September 2019
Contents
Good Morning,
With nearly fifteen years and more than six thousand installations in 114 countries under its belt, the FreeRide edition will soon be up for retirement. Waiting in the wings is “Stratoprint Zero,” another no-cost print pricing application taking shape at our new satellite office on the Space Coast of Florida.
The two programs do have some overlap, but their job descriptions couldn't be more different. Both calculate offset and digital (Zero also does wide format), and both come without a price tag, but that's where their similarity ends. Where FreeRide serves as a bare bones estimating program for small print shops, Stratoprint Zero is a print market price guide with a built-in calculator.
Reduced to basics, FreeRide tells you what you need to charge based on what it costs you to make, Zero tells you what you can charge based on what other print shops in the U.S. are getting for the same kind of work. The smart choice is to use both - Stratoprint Zero to see whether you could be leaving money on the table, and FreeRide to alert you that you might be taking a bath and that it's a bad idea to even quote. And because both programs are really, really cheap (as in "Zero, nothing, not a penny"), before long you can do precisely that.
Hal Heindel
Unitac International Inc.
First Look - Stratoprint Zero
Morning Flight FreeRide •Hourly Rates, Click Charges and Markups are fully adjustable •Maintains a customer file and creates quotes for offset and digital •Can't price booklets or digital NCR •Designed for small print shops •Available free of charge |
Stratoprint Zero •All pricing is locked. It needs to be, or Zero wouldn't be much of a price guide •No customer file. Creates worksheets for offset, digital, and wide format •Can price booklets and digital NCR •Designed for print sellers and buyers •Available free of charge |
Loving Florida, but . . .
. . . we’re not giving up our headquarters in upstate New York. The freedom to exchange the cold and snow of the North Country for Florida sunshine and warmth in the winter, while escaping the heat and humidity of the South during the dog days of summer is doing wonders for our productivity.
Our new Florida getaway is located on Merritt Island, a short twenty minute drive from the Kennedy Space Center and literally around the corner from the cruise ships and seafood restaurants at Port Canaveral. Life is good, with a Note to Self: You're not escaping the Rochester winters to play, you came to keep developing new software and finish writing the Cobra Story.