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[CLZ News] Long Term Roadmap for our desktop programs

Oct 31, 2014

CLZ Alwin here. One year ago, in October 2013, we introduced “Update Plans”, our subscription system for getting updates of your desktop software. And I am proud to announce that at this moment, after 12 months:

Over 50 thousand (!!) CLZ customers have an active Update Plan!

Thank you all for your loyalty!
To celebrate the success of Update Plans, I am going to do something I rarely do:
I am going give you an exclusive insight into our long term “roadmap” for the desktop programs.

Today’s subjects:

  • Reminder: What is an Update Plan?
  • The Past: one year of continuous improvements!
  • The Present: over 50 thousand active Update Plans!
  • The Future: our Long Term Roadmap.

Reminder: What is an Update Plan?

In short:

  • Our Win/Mac software is “pay once and use forever” software.
  • Every new license purchased includes a free 1-year Update Plan.
  • An Update Plan is a subscription for getting software updates.
  • When your Update Plan expires, your software stays fully functional.
  • Update Plans can be renewed or extended from your my.clz.com page,
    for US $2.50/month (auto-recurring) or US $24.95/year (pre-paid).

The Past: one year of continuous improvements!

We introduced the Update Plan system to free our programmers from the chains of the “yearly major upgrade” schedule, allowing them to work on all programs more continuously. Whereas in the old system, they worked on one program at a time, resulting in one paid major upgrade per program each year, then nothing for the rest of the year.

And looking back at the past year, the new system is clearly working:
The Update Plan system has resulted in a continuous flow of nice updates for all programs, Windows and Mac, including big features (like the new User Defined Fields system) and many improvements to existing functionality (e.g. the improved Edit Lists screen and the nicer Preview templates in Add Auto).

For a reminder of all updates that were released for your program(s), take a look at our Updates Pages:

The Present: over 50 thousand active Update Plans!

One year into the new Update Plan system, over 50 thousand Collectorz.com customers have an active Update Plan, meaning that they are able to install all new versions that we release for their software.

As you can read in the next topic (“The Long Term Roadmap”), we’ve got a lot of cool stuff coming, so make sure you have a valid, non-expired, Update Plan.
Log in to your My.CLZ.com account now to check and renew where needed.

Update Plans cost US $2.50 per month (when paid monthly).

Volume discounts apply when pre-paying for a longer period.
These are your options:

  1. Click here to pre-pay for a fixed period
    (one-time payment, stops automatically)
    Available options:

    • 3 months for US $6.95 (discount: US $0.45)
    • 6 months for US $12.95 (discount: US $2)
    • 1 year for US $24.95 (discount: US $5) »» most popular
    • 2 years for US $44.95 (discount: US $15)
    • 3 years for US $64.95 (discount: US $25)
    • 4 years for US $79.95 (discount: US $40)
  2. Click here to start monthly payments
    (Automatic monthly credit card payments)

    • US $2.50 per month (cancel anytime)

The Future: our Long Term Roadmap:

If you’ve been with us for a while, you may know that we rarely provide a long-term roadmap of what we will be working on, mainly to allow us complete freedom to change our planning, change our priorities, etc…

But today, I am giving you a rare insight in our long-term “to-do” list, an overview of the main things we’re planning to work on in the next year or so. However, no promises, no ETAs, we may still change our minds 🙂

The BIG stuff:

  • Fully automatic 1-button two-way CLZ Cloud syncing (like in FineDiner),
    making the sync much faster and better able to handle large databases.

  • Syncing of more data to the CLZ Cloud and mobile apps,
    like User Defined Fields, Loan info, tracks for music, etc…

  • Mac OS X: A faster database format: maybe even compatible with Windows.
  • Submit to Core for Movies, v2.0.
  • Submit to Core for Games.

and the rest:

  • Direct editing of First and Last Names of Artists/Authors/Actors in the Edit screen grids.
  • A better Field Selection screen (for Columns, Sort and Folder Fields).
  • A tool to remove “orphan images”.
  • A better Loan Manager screen.
  • Better support for using Movie/Book Collector as Seen It / Read It trackers.
  • More improvements for the Tools / Edit List screen.
  • Webcam barcode scanning.
  • Share collection list or items to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.
  • Better manuals and FAQs.
  • Comics: auto-download current values.
  • Games: import from Steam.
  • … and lots more …

BTW: the above list is about the desktop software only. Of course there will also be many updates for Connect and the iOS/Android apps. In fact, BIG Connect news is coming up next week, watch your inbox!

Talk to you next month!