Viewbook Pro?

Hey Rein,

I just checked out the pricing the new viewbook pro 19 dollar per month = 228 dollar a year! thats quite expensive! i know you guys really deserve the money and you work very hard for it! but i personally find it quite expensive! i wish there was a one time payment, for it, and not a monthly! something like 150 $ bucks flat rate??

i dont know how other members feel about that?

It’s actually kind of reasonable, if you compare it to other similar sites. Check out Livebooks.com (starts with an $800 flat fee for their most stripped down version, and goes up to $3000 for reasonable functionality). Foliolink.com is a little more reasonable, but still much more expensive for full functionality.

I’m just hoping that the viewbook index page is going to look professional. I hope that is part of this revision. That’s the missing link right now, the portfolio pages look awesome.

Paul

We’ve focused on finding an honest balance between making the price accessible, and to make it possible for us to run this service.

That’s why we also an offer ‘image only’ upgrade of $9,- For people who want to use Viewbook for their business $19 a month is not a lot, comparing to other sites, as Paul McEvoy says. Also we give a free basic service which gives most people enough for a basic portfolio.

Paul: What do you exactly mean with “I’m just hoping that the viewbook index page is going to look professional.” I’m not sure I understand what you see as the index page? Do you mean a portfolio (index) page like this? http://baillairge.viewbook.com ?

okay i guess you guys are right! i mean, i dont want to sound un-greatfull or anything, i mean, i also beleve that viewbook is the best thing out there, i just wish there was something like a flat rate payment, once and for all. not monthly!??

Hi Rien,

Sorry, I should have been more clear. Yes, I meant the portfolio page. I’d like to be able to use viewbook as my main site for my photography, but it doesn’t really look like a normal artists website at this point. It definitely looks more like a free site. (even in the sample you sent me). I’d like the portfolio page to be really clean, easy to customize, and also able to link to non viewbook material (for instance, if I had an audio-visual quicktime presentation hosted on another server, I’d like to be able to post a thumbnail to the viewbook portfolio page and have that open in another window.

But basically a really clean look, that’s customizable. It would be nice to be able to post text links to individual presentations, and use one large image for the portfolio page, for instance.

Like this: http://www.joakimeskildsen.com/

I love the look of the presentations, but for my own site, paulmcevoy.net, the portfolio page looks kind of amateur to me. I would like to select or upload the thumbnails, to start with (the way it’s cropping the verticals looks bad). I’d like to be able to hire a designer to design the portfolio page and upload the HTML to viewbook, ideally, but it would be nice to have a much cleaner layout.

Hopefully this makes sense.

Paul

I’d also like to take the dates off the presentations…it makes them seem more dated and flickrish (also the dates are screwed up…it’s dating my presentations into the future).

I’d like contact info to be on a seperate page, if possible, or at the bottom of the page. I’d like the URL to be off the page (because they are there already). And I’d like to be able to pick a different font.

Like I said, I love the presentation page and how it works…so awesome. I’m dying to get a new portfolio page because I want to start sending my work out, but the way it stands I can’t send stuff out.

Do you have an idea when you are going to try vs. 2 again?

Thanks so much Paul

Squared Monkey…if they were to give you a flat rate payment, it would likely be in the $700 range…there are a lot of services like that.

Personally, I am not in a position to get that amount of money together, that’s why I’m praying for viewbook. Which looks better than most of the other options anyway.

paul, well i think that could be a nice 4th option no?! rein whats your opinion on this? making a flat rate? or somehow give the option to download viewbook and run on my own server?!

“I’d also like to take the dates off the presentations…” I agree, I find them mostly inappropriate. An option to turn it off would be.

Looking forward to see the final version!!

Thankuou

We’ll be taking a closer look at the Viewbook web page (portfolio page) based on your reactions above. We’re (probably) going to make it possible to remove te dates / URL from the page. Also in thew new Viewbook you can customize colors and fonts.

Paul: thanks for the link to http://www.joakimeskildsen.com/. It’s a nice website and a good example. A lot of text though for a photography site.

Squaredmonkey: It’s not possible to run Viewbook on your own server. Viewbook is not just one application you can install on a shared host. There are multiple applications and services running together to make it possible. You can however create a custom website on your server and use the embed function of Viewbook. Very powerfull.

Flat rate: We are not planning for a flat-rate pricing. Like Paul says it will be quite expensive comparing to a monthly fee. Viewbook has on-going costs for storage an hosting, it’s better to see Viewbook as a service than buying a one time software licence. Do you know of hosting companies that works with a flat rate? Also notice in the monthly rate are also included upgrades / improvements to Viewbook.

The next Viewbook release will be launched in a few weeks from now. We’re optimizing it now to make it all run smoothly.

Thanks for your patience and support.

Hi Rien,

I was more pointing the Joachim site for the layout of the index page. One large picture and text links (not thumbnails) for individual projects. It would be nice if we had an option like that for viewbook.

Thanks Paul