Purchase Features Separately?

John Call said:

Will it be possible to purchase just the Sermon Editor in the future?  I do not need many of the features offered and would like to purchase a la carte like books.

Thank you.

 While I am certainly aren't qualified to speak on the subject with any accuracy, I would tend to think this would not be a possibility,  at least not in the near future. I'd be interested to hear what some of the faithlife employees have to say though.

Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:

John Call said:

Will it be possible to purchase just the Sermon Editor in the future?  I do not need many of the features offered and would like to purchase a la carte like books.

We typically don't sell features a la carte. One reason for this is that most tools aren't entirely standalone. They assume the existence of other tools and datasets. In the case of Sermon Editor, if you didn't have the Media tool, Sermon Editor wouldn't work well or at all. We're moving in a more integrated direction, which makes is really difficult to slice and dice tools and datasets up and make them available for individual purchase without providing a broken user experience.

That being said, we have considered turning Sermon Editor into its own web-based service in the future, which would probably have a subscription cost associated with it. But there aren't any plans to pursue that at this time.

For now your options are the Logos 7 Full Feature Set or a Logos Now membership.

I understand that there may be dependencies.  But it would be nice if datasets+dependencies could be bundled in those cases.  I think Logos is leaving money on the table by not letting users buy what they want individually rather than bundled with features they may not want/need or can't afford.

Tony Thomas said:

I understand that there may be dependencies.  But it would be nice if datasets+dependencies could be bundled in those cases.

TL/DR: While it might seem cost-effective from a user perspective, I think there are many hidden costs for the company to unbundle features which probably wouldn't make it worthwhile, or worse, drive up the cost of any individual feature+dependency "bundles."

Think of all the development, logistical, marketing, and support issues, due to the features and datasets being improved between major Logos releases.

As an example, suppose you buy Feature X, which initially was bundled with dataset Y and dependency Z.

A couple months later, the developers improve Feature X, but it now depends on additional components besides the ones that came with your original Feature X "bundle."

As a user, would you expect the bundle you purchased to offer the improvement too, or are you locked into only using the unimproved feature, until you upgrade your bundle? Should FL even sell the improved feature before the next major release? If they did, would people who recently purchased the unimproved feature be unhappy, when the improved feature comes out? Can you imagine needing to handle sales or refunds on a feature per feature basis, as the features are improved?

If a user can't or doesn't want to buy the new dependencies, that would mean that FL would have to support multiple iterations of a feature. I.e., unimproved (Logos 7.0) Feature X, improved (Logos 7.1) Feature X, really improved (Logos 7.4) Feature X. This not only would cost time and money, but feature pricing might even increase if the cost is passed on to the customer.

FL has actually already handled this in a efficient manner by providing a Logos Now subscription. The customer pays a reasonable fee, and gets access to new and improved features over the course of their subscription.

LN would also likely be more cost-effective than purchasing specific feature "bundles" separately, considering that some features and dataset "bundles," if they could be purchased separately, might cost $20-$40 or more.

I wouldn't even want to imagine the additional confusion a user might have trying to determine which features to purchase. Can you imagine trying to grasp what each of the 40 or 50 features do, to make an informed decision between so many unbundled feature choices?

I think we're at an optimum point now for most users, where they can choose between 3 "tiers" of features -- Starter, Full, or Logos Now -- without needing to be familiar with every single feature before making a feature purchase.

Andrew Batishko (Faithlife) said:

The dependencies look less like the picture on the left and more like the one on the right. In addition, dependencies are added on an ongoing basis, which would require rebundling, leaving customers who'd previously purchased in a state where they may be missing important or useful dependencies.

Thanks for a more concise answer about ongoing development

This whole problem is made worse by an issue that is entirely unrelated to coding dependencies and such like.

The bundling of a whole load of let's say "niche" Interlinears with the misnamed "Full Feature Set" pushes the price beyond what it needs to be if it was PURELY a feature\dataset upgrade. This is purely a marketing decision to bloat the product and inflate its price.

I would have paid for a Full Feature\Dataset Only upgrade, but I am not paying for features when I cannot buy them without a bunch of niche interlinears which I am never going to use.

Unless Logos sees the light and offers a true FEATURE\DATASET ONLY upgrade there's a snowball's chance in Abbadon that I will upgrade to the "Full" set, since the Starter Feature Set got me on the Logos 7 bandwagon, with nearly all the useful features for just £15 without all that padding. But I'm pretty sure there's never going to be a Feature Only set but that's Logos' loss.

Back to that again. I hear there's a new Klingon Interlinear bundled with Logos 8 [6]

Not to burst anyone's bubble but reverse interlinears have been the bread and potatoes of the crossgrades for years.  And I can attest their niche value, since I rarely use them. Now, granted I wear my right-finger out on the lookup menu but that's beside the point.

I suspect the issue isn't the nichies. It's the doubling of the price of the crossgrade, arguing lots of 'stuff'.  Maybe Logos just needs money. It's possible.

MJ. Smith said:

Richard Lyall said:

let's say "niche" Interlinears

You think you have to buy "niche" stuff ... at least the "niche" stuff you have to buy has a much larger market base than the "niche" stuff I have to buy.

I can't decide if this an arrogant and thinly veiled put-down, an attempt at humour, or something else, such are the deficiencies of text-based communication.

Fair enough