When I’m looking for a piece of software, I steer away from anything that has the word “enterprise” in it.  The only exceptions to that rule are pieces of software that are exclusive to the enterprise domain (e.g. it’s hard to find personal or open source infrastructure monitoring software or SAN deployments).  When it comes to the social media and web 2.0 space though, I think that even enterprise clients should be weary of enterprise software.

The latest example that proves my point, KickApps.  I noticed the new company on the SocialTimes.  It’s a web-based, social media infused web development toolkit.  Which is an AWESOME idea.  It also provides all the content management necessary to keep your site going.  This kind of an application can be critical to smaller firms that want to have a more hands-on approach to their website and give it a more social flare.

This was going to be a post about how awesome there idea was, until I reached the pricing section; “Monthly fees start at a minimum of $5,000/month for our enterprise-level clients and scales based on usage.”  For any organization with less then three full-time social media / web folks that doesn’t make any sense.  Why would you pay a tool like it was an active member of the team?  Especially since you can buy an entire pre-built website based on the WordPress platform for less then a single months fees.  For large organizations, KickApps is still a rip off, but a more justifiable one.  You don’t want to be playing with community built widgets (as you would on WordPress) when dealing with thousands of hits per day.  Still, I think with the right team and the right web hosting company, $60,000 per year is a little much.