Alibre Flies (Happily) Under the Radar

You would think Alibre and SolidWorks were competitors, as both are MCAD vendors. But Alibre's CEO Greg Milliken explains that Alibre is actually doing SolidWorks a big favor -- by taking care of customers that SolidWorks cannot-- or will not--service.

I met Milliken and VP of Sales, Paul Grayson, yesterday in San Francisco. "SolidWorks average sale is around $7,000." Alibre's average sale is only $1,000, so according to Alibre, they can sell to many wannabe solid modelers that cannot afford SolidWorks.

[SolidWorks is available as a basic package for $3995 but its Office Premium Bundle can fetch $7995]

"I've heard customers that try to get SolidWorks but can't get a SolidWorks VAR to visit them for a month," says Milliken.

What about Inventor?

Milliken has read the claims by Autodesk that Inventor is #1, but has difficulty believing them. "We just don't come up against them," he says.

"Hey, it's okay to be seen as a low end vendor," says Milliken, referring to the money that is to be made on what the big vendors were leaving behind. "For the last couple of years, our year-over-year revenue growth has averaged 50%, last year it was 90%," says Paul Grayson

After such growth -- as well as one and a half years of being profitable -- Alibre aims to jump out of the shadows and boost its marketing and advertising. The company has been content so far with a low visibility strategy, relying on Google ads, word of mouth advertising and upgrades from its popular Alibre Xpress, a free but limited modeler that has already been downloaded 250,000 times.

I asked if the users of the free Alibre Xpress were a drain on resources. Even free software required tech support, for example. But Milliken assures me that even users of Xpress are warmly received at Alibre and helped as much as possible -- after all it is an upsell opportunity. Alibre routs those calls through the sales staff.

A smallish company (50 employees overall, almost all of them in the Dallas, TX area), Alibre has survived its venture capital funded beginnings back in 1998 and its initial attempt to create CAD as an ASP application. "CAD users are conservative, they want to buy the software and own it forever -- even though with upgrades and maintenance, they end up paying about as much as we charged for the ASP model," says Milliken. Alibre is now a desktop application only, though Milliken hastens to add that Alibre does provide the online, collaborative peer-to-peer architecture for real-time data sharing.

Comments

[Rob Davis]

I have been using Alibre for 6 months (now upgraded to Expert with Alibre Motion). In that time I have 6 Alibre designed jobs operating - sure beats 2D. It is a great package and does all that I want. It is easy to learn due to its intuitive nature and also due the excellent training material provided by Alibre (free and very good paid for CDs). If you are new to 3D CAD you want do better than Alibre - if you a rusted on to Inventor or Solidworks, Alibre is sure to disappoint.

[Richard Williams]

I did an article on Alibre awhile back and it truly is a worthwhile program to own. Starting from the Free Express program but a limited version, you can go all the way up the ladder to their Professional Modeling Software when you need it and it is still way under the price of Solid Works or Solid Edge. The support staff is very responsive to questions and problems. I remember the challenge some years ago that Alibre began. Draw something that Alibre cannot draw and I don't remember if anyone ever could draw something that Alibre couldn't draw. Great Program led by a great guy Mr. Greg Miliken.

[Evan Yares]

Good piece, Roopinder. It all rings true. If you get a chance, possibly you could talk to the folks from IronCAD and VX, and write something similar about them. They're both "under the radar", but have really good products. (OK -- there are a lot of great companies that are under the radar. I guess we just need better radar, don't we?)