POLYTROPE CMAssistant: Sales

CMAssistant licensing and pricing

In order to use CMAssistant, you will need (1) a single license for CMAssistant; (2) as many licenses for FileMaker Pro 8 as there are workstations that will need to access CMAssistant; (3) hardware that can run FileMaker Pro 8. If you wish to share CMAssistant on a network, we strongly recommend (4) a license for FileMaker Server 8, which will need to run on a dedicated server machine; but this is not absolutely required. In addition, there may be a charge for the transfer of your legacy data into CMAssistant. For information about hardware requirements for FileMaker Pro 8, visit FileMaker Inc's website. For information on the cost of FileMaker Pro 8 licenses, FileMaker Server 8 and compatible hardware, we recommend that you contact your favorite reseller. For information about CMAssistant costs and licensing, read on, and then get in touch with Polytrope Sales.

CMAssistant supports the distribution of multiple publications, but it is designed for use by a single primary publication, working in a single distribution area and that is how it is licensed. A distribution area is typically a single metropolitan area, so, for example, Dallas and Fort Worth would be two different distribution areas. The price for CMAssistant is loosely or indirectly based on the total circulation to be managed with CMAssistant; technically and precisely, the pricing is based on the number of deliveries per month that you will expect to manage with CMAssistant.

Versions of CMAssistant (through 3.2) distinguished between standard (single-publication) and deluxe (multi-publication) licenses. With version 3.5, that distinction was abolished. All users of CMAssistant 3.5, 4.x and 5.x may use it to distribute multiple publications, provided you stay within the deliveries-per-month cap from your original license. If you have a standard license for CMAssistant 3.2 or earlier, all you need to do is upgrade to 3.5 and you'll be able to distribute multiple publications.

If you would like to get a quote, please write to support-at-polytrope.com and provide the following information:

  1. To whom should we address the quote? Please give us: name of primary publication, personal name of contact (with title, preferably, so we know who you are), mailing address (street or post office address) and email address.
  2. How many deliveries per month do you reasonably expect CMAssistant to be processing? See below for an explanation of this. To help us help you get this figure right, we would like to know the publication's circulation, the number of routes, the number of locations to which it is distributed, and the percentage of locations that are restocked. (See below for an explanation of "deliveries per month.")

We would also be grateful if you would provide the following information:

  1. What operating system do you expect to use to run CMAssistant: Windows 2000, Windows XP, Mac OS X, Mac OS 9? None of these? More than one of these?
  2. Do you expect to share the solution on a network with one or more other users?
  3. Do you have the latest version of FileMaker Pro already?
  4. What are you using currently to manage your circulation?
  5. Do you have legacy data that you think you would want Polytrope LLC to help you transfer into CMAssistant?

The determining factor for the price is the number of deliveries per month.

"Deliveries per month"?

CMAssistant's license is based not on the number of copies you circulate in a month and not on the number of locations that you're delivering to, but on the actual number of individual deliveries scheduled within a month. Redeliveries are counted separately, so are deliveries of different publications to the same location. In CMAssistant's terminology, a "delivery" is the taking of copies of a particular publication to a particular location on a particular date. In each case, "particular" means "single." So, for example:

  1. Say the Island Monthly is delivered just once a month (no redeliveries) to Will's Sandwich Shop: this counts as 1 delivery per month.
  2. Say Ithaca This Week is delivered to Will's Sandwich Shop twice each week, one primary delivery and one redelivery: this counts as 2 deliveries per week or roughly 9 deliveries per month.
  3. Say Sandy's Fish Barn gets two papers (Ithaca This Week and the Sailor's Report) delivered to it weekly, and one of them is restocked once. That counts as 3 deliveries a week or roughly fifteen deliveries per month.
  4. Say Ithaca This Week mails 1300 copies each week to paid subscribers. This number of papers is accounted for in CMAssistant as a single delivery record. This counts as 1 delivery per week. (This example is mentioned simply because this is a frequently-asked question. This and similar cases should produce numbers of "deliveries" so small as to be of no consequence to the pricing formula.)

When we receive your inquiry, we will suggest a ceiling that in our experience should work for you. To convert deliveries per week into deliveries per month, we generally multiply the average number of deliveries per week by 5. Why 5? A month normally consists of 4.3 weeks. Multiplying by 5 provides a roughly 20% cushion to account for growth and variations in monthly circulation. This delivery/month number is hard coded into your copy of CMAssistant and when you create drop records each week, CMAssistant checks last month's delivery count to make sure it has not exceeded this number. (If it does, you'll get a gentle notice advising you to upgrade your license.) [return to top]

Note that, in all the examples above, the pricing formula does not care whether the individual delivery amount is 50 papers or 500. We want your paper to grow while you are using CMAssistant. In addition, we are aware that distribution systems expand and contract seasonally. The delivery cap hard-coded into your copy of CMAssistant will provide for both. Capping your license based on deliveries per month rather than copies per month provides you with much more flexibility.

The maintenance contract

The initial cost of the license for CMAssistant includes a one-year maintenance contract that provides you with access to tech support for CMAssistant and "upgrade insurance." "Upgrade insurance" gives you access, at no additional charge, to updates and upgrades released during the subscription period. The maintenance contract is renewable at the end of the term.

NOTE: The maintenance contract resembles something known in the software industry as a "subscription." We try to avoid using the term "subscription" since it has a very different meaning to the publications we are selling CMAssistant to. We also avoid it because a "software subscription" sometimes describes a non-perpetual right to use the software - that is, an arrangement where the subscriber can use the software only so long as he pays his monthly or quarterly subscription fee to the software publisher. That is not how CMAssistant is licensed. You have the right to use the version of CMAssistant that you purchased initially forever, or until that license is superseded by another license when you upgrade to a newer, better version. Because CMAssistant's development has been ongoing, almost all of our licensees have regarded it as beneficial to renew their maintenance contracts year to year and stay current with the software. Version 1 of CMAssistant (then called EXTRA!) was released in late 1999. Seven years later, we are at version 5.8, meaning that there has been roughly 1 major upgrade to the software every year.

What the price for CMAssistant does not include

As you make your purchase decision, please keep in mind that the costs and licensing terms described here apply to the CMAssistant license alone.

CMAssistant runs under FileMaker Pro, one of the world's most widely used database-management applications. You must purchase separately a copy of FileMaker Pro for each computer on which you wish to use CMAssistant. If you would like more than one computer on your LAN to have access to CMAssistant, you may want to purchase FileMaker Pro Server software, also sold separately. Through a special program available to Associate and Partner-level members of the FileMaker Solutions Alliance, we may be able to help you get the best price on one or more copies of FileMaker Pro, so please ask. But remember that the cost of FileMaker is not included in your quote for CMAssistant.

The cost of your subscription to CMAssistant does not include the costs involved in getting your pre-existing data into CMAssistant Some of our clients start from scratch with CMAssistant and thus have no data to convert. The rest of our clients have taken advantage of our conversion service, for which a separate charge applies. Updates and upgrades to CMAssistant are self-performing but require a modest degree of technical know-how (mainly, the ability to follow detailed instructions). However, we will be happy to perform routine updates and upgrades for customers for a small fee.

The licensing subscription under which you use CMAssistant provides technical support for CMAssistant alone, not for FileMaker. As a convenience to our users, we provide here the answers to frequently asked questions about such FileMaker-related questions as the proper use of CMAssistant on a network, backing up your files and other file maintenance, how to recover damaged files, and the like (see the tech notes listed on the CMAssistant support page). Tech support related to FileMaker rather than CMAssistant will be charged to you at our normal hourly consulting rate. [return to top]

More about the CMAssistant license

The CMAssistant license is non-transferable. The CMAssistant license is granted to the owner of a single publication and is intended for use by this licensee distributing that publication (or that publication plus one or more secondary publications which may or may not be owned by the primary licensee) within a single geographical distribution area. The full CMAssistant license contains many other terms and restrictions common in software licensing agreements. The CMAssistant license is available online as an Adobe Acrobat document; click here to download it or view it. You may need to right-click or control-click the link to be able to download the file. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view this file. If you would like us to send you a text-only copy of the license, please email us.

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Terms provided on this page are subject to change without notice.

Copyright © 2007, Polytrope LLC, Dallas, Texas. All rights reserved.

This page last modified: April 19, 2007