Smustard FAQ

From our point of view, we are providing a service that enhances the usability of SketchUp. That service takes a certain expertise and talent, just as with any other profession. We don't think we're being greedy by offering lifetime-license scripts for a small fee (very small, considering the development time and the ROI in time savings).

If you purchased every premium script currently available from Smustard, you would pay less than $90. You would have a license to legally use that script for as long as you wanted or needed it. By comparison, if you downloaded the same premium scripts from a subscription site, you would only be able to use them legally for 8 months for the same money. After 8 months of use, our pricing structure has actually saved you money. To continue the thought, scripting has been available in SketchUp for 2 years now. If you had paid for these scripts via subscription for the past 2 years, your cost to date would be $264 for the same $90 worth of scripts, and would keep going up. [To be honest, we have considered offering all premium scripts on a subscription basis -- and would welcome your input on this -- but decided that a one-time cost was a better deal for the user].

We also realize that not everyone needs the same scripts. So, we let people purchase only what they need. Using the same comparison, if a user only needed one $10 script, it costs $10 once from Smustard. Obviously, this saves users money.

Finally, we believe these scripts easily pay for themselves. For example, let's say a manual task takes ten minutes. You bite the bullet, and pay $10 for a script that does the same task in one minute. If you use that script six (!) times, then what would have taken an hour of your time has only taken six minutes. Assuming an hourly rate of $20 per hour, the script saved you 54 minutes, or $18 worth of time. Subtract the original cost of the script, and you still saved $8. Everything else is just more savings.

And please keep in mind that I'm not criticizing any other website or its business model, and none of us at Smustard have anything against anyone else personally or professionally. In fact, we wish everyone well, because we believe that all the sites providing solutions for SketchUp are serving the users in the best way they can, in the niche they've identified. As for Smustard, we'll just keep on trying to provide the scripts users need at a truly affordable price.