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I’m looking for advice from FDM hubs who have over 100 completed prints. A recent reviewer left this as part of his review: “To be honest at first I was a bit sketchy as to how the price for you to print something was extremely lower than other printer hubs but after taking a chance I realized you where legit and you’r prints are even more legit and are better quality than I expected.” I price based on filament cost, electric cost, consumables, machine depreciation, 3d hubs service fee and failure rate. My in house rates use a simple hourly + material charge which is sometimes higher and sometimes lower than my 3d hubs prices. I haven’t looked at other hubs prices for comparison though I’ve noticed there is a lot of variation in pricing. Can another hub take a look and tell me if my prices are to low? How do you determine prices?

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Hi Miaviator,

Can another hub take a look and tell me if my prices are to low?

I don’t think there is such thing as a price too low. As long as you’re not making a loss, its fine. That explains how China is able to rapidly expand their industry, because they can do it cheaper! At the end of the month, do a consolidated income vs expenditure (or cost breakdown) and if its a profit you’re good to go. Then it’s a question of how much more profit margin do you want. If it’s a loss, then you’ll need to adjust your prices.

How do you determine prices?

The way you have determined your price is fine. Other companies have employees and benefits to take care of and that’s whats included in their price. If you’re working alone or with a small team, your cost is lower and can therefore offer a lower price. I’d leave out the “How to grow the team without increasing price” question, its an economics debate.

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Thanks for the input and for taking your time, I agree with what you are saying. My only concern is that I might be missing out on orders due to prices being to low. Which just seems odd to me. I’m able to expand by one printer every 30-90 days and I’m not (generally) losing money so I don’t intend on raising prices my last pricing calculation actually calls for a reduction on larger orders. I’m on vacation from executive management (GM/VP/CEO) so I’m leaving the economic debates out of sure. Jonah

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I personally believe that pricing is a totally individual thing… Some hubs prefer to charge cheaper prices, and offer a crappy quality, some do offer cheaper prices and ok quality, and some simply overcharge simply because they can.

Something that hubs don’t always realize is the fact that there are thousands of places for a customer to get his/her part printed, and by either overcharging or undercharging, they spoil the entire additive manufacture market… Some hubs take in account the wear and tear on the equipment, electricity, time, while others don’t, which will eventually come back and bite them in the ass at a later point…

So in my little humble opinion, with more then 1000 large scale prints under my belt, I believe that a hub should position its self strategically on the market, to offer competitive pricing, and at the same time, not cutting out other hubs that rather deliver quality over quantity…

Further more I believe that a customer should do his/her homework before randomly choosing a hub for a project, just because it is cheaper. Our hub, and a few other professional hubs, also feature their own web page, Facebook page, and other online resources that can verify the authenticity of a hub and the quality of prints…

It use to be true that a picture is worth a thousand words… in today’s world, the same is true about: a part is worth a thousand pictures… By this I mean to say that no matter how good quality pictures one places on their hub, I’ve seen hubs, Photoshop pictures, that do not look at all like the pictures…

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I started with a printrbot simple kit and pretty low prices, I upgraded my printer and prices didn’t have room for the old printer and have been pretty surprised at how quickly I started getting more business prints and less thingiverse parts. Most of my existing customers kept ordering, I am sure I have lost some sub $10 business that I am happy another hub gets now.

I don’t think looking at other hubs pricing is not that helpful, you never know their circumstances. About a year ago I had a customer buy me over $500 worth of filament , I don’t have much space and decided to list it cheap use it to get more reviews and get it out of my house. I’m sure it annoyed other hubs locally but it helped me out and was pretty profitable without any material costs.

Looking at your prices I don’t really see an overall strategy, but I also don’t know much about your business, do you have targets in mind for average order value or things that you think make your hub stand out?

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@garthvh,

Thank you for the reply.

My overall strategy is to not lose money :slight_smile: It really is that simple. I have 7 printers running currently and I’m one every 1-3 months. I purchase filament wholesale by the case of 10-30 rolls each month to keep costs down.

As for a target, I just enjoy 3D Printing. I do a lot of cosplay orders and engineering prototypes. I actually just yesterday raised some prices for 100-200 micron prints after reworking the print time requirements.

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Your prices, at least for smaller parts, are really, really low.

Your prices are definitely lowest, both in Grandville and in Michigan, of most of your competitors.

I just priced a few items to compare, and you are clearly the price leader. If your prints are also quality, and you are getting good reviews, you are good in that at least.

You do come up first in the rankings near you, as well as just searching Michigan, you come up first.

As such, your pricing may be too low. You show well in reviews, show well in searching, and have a lot of prints. I think you are leaving a lot of $$ on the table.

I am about the least expensive in my area. I do perfect prints, and have never had a bad review. in fact, I have only had 3 reviews that were not all 5 stars in every category. I have over 100 prints. However, I still can’t seem to crack the #1 position in my area for searches, so I have to have my prices set a little lower as I am seldom the “best match”, inexplicably. You do not have this issue.