Online software has been great for small business owners. You pay a monthly fee and can access your software, files, data, designs and etc from anywhere. However, once you’re in, you’re locked in and the software vendors can hike prices higher and higher.
Canva recently announced an increase in pricing to its teams software. Many small business owners are not happy, based on discussions I’m seeing in online groups. Some are looking for alternatives, as the price of Canva, QuickBooks and other software so many rely on, including my-self goes higher and higher.
Traditional Software Installed On Your Computer?
While few of us want to return to the days of using software on our hard drives, what else can we do? Cloud software gets updated on a regular basis and makes it easy for us to access it via a web browser, or app from any location. It has benefits.
Low Priced Software
Some vendors have priced their software very low, to attract such users. Even though Canva is free with limited features, the best features requiring premium payment. The features such as “background eraser” and the premium stock images are really good, but at what cost.
It always has been a concern especially when software companies are not spending the right investment on user experience research to implement a design for their specific demographic – Dan Gillman, of Visual Stream Productions
Software Vendors Need to Make a Profit
Indeed, we want the software vendors to make a profit and keep creating great software. Some of the software requires support, which we want. However, what’s the balance between free software, with minimal features, paid software (with good features) and paid software that’s increasingly out of price for small business owners on a budget.
QuickBooks is pricy, and it’s the leading software for small business cash management. It’s head to head with Xero, Wave Accounting, Zoho Books and other software. QuickBooks is full of increasingly good features. Such as pre prompted communications to your vendors who are paying late and other incremental features to make SMB money management easier.
Personally I try to avoid software that requires subscriptions. Thats why I won’t use Office 360 and still use Office 2010 copy I got from college – Ralph Philip, a business owner in the commercial cleaning industry
Investing in Your Business
If you’re looking for the best software to help your business grow, it might just require making an investment in premium software. You might find cheaper software that is “good enough” for your needs. But be careful. Don’t just shop for “cheap software” that doesn’t work for your business.
Eventually, all vendors are going to raise prices, either to make a profit OR to keep up with their own costs to create and support the software.
