We're pleased to announce that we’re only one week away from submitting Project KickStart v6 to external beta, with a commercial release scheduled for early September.
This new version of Project KickStart contains all the features and ease-of-use of it's award winning predecessors, but also boasts contact and calendar integration with Act! and Outlook, along with many other new features in a modern interface. Originally written in VB6, Project KickStart v6 required a complete rewrite effort from some of our best developers, and has taken about ten months to get to this pre-release state.
PKS v6 is targeted for commercial release just after Labour Day.
For more information on this exciting new evolution of Project KickStart, please visit www.projectkickstart.net. The old projectkickstart.com domain is currently being redirected to www.keystroke.ca, due to the old licensing server still operating on the old domain. For the next six months we intend to promote this new release at www.projectkickstart.net, and then combining the two sites as we sunset the old server.
Webplanner
As some of you may know, we also acquired the online version of PKS, known as www.webplanner.com, which was released back in 2013 in Microsoft Silverlight. Due to Microsoft deprecation of Silverlight, this platform currently only works in Internet Explorer and Safar, but that is about to change.
At the same time as PKS v6 is released, we also intend to announce a completely rebuilt webplanner.com in HTML5. The new webplanner.com will be compatible in most PC and MAC browsers, and be mobile device friendly (obviously better in Tablets due to Gantt charts), plus it will also include Act! integration.
An IOS app for Webplanner should be completed by October.
Project KickStart
It may surprise some to learn that Project KickStart sold over 40,000 licenses of the last three versions alone, and had a trial user base of over 250,000. PKS has won many software awards, and has long been recognized as one of the easiest project management applications to learn and use – as the tagline expresses, it’s “Project Management Made Simple”. PKS is still the only full project management application to integrate with Act!
To reward our loyal user base, Project KickStart v6 will be released for 60-days after Labour Day with “Early Adopter” pricing at 25% off, but after that we’ll be moving forward with only one price at $249.95. Different from past iterations, there will be no Standard and Pro versions of PKS that were priced at $200 and $300 respectively, and there will be no Full and Upgrade pricing. Quantity discounts will be easy to calculate and remember, as 5+ get a 5% discount, 10+ a 10% discount, and 20+ a 20% discount.
And there's more!
The first year’s purchase will also include one year of Maintenance and Support (M&S), with an optional M&S fee of 25% due annually after, which will provide all updates & upgrades, as well as email support.
Your purchase of Project KickSTart v6 will also include a free 3-month subscription of webplanner.com, allowing you to easily exchange your project data between the two platforms for easy collaboration. After that, Project KickStart members will also be entitled to a free upgrade of webplanner.com as long as their M&S remains active. For example, PKS members that subscribe to the basic tier of webplanner.com will get a free upgrade to Pro, and similarly members that subscribe to Pro will be promoted to Premium. This membership bonus literally pays for the cost of your maintenance & support as you'll receive $60 in Webplanner upgrades as part of your $62.50 M&S annual fee.
Localization
We are also intend to localize PKS for German and French by the fall, and release a completely rewritten Project KickStart "Team Version" which will support multi-user network access, deliver improved user integration with Act!, and enhance the data exchange process between PKS and webplanner.com.
Stay tuned.
