September 2015
Contents
The American actor and comedian George Burns (1896-1996) liked to tell his audience "When I get up in the morning, the first thing I do is read the obituaries. If my name isn't in there, I eat breakfast.”
My morning routine is different. I brew a cup of Starbucks House Blend on the Keurig coffee maker, then enter "Printing Estimating" into Google. If the Morning Flight website is still in first place, it's shaping up to be a good day.
Search engine rankings are important. Though not an end-all, they do reflect online traffic. Being number one tells us more potential customers have walked into our internet showroom than into the showrooms of our competitors.
Having consistently occupied the top spot since February (not counting paid advertising and the Capterra review site), it's time we said a big "Thank You" for your support. We wouldn't be in first place without your patronage.
Hal Heindel
Unitac International Inc.
P.S. My favorite George Burns quote? “You know you're getting old when you stoop to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you're down there.”
How much for a Print MIS?
We know it's a loaded question, kind of like asking "How much should I pay for a car?" The answer, of course, is it depends. Print MIS software functionality is all over the map. So are prices.
We make it easy to see what we offer and how much it will cost you. Our prices are posted at the Morning Flight Shop. Don't expect to find that kind of transparency anywhere else. And realistically, in some cases you shouldn't. Publishing the prices of high end 30,000 dollar MIS software on a web store is frankly impossible. Such systems are custom configured and priced a la carte, and well outside Morning Flight's playing field.
That leaves the middle ground, systems aimed at midsize print shops, with maybe a couple of million in sales and five or more employees. While here too prices are far from uniform, there's no reason they couldn't be published. Lacking hard figures, we found this post on Print Planet:
"For the MIS only, a starting price for a single seat unlimited user perpetual license is around $100 per week, over 36 months."
So somewhere around 14,000 dollars distributed over a period of three years, which I presume would include annual maintenance fees. Perpetual use means "forever" and I'm not sure how that would kick in when the three-year subscription runs out. The author of the post promotes ROI. I fully agree with that. Four hundred dollars a month isn't cheap, but if the system fits the bill, even at that price it ought to pay for itself.
Print Planet Post Morning Flight Shop
New Morning Flight MP4 Videos
The next time you stop in at our website, don't forget to visit the new video page. Flash is no longer supported by Apple, so we've converted all our screencasts to standard MP4 files. The original Flash files are still there at the top of the page, with links to matching MP4 files at the bottom.
Yes, MP4 files will play on your iPad.
The Printfire website, as viewed by Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. It's the most widely used web service of its kind on the Internet. The breath of information Analytics lets you track is eye-opening, once you learn how and where to look for it.
Search for Printing Estimating