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Comment by pault | Hacker News Reader

Link to the github repo: https://github.com/picovoice/porcupine

The keyword generating application: https://github.com/Picovoice/Porcupine/tree/master/tools/opt...

The keyword generating application is free for personal use only and requires a license for commercial use, but there's no pricing available and it only provides an email address for contacting about purchasing a license.

If anyone from the team is reading this, the information above should be front and center on the landing page. I would guess that 99% of your site visitors are going to bounce on your landing page because the relevant information is buried so deeply.

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This is Alireza. I am the founder of Picovoice. Thanks a lot for the information and also sharing. I 100% agree we do need to work on the website and its content. It is definitely in our TODO list. Will prioritize. In the meantime happy to answer any commercial questions via email contact@picovoice.ai

Thanks again for sharing

You could have answered the pricing question here, directly, in response to someone asking about it.

You said it needed to be addressed, and was a priority yet the question remains unanswered. It gives me the cognitive-dissonance.

I take it this is one of those "contact us for a quote" type of deals.

The reason the quote is not present is that there are just too many factors involved. What is the platform you are using (iOS, Android, ARM Cortex-M, DSP, etc)? What is the scale? Are you deploying to ten devices or ten million? Do you have specific runtime requirements? Some people have limited RAM (e.g. I only have 32KB of RAM), some limited CPU, some limited FLASH, etc. How many models do you need? Are there proper words or brand/made up names? Is it English? How much engineering support do you need?

In reality, it is a lengthy decision tree. I do not want to put that here or on the company's website as it will just maximize the confusion. But it makes sense to put the common easy cases and then ask for contact in the rest. Which is probably the path we take as it will save us some time.

That being said I challenge you to find a company who offers similar tech and have pricing on their website. I suspect what I mentioned is the reason. I could be wrong.

I see it may be a bit more complex than I had intially thought. Might I suggest a pricing table kind of thing showing some basic plans and usage and price points?

Something as simple as a few basic use cases, android app, no engineering support, under 10,000 unite, x price for example maybe.

I'm a small developer and tinkerer, so my choice to explore more on not is really price sensitive. However I do also consult with other groups, and may suggest your product as a fit if it meets other criteria I look for "private voice AI" - you've already checked a few boxes!

However, any time I see a "contact us for price inquiries" - I shut down. I know if they can't tell me the price on the page I can't afford it. At that point I don't bookmark the site, I don't research any further, and it reinforces the awesomeness of other projects I've put into my memory for use.

This is not just you, it's a lot of projects/ site on the web.

This is really good feedback. Agreed. What I have seen work is to put common cases. It probably makes our life on Picovoice side easier as answering repeating price questions is not a fun day to spend our time. We will address this soon. I promise.

I think it will work better for ya. Certainly you've run across sites that show some small access for cheap, and more access for more money, and "requests over X calls / transaction / users, call for enterprise quote" kind of thing..

I assume these businesses are mainly looking for those high volume / high price clients and or people with that kind of money to buy them out completely.. all the while making a cheap plan for people to tinker with, build an MVP and maybe scale up.. and perhaps get enough mid range sales to prove they are worth something to others..

Of course that's not the game plan for every service out there. Anyhow good luck to ya, glad to see people working on ways to do things more privately one way or another.

> But it makes sense to put the common easy cases and then ask for contact in the rest. Which is probably the path we take as it will save us some time.

That would indeed be great.

Also, if complex decision tree is your real objection, then consider putting a price range. "Depending on X, Y and other factors, the price ranges from A for minimal deployment low on Z, to B for large-scale solutions.". Or something like that.

Exact prices are always the best, but estimates for typical cases and a price range are second-best. It lets a potential user decide whether to even bother checking your service out.

Agreed. We try to put the price for easy cases. I rather to not put estimates. It probably ends up making customers unhappy.

How easy would your tech adjust to recognising sound patterns, for example the idea I have would be an intelligent baby monitor that would identify the various noises a baby makes and alert you accordingly to the babies needs from food, nappy change, distress, pain, etc.

Would that type of stuff be viable with your technology?

Though would be a way of automated nappy changing, but an automated rattle or such toy triggered by the baby may well make some tasks less impacting and equally more engaging for the baby. Though identification of needs and with that recognition via audio would be the start.

"I've soiled myself... how embarrassing!"

https://simpsonswiki.com/wiki/Baby_translator

Sound classification is in our roadmap in 2019.

Braina has pricing, after a few clicks.

Mycroft is all FOSS

Kitt seems all FOSS too

Snips has a big CTA to 'Contact Enterprise Team'

It's clear you're trying to discover the right price and of course it's complex. Please be upfront about it, what you've said here could be copy-pasta to your site already.

I've been watching Pico for a while, it's very interesting but I'm feeling like you keep teasing more FOSS and being unclear on costs.

I want to like your project too but currently the others are doing a bit better on presentation.

Thanks for the feedback :) Hopefully, we find a way to make you like our project!

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