Why won Balmori Software release prices when I inquire over the phone or by e-mail?
For commodity items like rice, desktop PCs, gasoline, and laundry detergent, it’s quite all right to base one’s purchasing decisions on price. But though almost everything else in information technology has become commoditized, software hasn’t. In the software business (especially in the software business), price is a supremely untrustworthy indicator of quality; it is quite possible to pay millions for junk, while an appropriate, effective solution for mere thousands is right under one’s nose. For software solutions, we maintain that it is absurd to make a buy/don’t-buy decision, or to make up a short list of potential vendors, on the basis of price alone. That’s a myopic, potentially career-damaging approach. To help our prospects and customers make an informed decision when investing in software solutions, we release prices only after we have had a chance to present the product to a responsible officer of a prospective customer (a time investment of one to two hours). Once we have h
