Spanning Sync v1.0 Now Available

Today we're launching Spanning Sync v1.0, following over seven months of development including a four-month beta period. All users are encouraged to download it now.

This is a huge milestone for us, and one that we know we could never have reached without the generous help of our beta users—all 18,862 of them at last count. So to everyone who has participated in the beta, thank you! With your help we've created something we hope will be of value to many people all over the world.

As we come out of beta, the biggest change other than the new v1.0 client is that Spanning Sync will no longer be free. After a 15-day trial period, which for existing beta users begins today, you'll be able to choose either a $25 one-year subscription or a $65 one-time payment. To convert your free trial into a paid membership, just open the Spanning Sync preference pane and when prompted, click "Buy".

When we started this project, we thought it would be relatively easy and be of interest to a few people. As it turns out, it's taken over seven months of intensive development (with some great help from both Apple and Google) and garnered a lot more interest than we had originally imagined. Here are some current stats from the beta:

• 18,862 beta users from 58 countries
• 65,097 client downloads
• 5 languages: English, German, French, Japanese, and Swedish
• 6.1M events sunc to date
• 3.6M GData API calls per day and growing

And the best thing about all this is that those 18,862 people aren't just users—they're Mac users, which means they're passionate, which rocks.

If you're new to Spanning Sync, please take some time to read the FAQ, peruse the blog (especially the comments), and explore the discussion group. If you're a long-time reader of the blog, come check out our new home page. It finally has some content on it.

Today marks the end of the beginning of Spanning Sync, and the beginning of a new era of integration between Mac OS X and Google Apps. If you haven't done so yet, please download Spanning Sync v1.0, try it out, and let us know what you think. With your help, we make Spanning Sync better every day.

Comments

[iMatt]

Congratulations on the successful end of beta!

Now you can start work on Spanning Sync for Mac OS X Address Book and Gmail!

[Charlie Wood]

iMatt,

As soon as Google provides an API into Gmail contacts, we'll start work on Address Book syncing. I keep hearing rumors that such an API exists, so I'll do some more digging. Any Googlers reading are encouraged to drop me an email. :-)

Regards,
Charlie

[Harold SANGAN]

Hello,

Congratulations.

Is 65$ per Google account or per computer ?

Will it be possible to synchronise calendars from two GoogleCalendar accounts (personnal and profesionnal) ?

For your contacts :
http://www.contact-up.com

Harold

[Charlie Wood]

Harold,

You only need one Spanning Sync account to synchronize multiple Macs and multiple Google accounts. See this post for information about how to set it up:

http://blog.spanningsync.com/2007/03/syncing_calenda.html

In a nutshell all you have to do is share your professional calendars with your personal Google account and the configure Spanning Sync to sync with your personal account. (Or you can do this the other way around.)

To use Spanning Sync on multiple Macs, just install it and login using the same Google account on each one.

Regards,
Charlie

[Joel]

After some thought, I decided to stay with The Missing Sync. I'd rather sync iCal with my Treo... it's portable and can be accessed anytime, even offline.

Still, good luck to Spanning Sync. I suggest updating your reviews in your front page... those are for the beta test period.

[Jon Crosby]

Congratulations on the release and for all of the hard work that went into pulling it off!

[Charlie Wood]

Jon,

Thanks. We really appreciate it, especially today.

Regards,
Charlie

[alex]

Hi guys-
I uninstalled today as well. I really enjoyed the beta testing and was very pleased with the product.
I understand the amount of effort you put into this product and I honestly appreciate it - however, I can't justify the price.

I was just thinking:
Since your server resources are quite high, would you ever consider releasing a "light" version - where instead of giving you the option to sync every five minutes, perhaps you could sync two, three, or four times a day or something.
Just a thought, guys - As a casual user, I synced only every hour - and that was even too often.
Perhaps a cheaper light version may be worth considering -
If have your computer on 24 hours/day and sync every five minutes, thats 288 syncs per day and 105,120 per year.
If you sync only 5 times a day (plenty for a user like me) thats only 1,825 syncs per year.
There are obvious server resource differences. - Why charge a light user the same as a heavy user?

Some businesses will require frequent syncs, while others will not - why not release versions (and pricing) that addresses the user's need?

Who knows - Just a thought.
Thanks again for your hard work!

[Charlie Wood]

Alex,

Thanks for the kind words--they're very much appreciated. And thanks also for the suggestion about a "light" version. It's something we have considered but have never come up with a way to distinguish it form the "full" version that we were happy with. We'll certainly take your suggestion into consideration.

Thanks again,
Charlie

[Mark Madsen]

Congratulations on hitting 1.0!

I missed out on the private beta but have been a public beta user since it came out, and I'm right there as a customer.

Certainly folks have the right to their opinions about pricing, but:

(1) If you think that this will be built into iCal or Leopard iSync at some point, the yearly rather than lifetime deal is clearly the way to go. A year from right now, I'm willing to bet iCal either doesn't do it natively or is still working through the bugs and complexities that the Spanning Sync guys have already learned about. True integration might take more than a year from today, but clearly folks are right that it'll happen at some point.

(2) So if you, like me, will probably bet on native Apple integration at some point and buy the $25 yearly version, I'd argue that the 7 cents PER DAY that this costs you is far less valuable than your time in manually dealing with two different calendars, "syncing" in various sub-optimal ways, etc. Personally, my time is far more valuable than 7 cents per day.

(3) Given the dynamics of the software industry, even if a skeptic is betting that this functionality will be "built in" to something in the future, why wouldn't it be Spanning Sync, via acquisition? The SS guys have clearly been solving what is apparently a hard problem, and have a growing user base, and that makes them attractive. So there's a chance even a lifetime investment might not be wasted, if lifetime users get a free version in an acquisition scenario.

The bottom line for me is that folks that think $25 or $65 is too much money for quality software need to spend more time WRITING software -- Spanning Sync looks like a spectacular deal to me, at 7 cents a day.

Sign me up.

[Jeffrey Lee]

Thanks for the hard work. Even though I rarely use iCal anymore, Spanning Sync has kept me on time more than once when I was unable to get online and view gCalendar.

I am perfectly content with paying the money for the software (65$), but I do hope the software continues to be updated and enhanced...

Thanks!

[Jeffrey Lee]

I should also note that this is the only way to sync Google Calendars to devices such as a BlackBerry. I just wish the device could support multiple calendars.

[Christiaan W. Lustig]

Guys, congratulations on reaching 1.0. Thumbs up for all the hard work.

However, I must say the one-time fee is a bit steep... but I'm not new in saying that. The yearly fee, though, is do-able for just about anyone, I guess. And although I don't *need* Spanning Sync, I've already grown too much accustomed to it to want to *have* it.

Remarks above about the wrong stats you're looking at -- the number of people becoming customers being only one percent or something -- are not entirely right, I believe. Only you yourself can judge if the number of new customers weigh up to the number of people uninstalling. I DO hope, though, that you might consider lowering prices slightly at any point in time to get more people to (re-)join the club, and now as paying customers.

Good luck!

P.S.: I haven't found out yet if I need two subscriptions for both my Macs. I reckon I do, but I'm not sure.

[Charlie Wood]

Christiaan,

No, you don't need to copies for your two Macs. Spanning Sync is licensed per-person, not per machine, so you're free to install it on as many Macs as you like.

Regards,
Charlie

[Jeffrey Lee]

----------------
Jeffrey Lee, how can you sync a mac with a blackerry? I thought isync didn't support it. I have a blackberry pearl and would love to get my google calendar on it.
----------------

You are correct. iSync does not support it. You will need to download PocketMac (free) from BlackBerry.com. It will sync your contacts, calendar, tasks, and notes from AddressBook, Daylite, Entourage, Now, and with spanning sync gCalendar.

[PeterM]

is there an ETA on getting Entourage working?

[Charlie Wood]

Peter,

We want to get Entourage syncing working as soon as possible, but we haven't yet been able to determine the cause of the problem. As soon as we do, we should have an idea if it's something we'll be able to fix or work around (it might be an Entourage bug) and how long that might take. We'll keep you posted.

Regards,
Charlie