How does modX generate revenue?

Our shop is tired of shoveling time into making Drupal work, and the existence of Acquia isn’t making my boss any more comfortable. I’m evaluating other/better CMS solutions out there and modX seems pretty cool. What should I tell my boss when he askes if you guys will be around years from now? How is core development supported? Is the the team I see in the about section entirely financed with donations, or do you guys take on project work as well?

Apologies if I’m missing something obvious - just shoot me in the right direction. Right now I’ve got some "nothing in life is free" arguments coming from on high and I /really/ don’t want to end up working with sharepoint. ;(

thx

The core developers could answer this one, but lemme take a crack at it:

This is open source software, so you can download it and use it as you see fit, but there is not going to be a hotline you can call if you have problems-- it’s just the forums. Worst case scenario is that all development on the project stops completely... then you’re still left with a very cool and functioning CMS. When I write software, I make money by billing clients... e.g. I make a handy tool and use it on a few projects, and thus it becomes lucrative for me. The same is true with MODx... I can use it to solve hundreds of problems on hundreds of projects -- if I see a need for new functionality, I can code it into the system and therefore get more projects and more money.

Is your boss just being thorough, or is he the MS cult type who thinks who thinks that if you don’t pay through the nose, it must not be worth anything? (I’m guessing the former... Drupal’s free too).

There are other posts about Drupal vs. MODx... I’d say the choice really comes down to what exactly you need this to do. If you have a specific application type of site in mind and the HTML/CSS and skinning of that site are secondary, then you can probably get closer to your goal faster using Drupal. If you have to do any customization of your templates and skins, then I pity the person who has to use Drupal. MODx is the best system I’ve seen when it comes to flexibility for designers. Developers can easily add code too, but there is a smaller number of 3rd party add-ons when compared to Drupal. It really depends on what you need your site to do.

MODx? Donations
Developers? Collabpad and day jobs... I think...

Well we know we’ve had enough of Drupal. It takes for ever to get anything to work and then our clients are always afraid of editing their site later because something might break.

I don’t think my boss is eager to jump in m$ camp, I think he’s just sour on "open source" after we spent so much energy on drupal and it never seemed to go somewhere coherent. Everyone hates microsoft, but no one’s worried their apps will just stop being supported and die a slow death tomorrow.

What I’m hearing is that modx is entirely volunteer/donation based, which means it may be awesome today but there really is no one to call but ourselves if we find a bug or whatnot. If the modx team is doing project work and decide that they really need modx to something different (i dunno, fill in the blank), /that’s/ what’s gonna be in the next version, even if it’s somewhat at odds of what the majority of the community is doing with it. Right?

if this is the case, my boss is going to want to know if we can engage the modx team for work as well.

again, i’m just trying to get the ammo i need to get away from drupal and keep my mac! Thanks so much for taking the time to answer these stupid business questions.

We’ve got several people working on MODx at Collabpad, and we’ve supported the project since founding it 5 years ago. Donations contribute some amounts to help defray expenses, but they don’t come even close to covering a single salary. Donations are a tough business model unless you’re ringing bells or have a call center and boatloads of agents behind you. That said, we could do a much better way of soliciting donations.

Here’s a few things we’re considering:

• (Paid) Hosting directory for vetted hosts that support MODx, including affiliate programs and just straight up hosting listings
• A developer partner program, including leads on projects, support and access/support from the company behind MODx
• Advertising on the main site and in the forums
• Tier 1 and Tier 2 support (see below).
• Premium Add-ons: not unlike the iPhone app store, where MODx keeps a percentage of all sales and provides all store infrastructure and marketing on the MODx site. Content packs, templates, Add-ons, etc.
• Installation, migration and upgrade services
• Conferences (MODxpos) and MODx Camps
• MODx schwag store
• MODx learning resources: training, books and electronic documentation, tips, howtos and project kits
• MODx Enterprise Hosting (not typical and affordable shared/vps/dedicated servers, but a highly optimized server stack that runs MODx and only MODx ... no company mail, etc.)
• MODx on Demand: pre-packaged deployments of MODx for specific niche markets. Sign up, tweak the template, and you’ve got a fully content managed site built using best practices and guaranteed to have a smooth upgrade path. Not unlike Wordpress.com.

Support Notes:

• Tier 1 will be traditional support program similar to RedHat that offers ticket, email and phone-based support options. It would be directly with customers and is applicable for larger customers running MODx (and there’s some very large ones!) and cost hundreds or thousands of dollars per month, depending on the complexity of the deployment being supported.
• Tier 2 support would be administered through our developer partners above, and would be an escalation path for challenging issues that can’t be resolved quickly. The developer partners would be the single point of contact for all support issues, so it’d be easier to support these types of accounts and much less costly per site (various tiers, all under $100/month).
• Developer partners can make commissions on all Tier 1 and Tier 2 support programs

To date, we’ve funded ongoing expenses and development by investing more than 100% of all profits from building sites and custom apps for creative firms using MODx technology. We’d love to and are working on becoming the "RedHat of the MODx world", if you will. Personally, I think the support options and having a company standing behind MODx is critical to MODx’s future. It’s just simply time consuming and not inexpensive to put the infrastructure in place to support the above activities.

I’d love to hear the community’s thoughts on the above.

Well, now that we have more info...

The MODx team does have commercial support if you need it...
but I will let them explain better the options that are available.

I can tell you that all of them and the MODx community are one of the
best communties I am involved with in many aspects. In the support
aspect, you can be sure that if you ask the right questions you will not
only get an answer, you will get several and then your problem will be
to decide which is the best solution for your problem/issue.

And as of speed, you will probably get some answers faster than in a
commercial support system.

As of the viability in the future of MODx, the proof is that there are two
major trunks of MODx being developed: Evolution 1.0 which is the original
branch and Revolution 2.0 which is the completely rewritten branch using
Object Oriented concepts and all the new technologies like latest PHP, latest
MySQL, ExtJS, etc.

The development team uses an open issue tracker and these forums to gather
what the community is thinking and wishing and many community solutions and
requests are regularly incorporated into the product.

Hope this helps a little...

EDIT: wow, Ryan’s info helps round this with stuff that even I did not know
was offered...

Ditto to what Ryan said; note though that all these programs that Ryan has stated will require initial financial investment and time to setup. So how do we get that?

Well, if everyone who’s ever used MODx donated $10, we’d have the development costs of all of those paid for for at least 2 years. Since that’s not likely, we’re hoping and looking for capital investments and other methods to increase revenue for the MODx Project so the development of such services can be done.

These are the services that attract me the most and my thoughts:

• A developer partner program, including leads on projects, support and access/support from the company behind MODx - actually a database of projects and potential clients who need solutions that MODx can provide would be a good subscription.
• Advertising on the main site and in the forums
• Installation, migration and upgrade services - this is sometimes time consuming so yes!! This would be a very valuable service. Especially for corporate clients.
• Tier 1/2 support - This could work like some reseller programs where a company outsources their support to the service provider from their website. Provide a ticket, MODx charges back to me and I charge back to the client (or any other model that works)

I want to buy a coffee cup with MODx logo for $60

Or maybe a cap http://www.branders.com/subcat/promotional_items_Trim_Caps?fdrid=927355

Actually it would be pretty cool if we could purchase a "MODx approved" logo/shield/medal to display on our websites (with a filter for people who qualify of course).