Cost of Revit!!

[BomberAIA]

I just got a price for a new seat....unbelievable!!!! $3295 plus an annual subscription of $695. What happened to all the updates and training included in the price? What happened to the $895 deal if you have Acad? Autodesk is trying hard to make Revit just like Acad. (which I hate)Now we have go thru dealers which I hated w Acad. Has anyone paid less?

[Scott Hopkins]

Ketiv Tech here in California is offering a crossover upgrade from AutoCAD 2002 to Revit 5.1 for $1,695. This price includes the one year subscription as well. If you had an extra copy of AutoCAD that you had not used in a crossover upgrade yet, then you paid way too much. You reseller did you a real disservice.

The weird thing is you can get the same crossover upgrade from AutoCAD 2000 for $1,545 - which makes no sense at all. I have a friend who was interested in Revit but just spent a ton of money upgrading from AutoCAD 2000 to AutoCAD 2002. He was thinking about getting the cross-over to Revit until he found out that he would be penalized for having spent the extra money to upgrade to AutoCAD 2002. It seems to me that the people in AutoDesk’s upgrade department don't have even a modicum of common sense.

[BomberAIA]

I have acad, I'll check out buying it at another dealer. Thanks

[Henry D]

I wonder what Autodesk's market studies show - I would think that they are not making as much money with the high cost of Revit as they would with a $2000 price which I believe would dramatically increase their market share.

Maybe they are doing what Polaroid used to do which is get the most out of each income level by scaling down the cost of their product. First come out with a new expensive camera which all the rich guys or fanatics have to have (that's us :?: ), then once that market is sold out, lower the price until the next income level is sold out, and so on...

What I find way too expensive is the cost of another seat. If I want to add a second seat in my office it will cost me around $4,200 plus the $695/yr subscription fee. That's about $1,400/yr which is well beyond the budget of a small office.

[designer56644]

This is one area of the marketing of the "Future" BIM product that has the potential to make this the BIM product of the "Past" (imho).

Adesk better get with it, and start going after new seats, instead of simply offering price discounts to existing customers. I mean, that's a good thing, but the user base needs to be grown in order for this product to really thrive. Should'nt they be pointing it at the educational institutions, and young, progressive minds who are willing to take the "risk" on a new technology? That means selling it at real world prices, not simply "offering" it to large firms with expansive budgets.

They are really missing the boat on the design/build, small Arch firm market segment. This product has the potential to crush the Softplans, Cadsoft's, Cheif Arch's, and Datacad's of the world.
Those people (I know a few) despise what they consider ponzi price scheming, straight up, and make their decisions to purchase based on value, and getting the job done (see CD sets). I hope they wake up in San Rafiel, I know their eyes are wide open in Vermont.

[gregcashen]

I agree wholeheartedly. The only reason I made the big switch to Revit over Chief or another product, despite knowing how superior Revit is to those tools, was price. I was offered a companion seat so I could keep a seat of Autocad and only pay about half price for Revit. Looking at a new seat and it suddenly dawns on me why the BSA is having so much fun tracking down pirated software users. No one can afford to actually pay for this stuff.

I think Revit could absolutely wipe out the Chiefs, Softplans, Cadsofts, not to mention kill Bentley and Graphisoft, by slashing prices and marketing the product in more than just high-end "foofy" design magazines and techy cad magazines. Get down to earth and advertise in the timber home construction magazines as well...show some renderings...not like Chief's shaded views...and you would sell the **** out of this stuff.

Also, I can't imagine that the current reseller model helps us any. Maybe, since Revit needs so much less support (i.e. training) than ADT/AutoCAD, Autodesk should pull Revit from the reseller channel and just sell it directly through downloads. If a reseller wants to offer training, I suppose they still could, but I don't see any reason that the software has to be so expensive.

[Steve_Stafford]

Autodesk has to be careful with pricing strategy like any other large firm dominating it's market...too agressive may well land them in court being accused of being monopolistic and restraining trade...

That said, I too would love to see the price MUCH lower!! Lower means more buyers, more buyers means more Revit...for all of us!

[designer56644]

I beg to differ on that point Steve :).

Perhaps cross-bundling and dropping free software onto a market you already monopolize, with the specific intent of eliminating the competition could land you in a court of law, but simply dropping your price to reflect the levels of a competing market segment? That is the American Way.

ADT is competively priced with Archicad, Arris, All Plan (hmmmm, all A words, stinky...) There it stays, and there it competes. Revit has yet to establish it's true identity in terms of market share. Autodesk is trying(?) to identify it with that same market level based on price/performance... Is it working? Is this where the consumer wants to see it go?

Revit is basically an extremely gifted first round NBA draft pick. We know it is reputed to be the future of the AEC franchise. We also understand that it is being coached by the best in the business right now. But the good folks holding the purse-strings don't really care much for high level abstractions "commited too" in the heat of a honeymoon ("the Future"). When that's over, it's all about a profitable product.

All I suggest is that if Autodesk truly wants to cast a very, very bright light onto this product's future, tap it into a market segment that Autodesk has yet penetrate, but exists in the real world ... Revit would fit perfectly, and one added bonus would be that it would probably knock all those off the fence that are playing their "wait and see" stratagies. Training and conversion would be much less painful then. It would truly be a win-win situation.

(Ma always said I was a dreamer :p )

[Steve_Stafford]

Okay...I can't believe I'm going to say this but...if I owned Revit and my users says it beats my best...ADT...I could argue sanely that my product is better and thus deserves a higher premium since it out performs the "others".

Now since my customers aren't all convinced I could be persuaded to offer an introductory price etc but my product still deserves a higher price since it is "better", or conversely my other competing product now deserves a lower price... :lol:

chew away!!

[designer56644]

Who sets the price?

[hand471037]

Just to comment on Steve's & Bill's comments, The price & Marketing of Revit seems more in line with the whole AutoCAD->Mech. Desktop->Inventor chain. Inventor costs around $5,000 while Mech. Desktop is around the same price as ADT. So I think that AutoDesk is pricing & pitching Revit in a simular model as Inventor, where it's the high-end 'next-generation' 3D platform for those that are savvy enough to use it and doing work that requires it, with Mech. Desktop & AutoCAD for more production drafting work.

One thing to keep in mind is that Revit's workflow model won't fit in with many offices, no matter how well it's developed. I think there will always be a need for some 2D or '2D+' (ala ADT/MDT) tools within certain working environments. We love Revit because it empowers us to do the work of many, and because it lets us 'build' the building on the computer rather than drafting it; however for some there is a real need for a *drafting* tool that doesn't give them the ability to make global, radical, parametric changes within the whole model but instead crank out shop drawings and pick up redlines and generate quick CD's. I'm talking abotu CAD monkeys, draftspeople, not working professionals who also do thier own drafting (which seems to be the majority of Revit's market to date). So Actually I see a place for AutoCAD, for ADT, and for Revit, and don't see how one replaces the other, or negates the other. Just because our work goes better with Revit doesn't mean that it's the best CAD system for everyone's needs.

I do agree that the prices are very high. Remember that commercial software is a racket, the EULA takes all your rights away, and that they can change the deal any time they want to for any reason. Commercial software is like deailing with the Mob or the Devil, you gotta watch yourself and make certain that it's always worth the trade, otherwise you'll wind up in trouble. ;)

[Wes Macaulay]

I have heard that some price fixing is also done with respect to competitors products, and that if you mess with that you could get slapped around by the Dept of Justice for being anti-competitive. The upshot was that if Autodesk sold Revit for say, $2000 a seat, their competitors (say, Graphisoft) could sue them for being anti-competitive since their products do more or less the same thing.

Not being a lawyer I don't know what goes on behind those closed doors, but it is an interesting discussion. I do wish Revit was cheaper, too - it would be nice if everyone could afford it.

[Steve_Stafford]

Who sets the price?

If we're still in that daydream that I own Revit....why me of course! :D

[gregcashen]

That doesn't make any logical sense, since Revit also competes with Chief Architect, which is less than half the price. I doubt there is anything so convoluted going on...they probably determined how many adt seats they were selling, determined how many revit seats they should be able to convert those into over the next few years, had some WAG (Wild *** Guess) of a number they want to make off of it in the next few years, did some division, some multiplication, a lot of addition and whamo...$3400 + $700/year.

G

[Steve_Stafford]

I don't think Wes or I suggested we were being logical or sensible... :lol:

[designer56644]

Now Steve, if you don't stop that whacky behaivior..... :shock:

Price fixing in my state is what is against the law. When Autodesk, Archicad, etc., shoot at the same dollar price mark though, that's kinda what they are doing anyway. It's "nice" for them that the market is forced to bear that premium, or not participate.

Corporate anti-trust, and preditory business practices are also unlawful. Competing in your chosen market is not.

Greg!
I also perceive that alot of users here are small studios,
which disturbs me further, because does'nt it stand to reason that we are typical of the Revit market in general? Which means eventually, alot of us get squeezed out (or at least our future demograph/potential user base)?

The pricing of the current products may yeild the highest short term dividends, and the insane drive to raise that yield, quarter after quarter. But under those circumstances, where does that leave the most important participant in this whacky dance?...


The big irony for me is that the parametric BIM model is the wave of the future. Not the Revit BIM model. Most BIM products "draw" in 2d nicely, including Revit. Work can be peroformed and CD's produced without leaving that comfortable view. Some do it with great speed. Power users, designers and architects exclusively reaping the benifits of a parametric modeller sells short the intended benifits (productivity/reduced errors, etc) that could also be realised by any average user of a parametric design/drafting tool. Therefore, it makes business sense to me to exploit that clear, present, and real market opportunity to it's fullest, no matter who the vendor is, not fragment, and segregate it ($3500.00-$4500.00).

[gregcashen]

I don't think Wes or I suggested we were being logical or sensible... :lol:

Good. I knew I fit in here for a reason. :twisted:

[JamesVan]

...or we could all just switch to BOA Research for $349! :shock:

http://www.boaresearch.com

[hand471037]

Boa is cool. The windows version is a little buggy. I haven't tried the OS X one yet, maybe I'll look this weekend on the wife's computer. It's interesting; it's very much more model based than the model & Annotation Revit approach, also the 'drawing' metafore that Revit has isn't within Boa...

[Wes Macaulay]

Hey people - I had a conversation with a higher-up at Autodesk who again confirmed that Revit's price is dictated by the fact that Autodesk is a public company and must abide by American laws governing such companies. Anti-competition laws mean that two similar products like Revit and Archicad (as opposed to Revit and Vectorworks, or 3D Home Architect, which are not similar products) have to be priced competitively, or get whacked with a lawsuit.

Someone like Autodesk with deep pockets could probably afford to do some price slashing and win the day; smaller companies like Graphisoft probably need every dime of the $4,000 US a seat that they get for Archicad, so I suppose that we're stuck with prices as they are. It would be interesting if someone could do the math and tell us how much Revit SHOULD cost up to this point. It's my expectation that Revit is probably "in the hole" at this time, and it's going to be some time before Autodesk breaks even on its costs for acquiring Revit.

You look at something half-baked like BOA. It's all about the money: they don't have enough to go farther with developing the product. And that's too bad - it looks like a decent contender to compete with Revit, which is what everyone needs. Archicad's bugs sorely need fixing - the users on their listserv don't sound happy - and I'm certain Revit's acquisition by Autodesk has them worried. It should. They need to fix their software so it's down to level of Revit's bugginess, which is remarkable low in my opinion.

Good features and good code - without both your software will be run of the mill. There's some minor bugs in Revit that have been around for awhile, and as David Conant has noted in another thread (http://www.zoogdesign.com/forums/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=7212#7212), even with Autodesk's resources, there's only so much you can do. Getting good code is a mix of luck and skill - the Revit team obviously has the skill, which is why Revit is as good as it is, and the luck part, well... every program has bugs.

For the architectural profession there are few programs that are as paradigm changing as Revit. I don't hold anything against Autodesk for Revit's cost... when you consider that you used to have to pay $2,400 US a year to have Revit, it's actually cheaper to own it now than it was before Autodesk bought it. Unless you were planning to only have Revit for less than 20 months and then never use it again! I wish Revit were cheaper, but you often get what you pay for. Now all I have to do is get the firms in our area thinking about what Revit does and getting them thinking about whether Revit is worth the price. It's not like Revit is a Lexus and Vectorworks is a Yugo - both cars may (or may not!) get you where you want to go... Revit is more like a Bell 206, because it's going to take you places the Yugo can never go.

[PeterJ]

I agree with a large chunk of your comment Wes, but for many smaller users - the one, two, three man bands on here the former Revit Technology Corp model was better as you had a cash flow obligation but no high capital outlay.

I actually believe that it is the high start up costs of being a user of some softwares that fuels the pirate market within the commercial sector. In the UK it has been found that many companies will have pirate software, not because the company or the IT department belive in the use of pirates but because someone will say 'Billy, has a CD here that if we need one more bum on a seat for a month will do the trick'. Those extra seats then become permanent - this across all sectors, not just AEC. If the cost of getting someone in were done on a license and could be a temporary thing then the market would be likely to grow and the money lost to piracy, which does ultimately burden the legitimate user as well as the publisher, would be reduced. For me this is probably the strongest argument against high capital costs that exists.

[beegee]

Wes,

Another interesting post (as always .)

I agree with Peter J's comments also, the subscription model did have a lot going for it for the smaller firm.

Its hard to see the capital cost per seat getting any lower in the short term. Autodesk paid something like $ 133 M to buy Revit. Forgetting acquision & on-going development costs, to get near a reasonable ROI would mean someting like 5K new seats per year. I doubt thats happening (yet ).

One possible way around the anti-competition laws, to tap into the lower end market and thus increase market share, could be to offer "free" software with every Revit seat. Say Autocad Lite and Viz or similar.
I'm sure the marketting people at Autodesk have thought of that eons ago. There is probably a good reason why it hasn'r happened.

[gregcashen]

Interestlingly, there is another option. There is a company (http://www.web4engineers.com) that lets you rent structural engineering programs on periodic basis. I have looked into it for some more advanced structural engineering applications because I frankly cannot afford to buy Staad.pro at this point. Probably wouldn't work for Revit, but if you neede someone to have access for a month, you could potentially rent it rather than pay for a new temporary seat or pirate it.

I agree that Autodesk would do well to bundle Revit with AutoCAD LT for free. Again, I don't think you can ethically separate the two until the Revit developers themselves stop promoting AutoCAD with every workaround. I think it is a necessary addition to any Revit office...which really makes Revit $8000+

[Wes Macaulay]

Greg, that is a brilliant idea. I agree that you still need AutoCAD for many tasks (like cleaning up stuff that's on the wrong layer in AutoCAD before you import it into Revit), so including LT with Revit is such a good idea that I'm going to tell our local Autodesk rep about... and also the head of the Building Services division for Canada.

[Scott D Davis]

That was the orginal Revit pricing model. You could pay for it for a month, and then let the subscription expire. If two months later, you needed Revit again, you could pay the monthly and be working again. It was basically a rental, month to month.

[Steve_Stafford]

Was only a year ago that Autodesk was claiming a rental license scheme was going to be available for various products...where did that go I wonder?

[hand471037]

When they ended the month-to-month lease option, saying that it didn't make enough money, I wrote a long letter to Revit's CEO saying that it was a very stupid idea to end the month-to-month. When I was first getting into Revit around 3.0 every young architect I talked to about the month-to-month thing was totally jazzed, for it would be fesable for them to use Revit on little side projects or when they start their own firm. And one of the PRIMARY introducers of new technology into mid-to-small firms are the young architects and recent grads. If they were already well-versed in Revit, and if they could get it for just a few months to prove it's worth to the rest of the firm, it would do a lot for Revit's market in general.

But now it's 5 grand to even get into the game, It takes a lot more for a firm to be willing to give it a try, and is totally out of reach for someone who's looking to do a side project for a friend or start thier own firm. All it would take would be for someone to make an GPL open source CAD software that had the same capability of AutoCAD R14 or so and I would imagine that most people looking to do work on the side or just starting out would use that instead, rather than buying AutoCAD LT or going whole-hog and buying Revit, and AutoDesk would get left out of the picture altogether.

One could even argue that MicroSoft's business practices and the expense of commercial Unix gave birth to Linux; for many people had the need to have a decent server operating system, couldn't afford or didn't want what was available, and those people had the ability to make one by using a open-source developement methoid to spread the labor. If software developement tools become easyer to use, and as more Architects get more computer savvy, it's possible that Architects might get into the game and start to create thier *own* software. And when any decent CAD software costs several thousand dollars, we have all the more reason to try to help out creating viable alterantives...

[Scott D Davis]

The other nice feature of the month-to-month lease was the ablilty to add/reduce seats with the workload.

One could have had 10 seats of Revit installed. Maybe 5 are being used all the time, and the other 5 are used on an as needed basis. If the workload increased, fire up another couple of seats for a month or two.

[Steve_Stafford]

According to our reseller the m to m thing died a lonely unused death. Apparently the program wasn't as good an idea as it sounds in the real world??

[christopher.zoog51272]

According to our reseller the m to m thing died a lonely unused death. Apparently the program wasn't as good an idea as it sounds in the real world??

we used it for two years until they killed it, my boss loved it

[Steve_Stafford]

Apparently you were the only ones... :cry:

[bclarch]

According to our reseller the m to m thing died a lonely unused death. Apparently the program wasn't as good an idea as it sounds in the real world??

So Steve..., Since when do you believe everything that a reseller tells you? :D Seriously, the month to month option and the ability to add or drop subscriptions at will is what convinced the owner of my firm to take a chance on Revit. We probably wouldn't chance it now with the current pricing strategy.

I think that Autodesk's pricing policy boils down to their cash flow worries not ours. Autodesk is a big corporation with a lot of overhead. I think that the accounting division is too nervous about the possibility of their cash flow jumping up and down unpredictably every month while their overhead costs remain the same. I think that they are allowing this worry to outweigh the long term benefits of increasing their user base through a month to month strategy. A yearly program is more predictable which lets them sleep better at night. Corporate decisions are (unfortunately) based primarily on short term financial prospects because companies have to show positive results to their shareholders every quarter. If they don't it often affects the executives bonuses and the companies also risk losing their more fickle investors who watch the market second by second nowadays.

Ouch, my brain hurts. Enough for now.

[Steve_Stafford]

I trust my reseller implicitly, I've loaned him lots of money and he's been telling me about this bridge that is a good investment...he'd never lie to me, I believe everything he tells me.
[indignant mode off]

[i][stealth humor mode off]

[gregcashen]

According to our reseller the m to m thing died a lonely unused death. Apparently the program wasn't as good an idea as it sounds in the real world??

My experience has been (post Revit Acquisiton By Autodesk) that resellers are almost entirely unnessary and worthless to me.

No offense to those resellers here, because if you're here you obviously don't fit the bill seeing as how you've latched onto the wonderful world of Revit...

My experience is with a firm that clearly does not understand Revit. I practically had to convince them to sell it to me as they were still trying to push ADT on me...touting it's new release and all that jazz. It was, I later learned through a conversation with a rep there that had replaced my rep, a scheme designed to sell more training.

In short...I don't believe a word that a reseller says about Revit or Autodesk in general unless they are here or the alt.cad.revit ng.

:wink:


Another thing...along the lines of the whole pricing model...I remember reading in one of the technology mags I read regularly about a company (can't remember which for the life of me...might have been Webvan?) that started up in the heyday of the dotcom thing and did okay...good idea, bad leadership..all that sort of stuff. Anyway, they ended up getting acquired (founders sold out for hundreds of millions). Dotbomb lands and they are done...Founder buys it back for under $5,000,000 and turns it into a small boutique outfit without all the dotcom growth anxiety. Founder still has millions from the acquisition and now owns the company again for nothing.

I could see this happening to Revit if Autodesk continues its schizo ways and doesn't give Revit the attention it deserves.

[Steve_Stafford]

Ours actually is quite reliable and responsive. I did encounter a little reluctance on the Revit front but they "gave way" once they realized I was serious about it. I'd be happy to recommend them to anyone in our region. They admit readily that training folks in Revit isn't what they're "ready" for and would most likely contract with a Revit guru or someone from Revit operations.

[PeterJ]

At a recent meeting here of Revit users one thing that came out is that certain UK resellers appear reluctant to back Revit over ADT because they see a loss of revenue resulting from the much shorter learning curve in Revit.

I would guess that many of you here are largely or in part self taught and that will impact on the resellers bottom line. To make it work for them with no change Revit would actually need to cost significantly more than ADT.

On a slightly different note I believe that the monthly license as sold here, back in the mists of time, was sold on a minimum three month basis. The maths were such that there was a two to three year period, depending on how good a promotion they were running, until it became more costly to have brought outright, not that that was an option. In that time frame most major software resellers would have bought out a significant upgrade with the costs of seat sales and training. The month on month arrangement should have worked in the publishers favour as well as the purchasers favour as a three month minimum period didn't really encourage the ready pick up and drop off of the software license that was noted above and the shallower learning curve of frequent upgrades would in some part mitigate the costs of extra training. It would only be the case that in years four and on the basic capital outlay plus upgrades would be cheaper. I don't know how that works for the bigger practices but me, as a small practice example, that is too far off to be a significant factor in my purchasing decision.

[Wes Macaulay]

Working for a reseller certainly wasn't my first choice, but when I found that in a city of 2 million people that there was no one showing the locals how great Revit is, it put me on a mission.

After eight months of this, I see how the reseller thing works and note the following:[list:c23d6a0412]* Resellers know ADT because most of them had real jobs working with AutoCAD before they became reseller bums
* If a reseller discourages someone from Revit, they either fear losing control over the client because they don't know the software, or they fear losing money since ADT probably requires more support than Revit
* My company makes more helping clients with their data (lots of GIS work) than selling Bentley, Autodesk or our own software
* At one time, another local reseller in our area was discouraging people from getting into Revit; I had talked to her when I first started using Revit and gave such a good review that I don't understand why she would have put people off except for the above reasons
* Most resellers are having a tough time getting by. Because we don't just sing to any one company's tune, we have had much better fortunes and people, against better judgement, trust us[/list:u:c23d6a0412]
Resellers only have the right to exist if they know the software better than their users, and they had better have industry experience!

I am mind-boggled by how much people need to know about software - Windows, Office, Revit, AutoCAD, internet, e-mail, photo software... I'm currently supporting the use of Revit on a large transportation project, and these folks are going to be hit with some more software to learn - their document management system, which has its own logic to how it operates, and I wouldn't call it blindingly obvious.

My goal with anyone I'm training is to mind-meld them with the logic of the software. And with so many "minds" - so many programs to know - I think we'd all complain that it's not just the cost of the software that hurts, it's how differently they all operate.

The digital world is still a mess. We've got our own file format for Revit, the engineers on AutoCAD have their own, the engineers on CAICE their own, the municipal people on Microstation another. If anything could be done to make 3D data flow more freely between platforms and disciplines, it would be a great thing.