Looking at the online MindMappers, including another entrant called comapping .com, the most interesting distinction between the contestants is the business model. Mind42 is still beta and MindMeister offers free basic functionalities plus a premium service. Comapping only offers a 30 day free trial period...
Comapping is cheaper than Mindmeister and more in line with what I would be prepared to pay for a service.
I like the Wordpressmodel, to offer very good free services, no intrusive or annoying advertising and really fair upgrade prices, for example to finetune the CSS or publish the blog under your own domain name. All that for a reasonable price: 10$ per year here and 15$ per year there. Same for flickr: 25$ per year is fair and square, I wouldn't pay more.
The comapping model (no free services) works best, when a unique service is offered, but obviously this is not the case anymore. Mindmeister on the other hand is having great basic features for free, but the upgrade subscription price is quite heavy. I am curious about mind42...
To marketeers and investors, it always looks attractive to offer those monthly yearly subscritions from 5 Eur per month. But those monthly payments quickly add up, particularly for small companies with employees. To me reasonable seems to be up to 25$ per year for essential services, mindmapping should cost the same, maybe even less.
This post has been originally published on:
http://qommunity.wordpress.com/2007/06/13/how-to-make-money-from-web-based-services/There is also a more recent article here on qompute.net, which is discussing web services for groups and also mentions similar thoughts about premium business models
I tried all the mind mapping software that you mentioned and find comapping the best not only in terms of pricing but also in terms of usability, format and structure which clearly differentiates itself from the rest of the competitors. Trying out the different mindmapping softwarei in the last few weeks, I would have to disagree and say that Comapping is in my opinion is a unique mind mapping tool and well worth the 11.99 USD.
ReplyDeleteHi Yasmin, I haven't done any real testing and therefore can't compare the functionality and interface of the different services. I will certainly look closer to comapping's offer thanks to your comment :-) .
ReplyDeleteMy post was around pricing and my only criticism regarding comapping is that there are no free services and that therefore the decision-making barrier whether to use comapping is relatively high.
BTW it's 11.99 USD for 6 months !
Thanks, I just checked again. I think they have a special pay up front offer for 11.99 for 9 months. I guess for people who want to sign up front.
ReplyDeleteJust to let you know Comapping has made a one of our most important updates so far. Please click here to read more.
ReplyDeleteOnline Mindmappers
ReplyDeleteIt’s a web 2.0 service of course. Over the summer I wrote a couple of blogposts about mindmapping here. Without naming a favourite here are the contenders so far:
MindMeister.com
Mind42.com
CoMapping.com
MindOmo.com
WiseMapping.com
I still ha...