We’ve made a ton of technical advances in Scopebox 4 that will allow us to quickly add features and innovate in the video QC and monitoring space. I’m very proud of everything we’ve added to the app with this release, but even more excited about what we have planned for the next few weeks, months and years. But some of the things users will be most excited about in Scopebox 4 are the tiny UI changes that make common tasks easier, the added hardware support, and the general polish we’ve taken the time to focus on.
The traditional software release model has meant many of these small changes have been “in the can” for months or years, but tied to larger technical changes that had to be held for a major release. We also face economic pressure to bundle these small tweaks into monolithic releases that can drive paid updates. The hard truth that took me years to recognize is that we aren’t a big enough company to sustain that model. We had to make a change.
Going forward, ScopeBox will be sold as a license, with yearly update subscriptions. New users can purchase the app and the first year of updates for $149. At the end of the first year, they can renew for another year of updates for $99. Users can stop renewing at any time and will retain the use of the last release during their active license period. To receive updates past the first year you’ll need a valid and active license. We plan to offer discounts for recent purchases ($0 for the first year for people who’ve bought in the past 6 months, substantially discounted for everyone else).
We are also adding a “ScopeBox Pro” tier that provides more in the way of support/directed development. We may tie a small subset new features to this tier in the future as we add functionality.
Lastly, for large institutions that prefer to avoid recurring charges, we’re offering perpetual licenses for $999. These perpetual licenses provide free upgrades and support for life as well as all the benefits of a ScopeBox Pro license.
We know this change will anger some customers, but the fact remains that our earlier pricing model was unsustainable. The goal is to get Scopebox to a place where we can afford to devote serious developer resources, to drastically ramp up our release frequency, and publicly commit to a roadmap. A reliable income stream is one part of achieving this.
We have answers to some common questions on our buy page. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us.