo product we will offer a paid version for businesses, which allows them to use Mikogo for commercial use and provides them with additional business benefits such as logo branding and customization.
Why the Freemium Model?
The freemium model was not our first idea. When we realized that we could not sustain the growing usage of the software by ourselves forever, we started thinking about ways to finance Mikogo. At one point, we asked people to donate. Wikipedia, for example, successfully did this but unfortunately it did not work for us. 
Next we thought about implementing an ad supported model. However, we did not like the idea of having ads displayed neither on our website nor in the software. We did not want Mikogo to become another piece of adware.
Besides the issue of covering costs, there is another important aspect why the freemium model is the right way to go. As we continue to develop Mikogo, improve the software and server infrastructure, add advanced features, and respond to feature requests from users, we foresee Mikogo becoming a very powerful online collaboration tool. By introducing a freemium model, we can place more resources behind our product and speed up development. We believe in our product and are not sales or marketing driven. WebEx, for example, spends tons of money on advertising which is financed by their customer sales. We focus rather on product development and infrastructure and this is where the bulk of our costs come from. This enables us to offer our freemium licenses at a very affordable price. For example, the price of a Mikogo license starts at less than $13/month.
A freemium model will be a step in the right direction for all those associated with Mikogo. As we receive a small amount for providing Mikogo to businesses, we can sustain our product while focusing on future development. It should be a very exciting time ahead for all of us as we have some really cool and innovative plans on our development road-map for the Mikogo users!
When Will the Freemium Model Start?
We are still working on some behind-the-scenes tasks to get all of this setup. We just wanted to post this today to keep you all in the loop.
Free Business Licenses for Translators
On a final note, over the last couple of years we’ve received a lot of support from people who volunteered to translate the Mikogo software and website – take a look at our Hall of Fame. 
We appreciate this and would like to reward our translators with a Mikogo license that they can use for commercial use. There will be more details specifically about this in an upcoming blog post – please look out for that.
Finally we thank you all for your support and understanding as we take this big step. You have all helped us in one way or the other: by using Mikogo, by giving us feedback on both good and not so good things, and by sharing Mikogo with the world. Some have put their heart into Mikogo and helped translate the software into many languages – 35 to be more precise. Some of you have created videos or written blog posts about Mikogo. We are grateful for this outstanding support and we look forward to continuing to provide a high-quality free desktop sharing program for many years to come!
Kind Regards,
Mark and Erik
Hi,
I realize this is a new thing, but have you worked out Fremium pricing yet?
@John, we haven’t finalized the pricing completely but close to it. We’re planning on introducing a couple of types of licenses, one of which works out to be $13/month. We’ll post more news and details of the freemium license, including final pricing, as soon as we can. Cheers!
I’m employed by a municipality with a significant budget deficit. While a “commercial” user in some sense, my employer is technically a non-profit, and our need for meeting software is pretty limited since most of our meetings take place at City Hall.
Sometimes, though, we need to have short meetings “on line” because the meeting members are scattered over a large metro area.
While $13 a month ($156/year) is a good price for using a product as good as Mikogo, it is doubtful we would have 12 meetings a year. I am hopeful you will take my suggestion to heart: also offer Mikogo on a per use basis, perhaps at $13 per meeting. In my case, where I may only use your app twice or three times a year, I will pay $39 – a lot less than $156. If I increase my usage significantly, I can change from the per use to the annual use fee structure. This would be invaluable, excuse the expression, for nonprofits and government users with few meetings annually.
Thanks for considering this,
Carole
[...] For details,visit Mikogo Freemium Model [...]
New user here and impressed by your features! I wanted to put in my thoughts about licenses. I run a small 1 person business and could use this service occasionally, mostly for training. One type of license that would be focused on small business could be a per use model. That way I could use it and not have to be burdened with a monthly fee that I do not need.
Our site at http://bit.ly/m5f212 shows the launch pad for our new project that we hope to roll out soon to all Towns in the UK and Spain for ex-pats as well (to start).
We would like to be rewarded for promoting your system to the businesses with whom we are begining to deal.
Is it possible to include an affiliate type model?
Warm Regards,
Peter
I wondered when this was coming …what took you so long. I am a small one man consulting firm. and would gladly pay a small fixed price. Still better than some of the others that want from $60 to $100 per month
There’s no doubt that Mikogo is a great product and it’s a great idea to offer a free license for personal use.
I am slightly concerned about the cost of licenses for businesses, however. To a small business such as ourselves, $13 / £8 per month is not an insignificant amount over longer time periods. This will be especially true if it is £8 per user. We use Mikogo internally for support. We have 10 users – that’s £80 per month to give everyone the ability to initiate a screen share, or £960 per year. There is no way that we will be able to justify this, and, unfortunately, it’s likely to push us away from Mikogo.
A per-use model is unlikely to work, either, as we’re unlikely to justify the cost “just for a bit of internal support”. We might be more inclined to stick with Mikogo if there was some kind of small business license, that would cover all of our users at a reasonable cost.
I don’t begrudge you guys the chance to make some money out of your efforts, but unfortunately the reality is that, especially in the current climate, money is tight, especially in a small business. I think it’s worth having a think about how you might be able to address the needs of those of us who are small business users.
Running a business I understand the need to cover you costs. However, like so many we are Small business and have only used Mikogo about 30 times in a year. If the 13 dollars is based on the company not the number of users thats fine, as we have about 3 people that use it, but sometimes for ease while sat at another PC we have logged on and set another user, rather than your own account. Can you monitor email address numbers and useage?
I understand why your doing this and I’m ok with that. The only issue I have is paying for the new mikogo 4. My company has been using mikogo 3 for support use and we have not been able to move over to mikogo 4 due to all it’s issues (not being able to see all screens, slower response and display time, etc). We have tried the suggestions in the forums and it has helped some, but is no where as good as mikogo 3. So I guess the question is “will you still support mikogo 3?” I can’t see my company paying for Mikogo 4 with all the issues and we may have to find another solution if that’s the case. I hope 4 will get up to 3′s quality and dependablity before you start charging for it.
Hi,
I´m using Mikogo since some months and I find this a very small and effecient solution. The only problem is the need to download the client software by users. In some business areas it is not allowed for the emplyees to download or execute unknown files, maybe this is a typical German problem. For private use this is not a real problem. I can understand that there is a need to make a little bit of money with this tool and so please define clear, in what Freemium and Business use of Mikogo will be different. Then I can decide the future use.
Thanks, Gunnar
If I am paying for Mikogo – which I can see that you will need to do – I would expect more reliability. Sometimes the features do not work well – like the other person taking the control over. Sometimes the whiteboard starts writing all over the place with no one touching the mouse. Sometimes it is hard to erase. The new version is very cumbersome with so many things to click on the whiteboard. The old version worked better with being able to click colors directly, click change of width directly, click change of shape. I am constantly clicking two things to do one thing with the new version. I wish you would change that back. Also, if I am paying I would expect more support on issues like the whiteboard sometimes just taking over and writing and the participant not always being able to type or use the whiteboard. Now, I just say, well it’s free. I also hope you can find a way to start your licenses without making the participants download new software. That was a difficult process that I do not want to repeat any time soon. I prefer the per month charge, but I can see that some people might prefer a per use charge.
The position is not an unreasonable one and the levels of investment indicated a small price to pay for the service provided, the fact that you have communicated with the base is a credit to you. When you put it into the context of the likes of GoTo and MyVSL etc the fee indicated should not realy be the issue. We support the move.
I think $13/month is a reasonable fee for the service provided by Mikogo.
What level of service does that cover?
Allow me to second two thoughts that I’ve read here. First, consideration for solo, vitually networked consulting practices like mine. Second, per-use pricing as opposed to subscription-based pricing. I avoid the latter like the plague because that model is never cost-efficient for me. A pay-per-use model allows me to recover costs from the affected client.
I realize that a price-per-use model incurs greater overhead on your part. But I suspect your revenue recovery will be enhanced by such a model offered as a choice to prospective users.
Thank you for this update, and I absolutely understand the need for you to change the model on which Mikogo is provided – I’m amazed that it was ever free, given its capability. However, one thing I’m wondering about is how you’ll define ‘commercial’. The thing is, I use Mikogo for charity work, and chose Mikogo over other online offerings because other companies consider charities to be commercial. Please can you give some consideration to allowing registered charities to use your service in the same way that personal customers can? Those organisations don’t directly generate any money from using Mikogo. I couldn’t find an email address to ask you about this directly, but if you’d like to be in touch about it in more detail, please feel free to drop me an email.
@Peter, we have offered referral partnership programs for BeamYourScreen and perhaps this is something that we can do for Mikogo too in the future. Of course the first step is to implement the freemium model and take it from there. Thanks for your suggestion!
@Magdalene, thanks for your feedback on the whiteboard. Yes there were many changes included in the whiteboard, however the benefit of this is greater features within the whiteboard, including different drawing tools, text box, laser pointer, saving screenshots, multi-user, etc. For further details on what can be achieved via the whiteboard, please take a look at our user guide: http://www.mikogo.com/support/user-guide/ Finally, please read the information in the user guide about the HTML Viewer. This allows participants to join your session and view your screen directly from within their web browser without any downloads required (however some features are not possible for a participant who joins via the HTML Viewer).
I guess like many, I am a one-man-band adhoc user (average use of once per month). It would be nice if your pricing model could differentiate between people like me and frequent business users.
Thank you to everyone for your comments thus far. We appreciate your support for our move towards the freemium model and it’s great to hear your thoughts on this. We will take your suggestions into consideration as we move closer to the start of the freemium model to see how we can best please our users.
We will also post more in-depth details regarding the business licenses and freemium model as soon as we can.
Thanks once again!
Some of the users having the same problems, small company, partly use of this tool, ….
However, as long as my partner does not have to pay for a web meeting when I start Mikogo, it would be ok. In addition licence must include min.<5 PC´s.
Because sometimes it does not work with companies having firewalls and need administration support to work with.
We have many customers who are not used to such a tool (getting better) and we start a telephone conferenence first and than I ask to use this tool for a better communication.
Hello all,
I completely understand this post and your position about the Mikogo sustainability. It is great that you’ve managed an apparent good funding model for it.
Let me know if you need a Portuguese (European) translator with great experience in Systems Administration.
I don’t have a problems with paying for multiple users (over 10?) for this. I am an independent consultant and use it for many one-on-one’s. My clients can afford to pay a small monthly fee if they are going to use it.
There are many competitive one-on-one products out there and I prefer Mikogo. I also think that in addition to monthly you should have a pay-as-you-go model for those who don’t use it on a regular basis.
I agree with Phil … a lower price for those with lower usage … like possibly, the free version includes one session per month, a $5/mo account gives you 3 sessions per month, etc. In any case, you guys are providing an excellent product… and no matter what, I’ll be a customer for life.
The move toward freemium make sense, but beware of the price. And beware of the freemium mode: “free for private use” is not a real freemium from my point of view (see dropbox, skype,…): freemium means free with some stuff limited:
* the awful advertisement splash box left on the client side once disconnected (good reason to upgrade)
* not being able to set (fix) the session id (the reason why I’m not upgrading to v4 and why I could abandon mikogo, especially the paying version)
* not being able to select which application is visible
So, from my point of view, the freemium version could have a bunch of limitations, and the paying version remove this limitations (3 examples above).
But, as other said, I’m not ready to pay upfront 156$ a year for mikogo (while I would have been ready to donate ~40EUR … but apparently I missed the “call for donation”). If mikogo goes paying (with a “freemium” version limited to private use), I will definitely re-check the alternatives. While I would not for a 30~50€ /year basic license (without above limitations… starting with being able to get my own session-id allocated … to me + random id as currently).
My usage of mikogo:
support users; training (up to 10 seats)… but not on a regular basis: maybe no use during months, heavy usage during weeks.
I hope you’ll make the right choice, the one that will allow me to stay with you.
Здравствуйте!
Хотелось бы все же уточнений в понимании коммерческое использование или нет.
Мы ведем бесплатную интернет – школу и очень часто новичкам интернета, приходится давать пояснения и программа Микого была как нельзя к стати.
И как такового коммерческого использования нет.
I am a semi-retired one man business, but I had a 23-year teaching career at an engineering college before I became disabled. I still teach one course per year using Mikogo. I have been trying to get my school to look at ‘Beam Your Screen’ for campus-wide use but they seem to be stuck with some high-priced equivalent software.
I think there should be some consideration (discount) for non-profit users.
Mikogo is certainly of high value but what some software companies is reduce the price for a one-year contract – say US$99 – it’s a model that works.
Dick Campbell
Your blog post makes sense, you have to sustain your business financially. If your pricing model compares favourably with competitors I will keep on using Mikogo to support my business customers. Good luck!
Hello! I love Mikogo so much that you guys even wrote a case study about our company. I just want to let you know that I will be glad to donate to the cause and completely understand your situation. Success! :O)
Have you considered using the Skype payment model where the client purchases credits to be used as needed. I am an infrequent user of Mikogo but still like to know it is available when I want to use it. One could purchase prepaid credits in say $25.00 blocks and then use to purchase $1-2.00 sessions. If ones usage reaches the point that a subscription becomes feasabile they can change to that pricing plan.
I’m a newbie with Mikogo and yet to initiate a meeting with it.
I’d love to see a “short-term” agreement. Maybe 7 days from the date of signing for $5.
This would be good for our business model now but would motivate us to “upgrade” to $150/year once we’ve proven its expected reward.
Thanks.
I am definitely against a model that will require the people who join in a session to pay. I will not use Mikogo if you go that way. I cannot ask my clients to do that, and I do not want the nightmare accounting and billing process of paying for them.
Andrew, can you please address the issue of the unreliability of the feature of a participant having control and it doesn’t always allow them to type on my screen? Also why the whiteboard sometimes has a mind of its own and draws all over the place.
Also would there be support if we pay?
Also what is BeamMyScreen? What does that cost?
We are a small business currently paying for BeamYourScreen and occasionally using Mikogo when we need 2 overlapping sessions.
As the two products are very similar, it would help to understand where BeamYourScreen will fit in with Mikogo Freemium and the product development ideas for each.
Bravo! $13 a month is a drop in the bucket for the value that Mikogo brings to the table. I have used many collaboration tools over the last ten years and in my experience, this is the most reasonable subscription price I’ve ever seen. It was still be far under the norm if the price were $20/month. Looking forward to the pricing and features plan!
Keep up the awesome work!
I’m another small consultant shop that uses the Mikogo product occasionally. When I need it, I need it, but other times I don’t.
I have absolutely no problem paying $13 a month for use, but frankly, sometimes I go 2-3 months between actually using screen sharing.
I would like to see an option where I can keep a credit card on file, but it only bills me on the months that actually see use.
I second Steve Kleinsmith on the Skype model. I’m an infrequent user. But otherwise excellent idea and great work.
Hi,
I occasionally use Mikogo to volunteer in e-tutoring yoga free of cost. But I am ready to pay. If you could have a pricing based on usage, it would fit my bill.
Thanks
Could you give us an estimate for when you will be announcing your pricing? Days? Weeks? Months?
This is a sad day for small businesses that utilize a great piece of software. I understand things cost money. Pardon the analogy but we got addicted to a great piece of software and now we must pay or look for another alternative. Mikogo has been branded as the “Free web conferencing and desktop sharing” solution. There have been a good number of posts on the Mikogo website on how IT and Sales divisions of many companies utilize the software
(For example http://www.mikogo.com/company/press/pr-2011/free-online-meeting-alternative-dimdim-ends/).
Perhaps if our business usage was monitored then the sales of Beamyourscreen could have approached us to purchase a full blown solution. As Diablo posted above, we missed any request for donations to keep the software free.
I just found the product/service in the last two weeks – very impressed with the functionality and stability of the package!
Nothing in this life is free – I encourage you to fund more good applications by demanding a fair return on your efforts. I hope the “freemium” will work for you, but my experience says it will not in the long term. It may take a combination of adware/donation for “free” use, pay per use for the casual user, and an annual subscription for heavier use.
What ever – get paid for your work – it’s good work and we need more of it !!!
Good luck
Wow. You have the nerve to want to get paid for developing a beautiful product that is pretty much idiot proof. I am a retired geek and of course end up as the go to guy for fellow geezers all over the world. Everybody thinks knowledge should be “free”. Mikigo has made it possible for me to log into computers and unscramble messes many times and has saved me hours of time trying to explain keystrokes to someone who has never taken the time to learn the basics. As of this post I will institute a $25 minimum charge for me to use your product to log in and fix the problem and we will both make a few bucks. I will happily pay for a license as its easier to charge the service out when I can claim I have a real cost associated with the service. After a while helping the great unwashed for free wears a little thin and the statement – No I won’t fix your damned computer – often comes to mind.
Having said my piece I would try for a subscription price for personal use of something in the order of $7.49 a month. Even personal / occasional users should be able to swallow that number (its only one beer) and if a couple hundred thousand folks buy you that one beer a month it should help pay the rent.
Good luck
Bill
Having been developing software for almost 50 years (yes, all the way back to the IBM 1401) I fully appreciate the enormous number of hours it take to conceive, create, support & enhance high quality software. And congratulations on NOT having to jump in bed with the VC sharks.
That being said, unless you either have a very low price point for Mikogo & supplement it’s support with the other side of the house OR have a zero cost Mikogo with some of the more unique features moved to Mikogo+ (or something) which has a subscription fee, you will start to lose followers.
Whatever your decide, you deserve to make a lot of money from your creation. Congratulations.
Let me start off by saying your product has been a very nice tool for my personal use. Let me define personal use as: I am retired and have spent many years in management within the technology field. As a result, I have become the tech squad for many of my retired friends and extended family. I do not charge them for helping them with getting their technical problems resolved. I have used your product to eliminate having to drive to someone’s home to try and fix what is usually a “user error” or lack of knowledge about the technology. Most times it is not very technical, but more user oriented.
My reliance on your product has been solid, but I have not used it very often; usually less than once or twice every couple of months. Unfortunately, the pricing for the Freemium Version would be a deterent for my friends or myself to commit to.
Your business model has grown of age and I understand better than most how important it is to have a revenue model that covers your cost. I wish you well in that regard and would gladly recommend your product on a business basis.
All of this said, and this sounds like a joke, but, maybe you could create a much simplier model that is AARP supported. This is a group that does not like to spend much on new technology and struggle with even using what is common to many of the younger (more techie) world. Okay, go ahead and laugh, I would if I received this too, but it is a market place that is growing over the next few years and AARP might be interested in working with you.
Thanks for listening and best of luck with this. I believe you are handling it in a very nice, professional, and understanding way.
Myrl
Although I am a registered user for a longer time already, I did not use the Mikogo service very often. There has not been more than a few opportunities for me (in Germany) and my friend (in the Philippines), but there have been trouble situations at her PC, and I really was happy that we could use a tool that seemed just made for our purpose of trouble shooting.
I have been wondering how Mikogo could be offered for free to everyone. Thanks a lot for this!
Your plans for the Freemium model are really good news for private users like me, and i hope that you will meet your financial goals and expectations by charging business users. The fee is very affordable, and I cannot imagine how a company could refuse your offer.
I wish you good luck and success, and I want to thank you for continuing free access to your product for people like me.
Mikogo is an excelent product.
I am a techie. I first learned of the product from a company that was serving the company I was working for. I liked the product when we used it. So I deceided to try Mikogo at home.
On the weekends I like to help my non teckie friends that do not live close to me with their computer problems. Mikogo fills that need. I do this technincal work for free on the weekends. So I am a personal users. Mikogo fills this needs well.
It is understandable that companies should pay for the service. They have to be the biggest users of the service. So they should be the first ones to be charged.
Thanks again Mikogo for your excelent service.
Sadly I can’t jump on the band wagon of people thanking you for charging us for a once free service. We were early adopters of Mikogo and helped spread the word about it to customers and others (trust me, you guys @ Mikogo know who we are). Apparently that has now bitten us right in the butt since helping spread the word has led to more usage and of course being charged for the service. We have a beamyourscreen subscription that we pay for and use for meetings where we require larger numbers of participants and better features. I don’t see us shelling out $156 per user per year (probably more since you are using the dreaded “starting at”) when the majority of our sharing is done 1 to 1 and there are plenty of other options out there. Sure, none are as good but if it means saving a fair chunk of change I imagine we’ll learn to get by. A few thoughts come to mind…
1) Why not leave Mikogo free and leave the money making to the beamyourscreen side? Simply reduce the # of connections allowed to a Mikogo session (it doesn’t handle 10 all that well anyway) and let people go buy beam your screen if they want bigger meetings.
2) Offer free mikogo licensing (or at least some # of free seats) for beamyourscreen customers since they are already paying for your service.
3) This is a random thought but how about changing the name to something recognizeable so we don’t have to spell out go.M-I-K-O-G-O.com everytime we get online with someone?
Anyway, I think you should know that you’ll have plenty of customers who won’t come here to tell you that they don’t like this move, they’ll just go elsewhere. I don’t know where these other people are getting the Kool-Aid that they’re drinking but I for one will never vote myself a tax increase and I’ll never be happy about being charged for something that I use to get for free.
Dear Mikogo Team,
we like & appreciate Mikogo a lot and have endorsed you to numerous of our startup-clients + partners i.e. as great + free alternative to the big established players. We even are one of your references at http://www.mikogo.de/vorteile/consultants/
While we perfectly understand your need for income to ensure the QoS, do we encourage you still be a real ALTERNATIVE and not just become another “ me to”. So we challenge you to find a price model that i.e. allows your biggest supporters aka (cost sensitive) startups, consultants, freelancers to stay @ Mikogo and be able to pay you for your great services.
Greetings & good luck
Ralf
Thank you to everyone who has written a comment. We also received numerous tweets, facebook posts, and emails. Your suggestions have been great. Not everybody uses Mikogo for the same reasons or the same frequency. We are hence spending a great deal of time taking all your comments into consideration so we can shape our freemium model in a way that best meets your needs. This is not a quick process and we are still working on this. I just wanted to leave a comment to let you all know that we working through your suggestions. So feel free to leave other comments or suggestions
@ME – we are also looking into offering BeamYourScreen Version 3 as an alternative to Mikogo Version 4. The software would be the exact same as Mikogo Version 3 and the prices would be the same as Mikogo Version 4. We’ll provide more details later – I just wanted to assure you that there will be an option to stick with Version 3.
Finally, thank you for all your support and understanding as we make this big step.
As many have said before .. if something is zero cost .. then it must be worth nothing.
Mikogo is not the case .. however the application set that Mikogo covers is now seeing more and more people getting into this application space. At the present time, we use Mikogo for two reasons. One is one-on-one support .. the other is for collabrative meetings.
If you look at the one-on-one support .. this is where the bulk of the free or free like products are coming in. The collabrative meetings (more than two present) is less active .. but growing.
Please note, that once you start charging for a service .. then the service (response time, robust nature of software, support, future growth) must be there .. or the cost is not worth it.
Our experience with Mikogo is that it is not as solid as some of the more expensive products .. so be careful.
In general I would support your cost model, but remember what it brings with you.
Learn from Google, people believe they are in the “search” industry .. they are in the data gathering industry .. ie search is a means to an end. If all Mikogo is going to be is a simple collabrative meeting product .. its life will be limited ..
Lets make sure this does not happen … read “who moved my cheese”
I must admit that I am surprised at how challenged many people or organizations can be with money. Let’s keep in mind that this service is great and the asking is only a fraction of what the competition is. If $13/mth (tax deductible) will hurt you or your business, you might consider that the main problem is not the fee. If Mikogo helps your business generate more money (or save travel money), consider that when charging your clients for your services and calculating your profits. It is important to support the software developers that bring us solutions so that they keep maintaining and improving their products in a healthy business environment. Otherwise, they die and we must then go back to the expensive alternatives. How would your business survive then?
I think you would make a LOT more money if you charged everybody $24.00 per year and provided additional features at a premium for business that want them. Anybody ought to be able to swallow $2.00 per month and you wouldn’t have to worry about $2.00 credit card charges.
In our organisation (a municipality), Mikogo is not used by our help desk, but it is used by super users to provide support to other users. Our municipality uses hundreds of applications in many different fields of expertise, so we have dozens of potential “super users”.
When reviewing desktop sharing solutions, we discovered that many solutions use named licenses. This model can be well-suited for help desk context with known users, but can not be applied to our “super users” context. Managing licenses and switching license for one user to the other can be a very time-consuming task.
We chose Mikogo because we don’t have to manage named licenses and switch license from one user to the other. Any of our users can download Mikogo and start a session.
To keep this benefit, I would suggest to use the concept of “simultaneous sessions” : for example, $13 / month for max 1 session at a time, $26 / month for max 2 simultaneous sessions, etc. To start a session, our users would need to enter a “corporate id”. Mikogo would use this corporate id to count the number of simultaneous sessions started from our organisation and to prevent the start of a new session when the maximum allowed is reached. Our IT department could monitor the use of Mikogo from is “corporate account” on your website.
This way, we wouldn’t have to manage licences !
Thank you !
+1 on the pay per use suggestion.
I downloaded your software a few weeks ago, haven’t used it so far, but with Skype quality deteriorating at the rate it is, I see myself switch for the live tutorials very soon. Paying 156 upfront is not going to happen though.
Bob’s suggestion above sounds actually even better; round it up to 25 bucks a year and you will have your cashflow problem solved!
It sounds like you are still looking for people to say how they use Mikogo, so here goes… We use Mikogo as a collaberative tool. We have about 15 people who may use it, but seldom need more than one instance at the same time. We use it to allow coworkers to work from home. 95% of the time, we have one presenter with 1-2 coworkers viewing. Then use the phone or skype to talk to each other at the same time. We’d be willing to pay for this (once again, we would have donated if we knew about it), but don’t think we would pay for 15 single licenses. We would go elsewhere first. A shared (i.e., floating) license would be perfect for us. We looked at the Beamyourscreen pricing and decided it was too expensive and we would use another free tool first, and suffer the deficiencies.
I would like to see non-profits still be able to use this for free.
The charge of $13 is reasonable but only if it is a one way charge for business. There is always someone who you are sharing the screen with. If they have to pay a fee for me to share my screen then I will run. These folks use it one time though I may use it 20 20 times a week. It needs to be free for inviting people to sessions. Mikigo 4 is no where as easy to use as was mikogo 3 and would suggest more of a mikogo 3 format for folks that are invited into a session. I have no prolem paying $13 per mo but cannot afford a per session charge or a charge for my clients to join my sessions.
Andrew, others here have asked about pricing for non-profits and such, and I have a question as well as to Mikogo’s use in the academic field. Ours is a Medical college and we use this during Grand Rounds with other hospitals to keep our physicians concurrent with new techniques, discoveries in their respective fields, and medical knowledge in general. This also helps the physicians to stay accredited. Still I suppose this falls under the “Commercial” (though purely used for education purposes), is this your view as well?
@Ben, we’ve taken educational purposes into consideration and are working through the different use cases and business cases for Mikogo as we finalize the freemium model and licenses. We’ll post full details on our blog soon.
Also (for everyone) several people have asked whether participants have to pay to join a session. No – only session organizers will require a Mikogo license to start sessions.
More information coming soon.
I’m assuming that the 13 bucks a mo. means that there will be a 150 yearly charge…more if you pay by the mo. This all seems reasonable but there are a few questions.
I use it to explain things in a demo kind of way. I am usually able to make them understand easier if I show them on my screen and talk to them on the phone at the same time. An average session would be 20 min for me and I need it maybe 10 times a year…this 150 would still be cost effective BUT my question is; Would they have to be members too? If so, it’d never work for me. I think you “tax” the presenter or the one that starts the session.
By the way, as an owner of a Freemium business, I wish you good luck and much success
[...] focusing on future development.”The full blog post about the freemium model can be read on the Mikogo Blog. [...]
[...] softwareWhy Mikogo?Unrestricted version of Mikogo is completely free for private users. It works on Freemium model where the software can be downloaded and used without any cost and there is no need to register an [...]
I understand the situation MikoGo; it is indeed a great product, and we all need to generate money to continue development, support etc.
My suggestion is the same as I have read in this blog I prefer a light version which doesn’t provide advanced functions multiple attendants, white board, change presenter, save presentation, file transfer etc.
This light version remains free of charge. If over time the other features are needed then change over to the full version.
Consider that current users might stop using MikoGo and change to other software that supports besides remote support also a presentation mode.
Best regards
Frank
I have for some time considered switching from Team Viewer to Mikogo, but didn’t think You’ll be able to keep it free for commercial use. I wasn’t mistaken
Having said that, Your price point is much better than Team Viewer’s.
What I would love to see in remote help solutions is making it easy for occasional use. If I’m going to be a heavy user, I’ll go an extra mile and install a VNC, NX or RDP server at my customer’s and it will furthermore be free to use remote desktop.
It’s when I need a one-off remote access to a computer that hasn’t been preconfigured when I NEED services as Mikogo. Ease of use was always their strong point – just tell the customer to run this stuff and tell me these two numbers.
All of this ease of use vanishes if I have to go for an extra hassle of settling my payments. I’d gladly prepay some small amount to some Mikogo account so I can just go and use the software when I need it. If it is not that small amount or it’s a recurring payment every month- it makes Mikogo stop having an edge over other solutions.
And, of course, 13$ is completely different for people in USA than it is for people in Poland for example. Your wages are much better than ours, yet we’re expected to pay the same for all the tools. Just saying
I have a small home based business with low revenues at this point. I use Mikogo about 2 or 3 times a year. I could only afford to pay if I could buy say a chunk of credits to use per use. Such as $25 buys 3 credits and you can use them when you need them. Paying per month is too much for my limited use at this point.
I’m still looking for the best remote access solution for me and my small business. Mikogo was the free for commercial use alternative I’m testing in time. But when it will cost up to 13$ per month, other alternatives comes again to my focus. I need remote access sometimes 3-5 times a week and then over 3 months not.
25-30$ per year is ok for me to pay for the service.
Once I miss is an easier way to bring preconfigured clients to Mac Users via web form.
Incredibly I took my time to read all of these comments when I saw “that” email message in my inbox. I knew “the end of an era” had arrived.
Not too much users expressed complete disagreement with the idea of having to pay for what it used to be free. But what can I say?
First, disapproval is what we usually feel in cases like this when we know that “the end of an era” has arrived. But we all have to accept that Erik Boos and Mark Zondler are the owners and they’re in their own right to do with their creation whatever they want.
The fact of beeing consulting us is something very wise and kind from them to us. Good intentions for those who have good intention for us. This all tells me about some sincerity from them ’cause they just could have executed their own decisions without consulting and that’s all. I understand they’re just looking the best way to take the step they know they have to take. And the best way to do it is first consulting.
I don’t know exactly how many times I could use Mikogo monthly, it could be zero times or it could be 24-30 times. Just be very carefull with the step you’re going to take because there are still other free alternatives which I don’t want to mention here for respect and consideration to you and for the good profits the use of Mikogo has given to me.
It’s true nobody will be willing to pay for something he/she used to get for free, but for most people it’s difficult at first to show consideration for the fact of everything in this world require money for its maintenance.
For people like me who is the owner of his/her own micro online business and who is begining to rise it (E-learning) is not easy to accept at first the idea of paying, considering besides how much dificult is getting dollars in my country due to a government restriction over foreign currency.
Citing @Bruno’s words:
“It is important to support the software developers that bring us solutions so that they keep maintaining and improving their products in a healthy business environment. Otherwise, they die and we must then go back to the expensive alternatives.”
My best wishes to you guys.
The support price of $22 per month or $55 for 5 sessions and the professional price of $25 per month or $60 for 5 sessions.
Looks like you are targeting the presentations/class or sales environment. I don’t understand the value difference between the two.
@Mr Laptop Repair, the difference between the Professional and Support versions, is the extra range of features and number of participants that you receive when you purchase a Professional license over a Support license. Please take a look at the list of features and the comparison at the bottom of the Shop page: http://www.mikogo.com/buy/ In general, we have been targeting the online meeting and presentation market since we launched Mikogo in 2008 (http://www.mikogo.com/company/press/pr-2008/mikogo-steps-up-to-be-the-leading-free-online-meeting-provider-for-private-users/). However we are aware that many use Mikogo for remote support so we aim to meet that demand and this is one reason for the Support license.