Update News for October 2021
Update News for October 2021
Here is a quick run-down on what you will find in this bulletin:
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Website Changes
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FINAL NOTICE – Price Changes
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Price Changes – INCREASES
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You Can Lock In The Old Prices
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40 Year Celebration – 4 Year Discount
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Multi-Year Discounts – How Do They Work?
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Bad News and Good News
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Price Changes – NO CHANGE
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Price Changes – DECREASES
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Webquote Changes
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Powered By Compulife
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Copyright Compulife Notice
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Terms of Use
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What If You Don’t Like Those Notices?
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We Are Testing The New CQS.EXE
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Our Current Programming Plans for 2021
These topics will be dealt with in more detail throughout this bulletin.
Jeremiah has been making changing to our www.compulife.com website. This includes updating the site with our new pricing which is now effective for new purchases. Jeremiah is also duplicating the more modern WordPress site to our Canadian website www.compulife.ca. We continue to maintain the old look and feel website at www.compulife.net but that will not likely be the case for much longer.
IMPORTANT: Invoices sent out on October 15th, for subscription renewals ending in November, will be at the new prices described below. If you receive one of those invoices you can still CONSERVE the old price by paying 24 months or longer as set out below. We will NOT reissue ANY single year mid October invoices at old prices. Between now and the issue of the October 15th invoice you can still get the OLD price for one year, or add just one year to your subscription, by calling and adding a year BEFORE the issuance of the invoices.
Tuesday, November 30th will be the cutoff for conserving old prices by extending your subscription for 24 months or longer.
We will not discuss conserving old prices in the November bulletin, or discuss prices changes in November. Chris continues to make enormous progress with the retooling of our Windows software, and while it is NOT debugged enough to introduce it to you, that will likely be the news for November.
Here are those price changes and subscription extension opportunities again.
A personal use version of Compulife’s PC software, which currently sells for $180 will be increasing to $192 per year. Compulife Basic will continue to be provided for free, with 3 devices as a maximum.
A standard license version of Compulife’s PC software, typically purchased by agencies and companies, which currently sells for $300 will be increasing to $324 per year. Currently that license includes 12 devices for the Compulife Basic program. That number will be reduced to 6.
A personal use sub-license version of Compulife’s PC software, which currently sells for $120 (1-9 unit price) will be increasing to $132 per year. Compulife Basic will continue to be provided for free, with 3 devices as a maximum.
A standard sub-license version of Compulife’s PC software, which currently sells for $210 (1-9 unit price) will be increasing to $228 per year. Currently that license includes 12 devices for the Compulife Basic program. That number will be reduced to 6.
NOTE: Only standard license versions of Compulife are allowed to purchase sub-licenses.
Also NOTE: Larger volume of sub-licenses (10 or more bulk buyers) will see NO CHANGE to pricing.
The Internet Engine will be going up in price from $1,200 to $1,260 per year. You have to purchase a Standard license to have an Internet Engine, and so the total price is going up to $324 + $1,260 which is $1,584 versus $1,500.
Between now and the end of November all subscribers will be able to lock in the old lower prices (and still benefit from any price reductions) by “extending their subscription” from 24 to 48 months. We are allowing the offer to extend old prices to be combined with the discounts for those who pay for more than 12 months at a time.
NOTE: You have until December 1st to LOCK IN any of the old prices.
October 2022 will mark Compulife’s 40th year in business. From now until then we will be offering a new 4 year subscription discount of 25%. If you combine that with locking in the old pricing, it means you can avoid any of the prices increases that we have discussed for 4 years, and also lock in the old prices from any further price increases during the next 4 years.
NOTE: You have until December 1st to LOCK IN any of the old prices.
The new price of a standard license will be $324. The current price is $300.
EXAMPLE: Let’s say your current subscription will renew in June 2022 (you are paid to the end of May 2022). You can now extend that subscription for up to a total of 4 years BEFORE the end of November, at the old price. In November you would have 6 months left on your current year. A 4 year subscription is 48 months, and so you can add up to 42 months at the old price of $300 / 12 = $25 per month.
42 X $25 = $1,050
Because you are extending to 4 years, then your discount on that additional $1,050 is 25% which reduces the $1,050 to $787.50 which saves you $262.50.
IMPORTANT: Any additional software options that you are buying must also be extended and paid for at the same time.
EXAMPLE: Let’s say your current subscription will renew in September 2022 (you are paid to the end of August 2022). Your subscription also includes $36 for 3 local zip codes and $96 for a webquote option. The new price will be $324 + $96 +$36 = $456. You can lock in the old price which is $300 + $96 +$36 = $432
You can now extend that subscription for up to a total of 4 years before the end of November, at the old price. In November you would have 10 months left on your current year. A 4 year subscription is 48 months, and so you can add up to 38 months at the old price of $432 / 12 = $36 per month.
38 X $36 = $1,368
Because you are extending to 4 years, then your discount on that additional $1,368 is 25% which reduces the $1,368 to $1,026.00 which saves you $342.00.
Bad news: Software subscriptions are non-refundable. If you no longer need the software, there is no refund. Having said that, if you have a subscription with 30 months left on it, that has value and you are free to flip it to a new agency or agent. What they pay you for it is between you and them. We will continue to honor the subscription to the new licensee that you transferred it to.
Good news: Because your subscription is a non-refundable purchase of software, you can take it as a business expense in the same year you pay it. There is no need to amortize it. That means that the invoice for the payment is tax deductible. If in doubt, talk to your accountant.
There will be NO change to the pricing for term4sale listings.
There will be NO CHANGE to API pricing.
There will be no change to sub-user prices for bulk purchasers of 10 or more systems.
The price of the webquote Option is NOT changing. It will remain $96 per year.
The retail price of Compulife Basic is NOT changing. It will remain $96 per year. Compulife Basic is the minimum required subscription for webquotes. Someone who wants webquotes and only webquotes will still be looking at $192 per year ($16 per month).
Two of the options for the web quote option will see a decrease in price. We are going to lower the price for the consumer ID option from $48 to $24. We are going to lower the price for the health analyzer from $72 to $60. The other webquote option prices will remain unchanged.
Agencies that want to purchase more Compulife Basic devices for use with their agency standard license to Compulife’s PC software, can now do so in packages of 3, versus packages of 25 which we were selling before. If you want to add 3 additional Compulife Basic devices to your total allowed, the price for the additional 3 is $24 per year. You can buy up to 10 of these additional packages of 3 per standard license. Therefore, $240 would get you 30 additional Compulife Basic devices, in addition to the 6 which are included in the standard license price. The old deal was $300 for an additional 25 and so this actually represents a price reduction. As before, agencies can permit their agent-brokers to use those device allocations, and there is no problem if the agent broker is not resident in your office. As before, the Windows PC software that is part of the standard license agreement may be placed on up to 5 PC’s within same office. It may not be used off-site unless there is a specific agreement to do so with Compulife.
Personal use subscribers are NOT allowed to purchase additional devices for the Compulife Basic. Over the time that we have offered Compulife Basic, there is no agent who needs more than 3 devices. The Windows PC software can still be used on any Windows PC that the agent has or uses, providing that other licensed agents are not given access and provided that quotes are not sent or given to other licensed agents. If you want to be able to give quotes to other agents you would need a standard license.
In the next few months Compulife will be changing the names of the variables used to communicate with our Internet Quote engine. The engine is the same software that is used to provide our WebQuote option and so the source code used to talk to that engine will need to be changed and upgraded.
IMPORTANT: Those of you who have put our webquote option on a web page by placing a “link” in an “iframe” will have NO CHANGES to make. We will be making ALL the changes needed to your quoting page that appears in that frame. Once again, there will be nothing for you to do if that is the way you have put our webquote options on your website.
If you do not currently do that on your website, we strongly recommend that you make the change now as this will make future changes and upgrades a non-issue for you.
This is what the NEW web quote option looks like:
If your webquote option does NOT look like that, you will be needing to do work. The simple solution is to upgrade. Once again, the upgrade is FREE.
This is what the OLD web quote option looks like:
If that is you, then you need to call and upgrade. We do NOT upgrade automatically as you may need to make some changes on your site. The good news is that if you make those changes, then all future upgrades require no more changes.
Some of our subscribers want to change the “look and feel” of the quoting page and so those subscribers have taken a copy of our html code and placed that code on their site, and have made changes to that. If you want to keep doing that, you have a lot of work that will need to be done,
Other subscribers who have had the webquote option for many years, and who have never upgraded to the new webquote page (which is RESPONSIVE) are still using html code that has been put on their website to talk to our internet engine. If you want to keep doing that then you will have changes to make.
The easiest way to avoid the changes that will be needed, and to make this VERY EASY, is to simply upgrade to the newest version of Compulife’s webquote option (FREE UPGRADE and you end up with “responsive quote pages”). When you are ready for this upgrade you simply make an iframe on your web page and put the quoting tool link that we give you into the frame. Once again, the upgrade is FREE and once you have made that upgrade on your page there is nothing more for you to do and there will be nothing more that you have to do in the future.
Some subscribers want to modify our quoting tool because they don’t want people to know that it is Compulife that they are using for a web quoting tool. Part of the reason that we ONLY charge $96 per year for the option is because you have a “Powered by Compulife” note at the bottom of the page. That note is our “advertising” and that message links to our website. This will have NO impact of your insurance customers because they don’t buy life insurance quoting software or compete against you. The advertising is directed at other agents who wonder where you got that great quoting engine. With that line of advertising they can find us easily.
Now it is understandable that some agents don’t want to inform their competition about where they are purchasing the quote tool. We understand that. But the $96 per year ASSUMES that we are getting some advertising benefit from that. Therefore, if you want to remove that in the future, you can do so but the cost to remove the footnote is $36 per year.
With the changes that we are going to be making to our variable names, if you have placed Compulife’s html source code on your site, and not simply put our link in an iframe, you will have changes to make to update the source code so that it will talk to the new engine.
If that is you – DON’T PANIC. The old engine will stay in place for a few months, until we have adequately and repeatedly warned everyone that they need to make the changes. Only after a reasonable time period will we remove the OLD engine. If you have ignored all our bulletins and notifications, you will have to scramble at that moment, but we are trying to make sure that we give everyone adequate time and warning.
But if you are a webquote user, and using our HTML code on your site, you must have the “Powered by Compulife” notice or be paying the new $36 per year fee to remove that advertising.
The copyright notice that Compulife has placed on the webquote option will be moved from the visible page to a “comment” (hidden from your viewable page) in the html code. That will happen once we have the new variables working with the updated engine. The removal of that notice will happen when we upgrade your html code – there is nothing you have to do. We will most likely repeat the copyright notice at the beginning of the html code, at the end of the code, and in some key elements of the code. Future infringers will have to delete it more than once and so the argument “I didn’t know” won’t work.
If you decide to place the html code on your own page, we will require that you display our copyright as a comment in that page. Once again it will need to be displayed as a “comment” and you will not need to make it visible. As a licensed user, with our permission to use the software, there is no reason for you to not leave the copyright notices in the source code as a hidden comment.
The “Terms of Use” notice will continue to be displayed on the webquote option page. You can have us remove that IF you have your own “terms of use” agreement on your site which includes the webquote option. Providing that we are satisfied with the content of your terms of use, and that you warrant that you will defend your terms of use agreement should it be violated by your website visitor/user if they have violated our code, then we will remove the terms of use agreement from your quoter. If that all sounds like too much legal exposure for you, then just leave our terms of use agreement alone. If we end up with an infringer, we will do all the suing.
We have great news for those who want to do it all their own way, Compulife offers two other options for quoting on your website. You can purchase the API option for as little as $300 per year (versus $96 for the webquote option) or you can purchase the Internet Engine. Either the API or Internet Engine give you full and complete control over the pages that communicate with our engine. If you don’t want anyone to know that you are using Compulife to power your website quotes, then either of those products will give you that option.
The changes will tick some of our engine customers off, because our changes will mean they will need to make changes. Before anyone panics, we are going to give you lots of time to get this done.
Our programmer has been working to remove a programming component from our software called “Delphi”. Delphi is a programming tool that generates the screen and menus that you see in Compulife. It has been part of our Windows software since the time we first rolled out Windows software. It is also one of the reasons that our software “looks” dated and old fashioned. While current subscribers worry much more about function than appearance, newer software prospects tend to put a lot of emphasis on how it looks. That’s going to be changing with the new software, and while we are at it, we are retooling some of the menus to make them easier for new customers. Existing customers will NOT like the new menus at first but we are convinced that you will like them once you get used to them.
The first goal was to convert the program “as is” to get rid of Delphi. That work is coming to an end. I was actually surprised how much the converted screens looks like the old screen created by Delphi. The Delphi to C++ converter that Chris our programmer has been using has done an amazing job. Having said that, a good tool in the wrong hands does not work well but in this case we have a tool in great hands and Chris is doing outstanding work. As the English would say, “I’m chuffed”.
There are remaining bugs and portions of code left to convert and Chris continues to work on that. Once we think it is working as it should, he will begin changing the Red Menu, Client Entry Screen and the subordinate Red Menu “options” and “Manage Product Database. He will also be moving some of the Red Menu options to the Enter Client screen so that the OLD Red Menu becomes much simpler than it is now.
If that sounds confusing, it won’t be as confusing once you see it. Further, the current comparison windows, single product display, Pick 12 and Analysis screens will have NO changes initially. Once again, I am amazed at how much those screens without Delphi look and work just as they did with Delphi. I am very pleased; that’s American/Canadian for I’m chuffed.
Once this work is completed we will roll out the new CQS.EXE which you will be able to use while still having access to your current GOWIN.EXE. We want you to have the option of either program as we then direct our attention to the new “data structure” and overhaul of our database technology. Once we start rolling out the new data files, those new data files will be what the new CQS.EXE uses. The existing data files will continue to work with the old GOWIN.EXE.
As we have promised, you will have both old and new on your computer for a few months (after the job is done) to ensure that everyone is happy with the new software and that our internet engine customers have updated and are using the new data files. Once that is all settled we will then retire the existing windows software and old data files.
And finally, once that happens some big changes can then begin to happen. The new data structure will allow us to quickly abandon many old limitations which will simplify our system. Following that we will incorporate new features and functions that will help us to dramatically improve our product.
The following is the current order for new work that we will be doing in 2021:
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- Introduction of New PC Version: CQS.EXE
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- Overhaul Of Current Product Data Files
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- Introduction of Compulife Basic Plus (with Pick 12)
Anyone with questions about any of these upcoming projects can call Bob Barney to discuss:
Please don’t email me essay questions, just call. If I’m not in, email me your phone number, I’ll call you.
These planned objectives will easily consume our programming time during 2021. The good news is that once the product data files have been converted, and we have introduced the new CQS.EXE, and upgraded our internet engine to use the new data files, Compulife will be turning it’s full attention to our web based, Compulife Basic software. The long term goal is to have a web based product that does everything our PC based software does.
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