Monthly Price for Shotgun Will Drop to $30/User, with Premium Support Option at $50
The popular VFX playback and review software RV will be provided with the next version of Shotgun's production-management platform at no additional charge for users, Shotgun Software said today.
In addition, Shotgun will be available beginning today at a new, lower price point of $30/user/month, along with a premium support option at $50/user/month. The basic tier comes with what Shotgun calls "awesome" support, including email, online and community support options. At $50, users get "super awesome support," including videoconferencing and "direct access to support engineers," the company said. The $50 plan also enables dual-link SDI output in its RV implementation, which the $30 plan doesn't offer.
Meanwhile, the standalone versions of RV's software will remain available for purchase at current prices.
| Awesome ($30/user/month) includes … |
Super Awesome ($50/user/month) includes everything in the awesome package plus … |
| Email Support (24-hour response M-F) | Email Support (six-hour response M-Sat) |
| Community Support via Forums | Increased Security Controls (IP Restrictions) |
| Online Documentation | Advanced Permissions Support |
| Training Videos | Annual Tuning and Training Sessions |
| Public Webinars with Live Q&A | Videoconference Support |
| RV for Shotgun (in April) | Direct Access to Support Engineers |
| RV + RVSDI for Shotgun (in April) |
Source: Shotgun Software
Autodesk bought RV maker Tweak last month and folded it into the company's Shotgun unit. The question of pricing for RV had been left open, since Autodesk is in the midst of a transition to a subscription-only business model. Today's move is meant to add value to a Shotgun subscription while giving RV users who don't also use Shotgun the ability to go about business as usual.
"We don't want people to think this is some big scheme" to make people use Shotgun, Shotgun Software CEO and co-founder Don Parker told StudioDaily. "There's no secret plan. RV will continue to evolve, with the same team and an aggressive roadmap. It's just that the integration with Shotgun will be slick."
Those new integration features will focus on the increased need for efficient collaborative tools, Parker said. "Instead of having your creative tool that lets you work alone, we want to figure out other ways to share your work," Parker said. "When you're working on something creative, you're always working with other people."
That means workflow pipelines have to evolve to keep up with the increased technical demands of collaborative pipelines, Parker noted. "We see that review pipelines are hurting a lot of studios," he explained. "They used to have a lot of people sitting in the same studio, iterating together. They would do dailies, and the supervisors would walk around the studio doing reviews, and it worked. But now, everyone is spread out, and there is pressure to do more iterations in a day. Without the right tools, that just hurts.
"So people are spending more time on logistics and moving stuff around. Supervisors are leaving their artists idling, and they're missing out on iterations they could have gotten done. It sucks for artists and it sucks for supervisors, because they know they're in a bottleneck. And it's bad for the studios because they're not getting their best work done. We're trying to provide solutions to that problem."
The next version of Shotgun, including RV for Shotgun, is expected to become available in April, Parker said. Monthly subscribers will be moved to the new pricing on their next billing date, and subscribers who paid for a year in advance will get an account credit if they contact Shotgun about making the adjustment.
