Corel puts eye-popping low prices on suites

Corel is aiming to give Microsoft a black eye by releasing a new version of its WordPerfect suite for a street price that will likely duck £130 including VAT. At the same time, it said that it intends to keep WordPerfect Suite 7 on the market at a yet lower price in a move that replicates a tactic used with great success on its flagship CorelDraw package.

The Canadian upstart said today that the official pricing for WordPerfect Suite 8 will be £299 + VAT for the full product and £149 + VAT upgrade. However, Marc-Antoine Benglia, communications manager for the firm, said that he expects street pricing to hit £129 inc. VAT and £99 inc. VAT respectively in a bid to lure small businesses and home office users.

The double whammy is completed by maintaining WordPerfect Suite 7's presence on the shelf, and Corel is insistent that the move is more than just marketing. "We're keeping WordPerfect 7 on the market and it's not just to clean up the channels," said Benglia. "We'll keep it on the market at least a year to see the dynamics of the market. We've been very successful in maintaining older version products with CorelDraw and nobody else in this field has tried it as far as we know. [Microsoft's] Home Essentials is a cut-down product but our belief is that even if there's more in the box than they can fit on their hard drives, users will go for it." WordPerfect Suite 7 will be priced at £99 + VAT suggesting a street price of around £60 including VAT.

WordPerfect Suite 8 will sport a number of enhancements including MMX optimisation, the implementation of CorelDraw 7's Property Bar across modules, faster file open and save functions, and a 'flat' toolbar look similar to that in Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Because of Netscape's failure to complete Communicator in time, the package will ship with a voucher allowing users to claim Corel's Communicator-based Central 8 organiser when it ships.