Have you noticed an increasing, disturbing trend in software sales websites where they intentionally hide the price of the software on the website, but enthusiastic prod visitors to download their trial? I am immediately suspicious of any vendor who will not tell me what the price of their software is and instead make me click through a bunch of order screens to get the answer or download their trial. Put a freaking price tag on the software!

Check out the screenshot above of one vendor I came across this morning that doesn’t want to tell me the price, but wants me to download their trial and check out their software. When you click through their order link you end up at the form shown above asking:

Please fill up the Order Form below and click on submit when the form is filled. Once your form is submitted to us, we will revert back to you with a proper quotation to your email address within 2 working days.

Don’t know about anybody else here, but when they need to send me a quote, I’m thinking the software is very expensive. The last time I got a quote from a company selling software the price started at $20,000. No wonder they didn’t put the price on the website.

It’s a shame if this company was selling single user licenses for under a hundred bucks because I might have bitten if the product was business useful and/or cool. Unfortunately this unnamed, suspect company will never know because this potential customer stopped at their get-a-quote form.

Unless the commercial software is recommended by several other people or from a major vendor then I’m not going to go all Sherlock Holmes on the price, nor download the trial to unlock the mystery. In this day and age of spyware, trojans, viruses and other nasty garbage, I’ve got an extra cynical eye honed in on any suspicious or deceptive behavior — especially when it comes to download new/unknown software.

If they can’t start out the relationship by simply telling me how much their software costs, who knows what else mischief will be unleashed once their code is installed.

What about you? Do you like to see the price of software clearly and plainly available? Is this one way that a new/unknown vendor can help gain your trust?

Did this post make you go hmm?

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