Apr 14 2009
Iron Speed licensing: Now even more absurd
Well it seems Iron Speed are at it again with their ridiculous licensing policies. I received an email from Iron Speed which contained the following information:
Beginning with our upcoming Version 6.1, Iron Speed Designer can be installed only on one machine at a time. Simply uninstall Designer to move to a different machine. As with earlier releases, your software license permits one named user to run on one machine.
For years, power users have purchased extra licenses so they can run on multiple machines. If you’d like to use the product this way, we are pleased to offer a special one-time 30% discount on additional licenses for yourself or other currently licensed developers on your team. Please contact your sales representative to assist you with a purchase or email sales@ironspeed.com.
This offer expires on April 23, 2009 and will not be repeated.
There are 2 things that annoy me with this “incredible offer”. First is that they’re actually making it harder for you to run multiple instances of the designer. From what I’m reading, you can no longer activate and deactivate instances, you actually need to uninstall your copy of Iron Speed to transfer it between machines.
Second, they are giving you the opportunity to buy more licenses so you can run the software you already own on more than one machine. It’s completely absurd. If you do any sort of consulting work, there’s no doubt you’ll have multiple machines. I personally have 2 laptops and a desktop. At any given time, depending on the job I’m doing, I could be on any one of the three computers. It’s just not viable to have 3 licenses of a single product to use on those machines. Throw in the fact that I can’t even run Iron Speed from within a virtual machine and you suddenly question whether Iron Speed have any idea what they’re doing when it comes to licensing and marketing.
Iron Speed have a decent product, but the ridiculous nature of their licensing continues to annoy me so much that I will refuse to purchase from them.
April 28th, 2009 at 9:43 am
Phil~
AMEN!! We began using this product back around version 4.0, and I thought their licensing model was dumb back then. It seems with each release of their software they attempt something to further alienate their customer. We have fought blackmail and price gouging from Iron Speed for the past year or so. It is such a shame because the product is a great Rapid Prototyping and UI builder but their customer service and sales staff are just awful. We were forced to stop purchasing from them as well because of their poor customer service.
April 29th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
Hi Jason,
It really is hard to understand a licensing system that alienates paying customers. I don’t have a problem with them trying to protect their product, but there are certainly smarter ways to go about it. It seems like Iron Speed are completely focused on extracting the maximum dollars out of their customers with little regard for the fact that we are in fact already paying customers. I have other stories of Iron Speed simply de-activating fleets of licenses but NDA’s prevent me from going into detail. All I can say to potential customers is beware and make sure you completely understand the licensing model before you commit your dollars to Iron Speed.
May 17th, 2009 at 3:06 am
here’s how i feel about ironspeed at the moment–i came across this post because i was searching for a place to “get the word out” about ironspeed’s ridiculous licensing policies. we have several licenses of their software and have used the product for a few years now. my machine recently was infected with a virus and had to be reformatted. the IT folks gave the machine a new name. i called ironspeed support just this week (may 2009) to ask them to unlock the activation for my own named user account. their response:
-under no circumstances to we unlock activations
-it is YOUR fault (their words) for not backing up your license
-the “easiest solution” is for me to get my IT staff to rename my machine on the domain. when i said, “actually, the easiest thing is for you to support me as a customer and unlock this activation.”
they don’t care that we have been customers for several years and are apparently fine losing us as customers. i am the head of my team and my patience with ironspeed has now run out. not only are we not going to spend any more money on the product, but i am going to strongly advise any and all potential ironspeed customers to steer clear of this product.
May 17th, 2009 at 3:09 am
…forgot the most ridiculous thing–the representative on the phone actually said that i should buy another license if i couldn’t get IT to rename my machine. is it greed? a complete disregard for customer service? if the reason that they’re behaving like this is that they desperately need the subscription and new license revenue, i’m more than happy to deny them any contribution from us.
June 12th, 2009 at 3:34 am
So, Phil, as a long time ISD user…. what will you switch to using?
June 17th, 2009 at 1:39 am
I strongly agree with all comments about the product and the abusive nature of the company’s sales people and founders not excluded. The change in their license policies together with the constant revisions that mandate users to pay for upgrades is shamefull. I was burned and I advise others to be very carefull.
No more dollars for IronSpeed.
June 20th, 2009 at 8:32 am
@currentironspeedcustomer: I’m currently writing a post about the alternatives, but at the moment I’m using a combination of tools which I’ll elaborate on at a later date.
July 15th, 2009 at 9:36 am
@Iomaxx – thanks, will look forward to your tools evaluation.
July 29th, 2009 at 11:37 am
I’m a new customer and just had my first run-in with Technical support. After my first month of (rather useless) technical support has ended, the sales guy phoned me to ‘find out if he can help’. At that stage 4 questions posted during the subscription month was still not properly answered and he told me that they will not answer those any more as my month of support is over. Only after getting furious and contacting his manager, I got my questions answered. If I have to start contacting managers to get support staff to do their work then I don’t see why I have to pay a cent more for anything from that company. I used it for 1 month and am fed-up already. Be warned.
November 17th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Are there any other products out there that even come close to their feature set? I see different companies that sell different controls, and I see nothing that comes close to Iron Speed. Pleae provide some feedback. Like to know what are the other options.
February 6th, 2010 at 4:49 am
This licensing is just another reason I won’t upgrade. (The main reason is that the PAIN and COST involved in upgrading a complex app to a new version is ridicuous.) Still on 5.X, and unless a client is willing to fund an upgrade, I will be migrating off Iron Speed. It is a good prototyping tool. But not to build serious, business-class apps.
February 10th, 2010 at 11:09 pm
Nice posts guys thanks for the insight. I almost bought ironspeed but after reading this and several other related articles and posts found via google I decided to dig deep and look for alternatives. Although ironspeed seems like a great tool it is just to scary to invest the development of an enterprise app to a company that treats their customers this way. I spent 2 months and downloaded just about every code gen product out there. This isnt an evangelist post but I have found the product offered by codeontime.com to be pretty damned good. It is still maturing and takes a little getting used to but after 2 months into it I think these guys are really getting it right. Just my opinion………….