MSPmentor

It’s not a per-user price cut. But Autotask has found a way to lower the barrier of entry for Autotask Go!,  the company’s cloud-based professional services automation (PSA) software. Specifically, Autotask Go! is now available in a single user license of $29. Here are some details above the move, plus some thoughts on the cloud competition between Autotask and ConnectWise.

Until now, Autotask Go! was sold only as a bundle of 3-users plus a QuickBooks Extension for $99, notes Autotask Chief Marketing Officer Bob Vogel. But the single user license lowers the barrier to entry for smaller IT service providers. Still, Vogel is quick to note that Autotask is not lowering the per-user price of Autotask or Autotask Go!

“We believe that the service is already an amazing value,” Vogel says. “We haven’t had a price increase since January 2007 and have no increases planned for the foreseeable future.”

The Bigger Story

Read between the lines and I believe Vogel was striving to differentiate the Autotask Go! single-user license deal from ConnectWise’s July 2009 price cut on Hosted ConnectWise.

No doubt, Autotask and ConnectWise are locked in a war evangelizing their respective cloud strategies. Except for some selected customer settings, virtually all of Autotask’s customer base runs Autotask’s software in the cloud. In stark contrast, roughly 90 percent of ConnectWise’s partners run ConnectWise’s software on premise and 10 percent in the cloud — though that data is a few months old and I need to check in with ConnectWise to see how the hosted business is ramping.

In recent months, ConnectWise has increased its marketing efforts around hosted and cloud services — including a unified business process management system that connects ConnectWise and third-party applications in the cloud.

I’ll have more on MSPs in the cloud later this week.

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Read More About This Topic

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• ConnectWise Cuts Hosted Pricing
• Autotask Acquires VARStreet: Services, Products Converge
• MSPs: Reinvention Once Again Is the Key to Success