LandlordMax Version 3.11f is Now Available!
We just released the latest version of LandlordMax Property Management Software (version 3.11f) tonight. If you’re a LandlordMax’er I suggest you upgrade to this latest version. The most noticeable change you’ll notice is that we’ve really enhanced all the reports printouts. Although the reports were really good before, we’ve brought them up to another level. On your computer screen you might not notice the difference as much, but when you print the reports out on paper the use of a darker gray instead of black for the lines makes the reports much more readable (click here to view a sample report).
As well this latest version of LandlordMax is a maintenance release, which means we’ve resolved some issues within the software. In particular we resolved two bugs that can affect you. One of these is that the report “Account entries for a Landlord (adjusted % owned)” didn’t work for some individuals in particular situations (the report just didn’t generate). This was of course resolved. The other issue that we dealt with how negative expenses were shown and calculated on two specific expense related reports. After that all the remaining issues are pretty much minor issues, such as having some text truncated, icons revised, etc. You can find a complete detailed list of all changes (release notes) for version 3.11f here.
Actually one of the more noticeable minor changes we made was the default screen size of LandlordMax. Up until this release LandlordMax supported all screen sizes from 800 x 600 up and default to 800 x 600 on startup. As of version 3.11f, the default screen size is 1024 x 768. Although we realize this may be an issue for some people (we still have approximately 3% of the people visiting our website using this resolution), they can still downgrade their LandlordMax screen size to 800 x 600.
However as of the next major release we will only support the screen resolution of 1024 x 768 and higher. That’s a pretty standard, 97% of our web visitors have this screen resolution or higher. We preemptively did this change to determine the reaction, if any, we might encounter from our current users before we fully commit. The reason we’re increasing the minimum supported screen resolution for the next major release is because we’re finding it impossible to properly display all the data we want to expose. Not to mention the fact that 97% of our users have already moved to this higher resolution (try to buy a monitor today that’s lower than 1024 x 768!). We have to do this if we want to continue to grow and offer more and more enhanced functionality. This is especially true if we want to do it in a very user friendly manner (aka. easy to use). In other words this is in anticipation of these imminent upcoming needs.
In any case, I strongly recommend you download this latest release of LandlordMax if you haven’t already done so. The updated reports alone are worth it!
· April 13th, 2008 · 11:05 pm · Permalink
Steph:
I was thinking about your software and it looks really great. I can’t attest to being a customer, yet, but if I were to become one soon I wouldn’t just want the trial.
Really, this software is meant for long term use and 30 days just isn’t going to give you that “feeling” of whether it’s going to be an asset to the business.
I was wondering if you had ever though of offering the software for free and limit it’s use to say 5 properties (or even one or two?) with no limits of functionality.
That way new users like myself could really use it without worrying about spending all this time setting it up and then possibly not liking it. Plus, for your benefit this could get people to use it, commit to it, and then after awhile they won’t want to make the hassle to switch to someone else’s product and thus purchase the upgrade to yours.
Just a thought. Keep up the great work!
– Joshua
· April 15th, 2008 · 4:39 pm · Permalink
Hi Joshua,
Firstly thank you for the compliments on LandlordMax, that’s very appreciated.
In regards to the free trial for smaller real estate portfolios, we have thought about it quite a bit. The issue we’re facing is that many smaller real estate investors never grow past a handful of properties, and therefore would never end up buying the software.
Although the majority of our customers do have larger portfolios, we still have a considerable amount of customers with small portfolios (double digit percentage). That being said, we are a business that needs to generate money to grow and evolve the software, to make it better. We’d love to give it out for free as a way to seed the software for real estate investors with smaller portfolios, but the unfortunate truth is too many would never grow enough to buy the software. We just can’t give our product away free unless enough decide to purchase it later.
Which is where our analysis led us, we started to calculate the costs of supporting this free customer base. With software comes support, and we offer high quality support, it’s part of why we sell so well. This costs money, and based on some basic research and assumptions, if we gave away a free version for one to a few properties we’d get a lot of traffic, many small real estate investors would use it. With that large increase in traffic we’d also experience a large increase in support, and hence support costs. The question is would the additional support costs be enough to absorb the future conversions? At this time I don’t think this is true, especially not as the smaller and less astute investors are getting weeded out of the market today…
I might be wrong, but I suspect this would cost us much more money than it would generate. And this is why we don’t offer this. It’s a great idea, at least until the support costs are added into the total.
· April 15th, 2008 · 8:41 pm · Permalink
Thank you for the astute and detailed reply! How about offering a 1 property version? That way you still hook people to the software and limit your exposure to aforementioned problems?
Then again, maybe I’m just cheap. 😉
· April 15th, 2008 · 9:15 pm · Permalink
[…] And that was us on Monday this week. The good thing is that it was a completely quiet day!!! Not a word. Not a peep. Nothing. The release went absolutely perfect. Not one hitch. The server got hammered by the sheer number of downloads but it held up without a problem. A lot of people upgraded based on the sheer number of downloads, but not one support request was related to the upgrade! […]
· April 21st, 2008 · 10:35 am · Permalink
Hi Joshua,
Btw, I love your persistence, that’s a good trait in business 🙂
Let me ask you a question, would you be able to offer the first GB for free to everyone on DatSure? What do you think would happen to your bottom line?
That’s exactly the same situation we’re looking at.
· April 21st, 2008 · 11:29 am · Permalink
You do your research, lol! Yes, I could probably offer the first 1 GB free if I were trying to attract new clients that I thought might be hesitant.
But, if I don’t have to I won’t. 😉 It all depends on the situation. However, the differences between our two business models is that your software is MUCH harder to move away from. They would have to re-enter all of their information, history, records, etc.. into another software product and that would be a huge pain for them.
With mine they only have to select a few files/directories and they can switch to someone else. I’m saying with your product if you can hook them in with the first house or two.. then it would be more difficult for them to try something new when they are already familiar and “locked into” your product.
Just a thought. 😉
· April 23rd, 2008 · 2:01 pm · Permalink
Hi Joshua,
I try to do my research 🙂
When I suggested you offer a free 1Gb, I was hoping you’d look at it from another point of view. A 1Gb customer or a multi-Gb customer is probably going to cost the same amount of support. However you’ll get a lot more 1Gb free customers, which means a lot more support costs. You might get some additional revenue, but you’ll also significantly increase your costs. Is it worth it?
You are very correct in that for us the data is much harder to transition, which is an incentive. But you might also be amazed at how many customers we’re getting from our competitors, customers willing to either re-enter in the data or start fresh. That’s how much they want to change. But that’s another story 😉
In any case, you may be right. I just fear that our support costs will significantly increase which is why we don’t do it.