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PhraseExpander Professional for PC 79% off $29.99

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dhous:
where? https://bitsdujour.stacksocial.com/sales/phraseexpander-professional-for-pc

ScreenManiac:
I cannot help but wonder how much of a deal this really is.
The price tag of $150 is totally ridiculous, and even 30 bucks seems very steep, considering the many free alternatives.

The description on their website just mentions the usual run-of-the-mill features.
Do you - or anybody else - know what advantages it offers over free stuff, like say, PhraseExpress?
http://www.phraseexpress.com/features.htm

wraith808:
I cannot help but wonder how much of a deal this really is.
The price tag of $150 is totally ridiculous, and even 30 bucks seems very steep, considering the many free alternatives.

The description on their website just mentions the usual run-of-the-mill features.
Do you - or anybody else - know what advantages it offers over free stuff, like say, PhraseExpress?
http://www.phraseexpress.com/features.htm
-ScreenManiac (August 20, 2015, 03:42 PM)
--- End quote ---

1. PhraseExpress isn't really free, unless you're aiming for only personal use, i.e. We give away the PhraseExpress productivity boost free-of-charge to personal users

http://www.phraseexpress.com/docs11/09/shop.php

2. Both products are aimed at the medical transcription market.  That's a very high priced and revenue/income generating market, where productivity is paid for- as long as its accurate.  If you're in that market, then the price for either of the competing versions, i.e. professional version of PhraseExpress at $140 or professional version of PhraseExpander at $150 will help so much in income, that that is a paltry price.

3. The price for the commensurate comparison products is $10 difference.  You're looking at an apples to oranges comparison.  Apples to apples, they are very much similar products, so much so that there have been some pretty ugly wars between the two- some even on this board.

That said, they have two different marketing strategies.  With PhraseExpress they give away a limited feature set, and as you use the expanded features, it converts into trialware.  With PhraseExpander, they sell a lesser version that is arguably better than the free version, but pretty close if not a little better than the commensurate PhraseExpress offering to show the same to users that might need the pro version, but probably don't.

I used PhraseExpander when it was Direct Access and it was a solid product.  I've also used PhraseExpress, and it is a solid product.  I also dislike the... attitudes of both companies, though NagarSoft is a little more palatable than Bartels, which has made me migrate away from both, and I now use software specifically for developers rather than using this to take the place of the same, i.e. Resharper, replacing CodeRush in my arsenal..  However, that is personal bias.  If you need the functionality, then yes, it is worth it.

As an aside, Breevy is also pretty comparable to both lower offerings.

And to both developers, this was kept as unbiased as possible in the comparison of the products, 'just in case' you happen to drop by.

ScreenManiac:
2. Both products are aimed at the medical transcription market.
-wraith808
--- End quote ---
Wasn't obvious to me, from neither product's website.
Don't know how many companies hang out here to find a good deal. My perspective is purely personal, strictly private usage scenarios. If anything, I was expecting differences in ease of use, maybe, or performance or compatibillity. Like you said, feature-wise they seem much the same.

Thanks for your well-written assessment. I also appreciate the link to Breevy, although I have not checked it out further, got too many text expanders lined up already, for testing purposes sooner or later.

dr_andus:
I was expecting differences in ease of use, maybe, or performance or compatibillity. Like you said, feature-wise they seem much the same.
-ScreenManiac (August 21, 2015, 03:25 AM)
--- End quote ---

I went through that exercise a few years back, with similar criteria (I needed something that worked right out of the box and required the least steep learning curve). One good way to do that is to evaluate them all on the same day, one after the other. Just download them and get started and use them for a few minutes each, and it becomes pretty apparent immediately which ones are the easy ones to set up, learn, and use, and whether you come across a killer Pro feature that justifies the price.

The "killer feature" will probably vary on the basis of your needs. For me the key thing was not to have to remember abbreviations (which ruled out most of the free ones), which requires that a box pops up by the cursor after I type two letters, with a specified number of phrases to choose from, which then gets filtered as I keep typing more letters, with the desired phrase rising to the top and which then I can quickly select by hitting my chosen key (tab, in my case). There were only 2 or 3 that could do that at the time.

BTW, while the target market for these seem to be those professional services (medical, legal etc.), this category of software is pretty generic. I make good use of my chosen text expander for my academic research work (qualitative coding of data, anonymising sources, and writing long pieces of text with specific phrases that reccur often).

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