One of the great things about a SaaS product like GrabCAD Workbench is that it is always improving. An example of this is Partner Spaces - an improved way to work with partners inside and outside of your company. Today we’re announcing a change to our pricing based on improvements we've made to Partner Spaces.
Partner Space - The New Way To Get Partners Involved
Since we released Partner Spaces a year ago, we’ve gotten great feedback from users with new ideas for how to make it easy to share files with people outside your immediate team. We’ve responded by adding a set of new features to Partner Spaces. Now you can:
- Invite an unlimited number of partners to an unlimited number of projects
- Publish specific version and revisions to a specific partner space to make sure partner has access to the correct part
- Invite users by email or by sending a link (no sign up required)
Although we’ll keep making improvements we believe Partner Spaces has become the simplest way to share with partners.
We’re Retiring Our Free Pricing Plan
While we’ve been making changes to Partner Spaces, we’ve seen that users are confused about whether to invite a partner as a Collaborator or a Partner to the project. In order to clear up some of the confusion, we’re eliminating our Free pricing plan.
Historically the Free plan was used by project owners who wanted to give a partner access to only one or two projects. However, a Partner Space invitation is not limited to just two projects - a person can be a partner on any number of projects, across any number of accounts. And Partners are free.
Because a free Partner Space invitation is more flexible than a free collaborator seat, we’ve decided to eliminate confusion by removing the free plan and urge free users to move to a free partner seat.
Please note that this change only affects our Workbench pricing - our free Community will remain free. You can still upload and download CAD models without any charge.
What Should I Do If I’m a Free User?
If you are a manufacturer or outside consultant who only sees certain version of a CAD file (for example when it’s ready for prototyping), we suggest you email the project owner of your GrabCAD Workbench project and ask them to invite you to the project as a Partner. If they haven’t already done so, they’ll need to set up a Partner Space to invite you to - see this Help article for quick tips on how to do that.
If you are are a design partner, with files going back and forth to your collaborator, we suggest you upgrade to the Pro pricing plan, which will also give you access to a number of CAD file management features (including a desktop client that makes it easy to sync files).
What Should I Do If I Am A Project Owner With Collaborators Using The Free Plan?
For each user you’ll need to decide what level of access is appropriate. For most Free plan users, the answer will likely be a free Partner Space. To invite a user as a partner you’ll need to create a Partner Space in the project - here are instructions in our Help section.
If someone needs full access to all the files and all comments in the project, in other words if they are a full collaborator, they will need an upgrade to our Pro plan - you can learn how in our Help section.
This Change Takes Effect August 1
We will eliminate our Free plan on August 1. We won’t delete any data on that date, we’ll simply freeze access to Free seats. If you don’t get a chance to set up a new plan before that date you can still get access to your data by emailing support@grabcad.com. We will hold all data for 6 months, or until you request we delete the data.
Any Questions?
Send us an email at support@grabcad.com and we’ll help you out!
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