Initial pricing information and release plan?

I know that these are hard questions to answer, so I'll say this, I won't hold you to your answers :)

But still.

Do you have an estimate on the pricing range you plan for this product?

Also, do you have an estimate on the release plan? Are we talking Q2? Q3? Q4? 2012?

It's alright, I was expecting this question :)

And I have to be completely honest in saying that it totally depends on how well the product is received and where it goes. I'm very conscious of the fact that not all developers have deep corporate budgets to dig into for a tool like this, though it is also a substantial time saver and there is some value there.

I have also toyed with the idea of keeping it free, though it is quite a demanding project and difficult to fit around a full time job.

I can safely say at this stage that there won't be any kind of commercial release happening this year. Right now I'm far more interested in making sure the tool is 100% reliable and will work in all environments where it can add value. This is really where the beta testing comes in, as I only have access to a limited number of development environments myself, and there are a huge number of variables that need to be accounted for with such a complex tool.

So if you hit any issues, please do report them ... and if you have any ideas for ways to make the tool more intuitive or powerful, do share them! :)

I don't think you should worry too much about how the product is going to be received (https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23ncrunch) :) Word of mouth will get you your customers well before you're ready to market this thing in full.

And to be honest, I don't think this product should be free only, for that it has too much promise. Instead, my advice (as a non-company-owner mind you) would be to create several price tiers and possibly some different editions. For instance, if you have to put a lot of work into the product to support VB.NET, perhaps you should create what JetBrains have done with ReSharper, a VB.NET edition, a C# edition, and a full edition.

In any case, best of luck, I'll be watching this project carefully.

Oh, and if you should decide to make the product free, would you take on contributors? I, for one, would be most interested in helping out, for instance to try to add (sooner) the support for the various TestCase attributes for NUnit. Just a thought anyway.

Thanks for the ideas - I'll certainly keep them in mind.

I'm glad you enjoy using the tool and I hope you also tell others about it. So far the reception has been very positive, so I do have high hopes :)