Getting Things Sold

I had a little chat with John Polling about switching from Things to OmniFocus. Both are apps built around the popular productivity process GTD – Getting Things Done.DO NOT FRET THIS IS NOT A POST ABOUT PRODUCTIVITY GURU MYSTICISMJohn had been using Things for some time, but has switched to OmniFocus and has tweeted a lot about how impressed he is with it. I commented that I wouldn’t be able to move because I’ve got so much personally invested in Things – moving would be painful and very expensive in terms of time. Since we had that chat I’ve been wondering about the price tag for these apps. OmniFocus comes in at a whopping $79.99 while Things is £34.99 – and that’s before you buy supporting apps. Once you’ve paid the money down the real investment you make in the product is time, and that could be quite powerful commercially for the software company. I’m really surprised that these apps aren’t running a freemium model – much longer free periods followed by an on-going subscription, or a reduced free feature set alongside a premium subscription. I’m so locked into Things now that I’d certainly pay a small annual charge just to maintain the time investment I’ve made in populating the app with my data.Lucky for me, Cultured Code are happier with a one off up front payment, but I wonder how the sales figures would look if they gave people longer trial periods to invest in the system.John Polling is a super freaky awesome web developer who I was lucky enough to work with in a past life – hire him, you know he’s super efficient as he uses GTDPicture CC licensed by jkleske

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