Benchmarking : watch out opensource CMS Premium support services

I have been meaning to start watching what gets done here and there in terms of paid premium support for opensource CMSes. I am starting a thread for this very purpose, where I’ll collect how this gets done by various OS dev teams, communities and private companies.

Let’s start with a well know example : WordPress.
Automatic, Matt Mullenweg’s WordPress founder is offering a Support Network with Basic (2500 $/year) and Premium (5000 $ / year) support based on annual subscriptions.

Basic support includes :
- Updates and upgrade notification
- Professional service provider directory
- Self Help Support
- Knowledge base
- Private forums
- Problem Resolution Support (with unlimited number of incidents
- Web/email access

On top of that, premium support adds :
- Faster response time (6 hours, vs 1 business day for Basic)
- High priority problem resolution
- Plugin selection and configuration
- Scaling and performance tuning
- Spam protection and security

I know the Textpattern Team is going to offer something very similar soon. I’ll update this thread when I have the data available.

We already had talked about private forums and the possibility of having a paid beta program, I think it could be a good idea to think about the future. I don’t know about you, but I am getting more and more RFPs from prospect specifically asking for MODx. In France at least, the business interrest over MODx is rising fast and steady recently and it’s even up to the point where I am wondering if I won’t end up over-powered by it. Let me explain : the past three month, I had about 3 spontanneous request for information a month about MODx, resulting in about one RFP. Now I am getting 3 contacts a week, and 2 end up with RFPs !!! I don’t know if this will last, but the surge is noticeable the past three weeks.

Most of the companies who contacted me are interrested specifically in MODx : clearly, companies are intrigued by the MODx buzz, want to get an RFP and compare with the other proposals (in France, it means RFP based on Typo3, SPIP or Joomla). I don’t know about you guys in the UK, Italy, USA... etc, but I clearly feel that I’ll need pretty soon to rely on qualified MODx professionnals to handle the surge, to do part of the job or even possibly the whole contract altogether. I am faced with a potential "problem" : not being able to satisfy demand, or rather not being able to handle it properly (and I wouldn’t want MODx blamed for the person in charge’s shortcomings). I like the idea of a "Professional service provider directory" like Automatic is setting up for WordPress, this sure could help. I am curious about other countries potential "MODx pro networks" and other markets : how is the market for you and do you already need some kind of network to rely on ?

It might be interresting to share resources : I am thinking paid support, specific development, network of freelances either to exchange contracts according to availability or work in concert... whatever can be imagined. I am also thinking, give a share to the dev team, systematically. Sustainable development is a fashionable subject these days, but I think for MODx to succeed in the long run, the dev team (and also contributors) has to make money out of it.

How the heck I missed this topic?

Nice input on the topic btw , SMF uses Charter Members technique, and as you discussed WordPress and others, sounds really nice to launch a service based on this concept. I am sure this will help core members as well as keep this project healthy, wealthy and *wise*

Looking forward to listen to Foundation

regards.

zi

I’m not sure how I missed this one either???

Anyhow, yes, this is great stuff, and no arguments from me on the long-term success of MODx being dependent on our ability to profit from it’s continued development and improvement.

Now, I can’t speak for the entire U.S. market, but I can say I don’t see near that many inquiries specifically asking for MODx; it’s still a convince them to use it market, at least from my experience. Other U.S. MODxers may have a different perspective, as I don’t do much specific marketing of myself and usually depend on others (read: Ryan and Victor) to find work for me.

That said, how do we get started with something like this? I would love to be able to spend a few worry free days working on MODx, be able to delegate projects I do get, and avoid assisting on a Plone or Joomla project because I don’t have a MODx project to work on. In fact, I hate marketing myself, so this would solve so many problems for me, it’s not even funny.

Plus, I think we’re pushing the limits of what our relatively small volunteer team can do already, and the sooner we get something like this in place, the sooner I think we can get back on track in terms of release timelines, documentation improvements, and bringing MODx to the top of the open source CMS heap...

Funny, having no answer I totally forgot to follow up on that !

Quote from: OpenGeek at Jul 14, 2006, 07:34 PM

Now, I can’t speak for the entire U.S. market, but I can say I don’t see near that many inquiries specifically asking for MODx; it’s still a convince them to use it market, at least from my experience. Other U.S. MODxers may have a different perspective, as I don’t do much specific marketing of myself and usually depend on others (read: Ryan and Victor) to find work for me.

The US market is much bigger and there are more competitors... About people asking for MODx, I have managed to create some buzz around MODx here in France, and being the author of so many post in so many places (plus the Framasoft article with 20 000 reads) also explains the RFPs I am getting.

I was just curious what was the market’s reaction to MODx in other countries...

Quote from: OpenGeek

That said, how do we get started with something like this? I would love to be able to spend a few worry free days working on MODx, be able to delegate projects I do get, and avoid assisting on a Plone or Joomla project because I don’t have a MODx project to work on. In fact, I hate marketing myself, so this would solve so many problems for me, it’s not even funny.

How do we start this ?

Well, first we’d have to rally enough MODx proficient professionnals to the idea (I am talking about support there). They are the ones who will bring clients and will benefit from mutualizing resources with other profesionnals. Do your contract include support of is it just webdesign and hosting (about hosting, what about hosted MODx service ?) ? If so, what share of your contract do include support ? How much do you charge for it ? What are the terms of the contract ?

Once we rally them to the idea (basically, explaining how a support network would make their life easier -> share resource and get their client better terms for a nice price), we have to actually test out the idea with the market itself (i.e our clients). Pricing and terms could be defined based on a quick study (or based on each of us experience).

Support is one thing, but other means to get things boiling up are :

- create a network of MODx coders/developpers that would be able to do specific development for webdesigner (like me) who are not skilled in that area. I know I could sell more contract if I knew I could rely on a pool of developper to handle this kind of work. That include the dev team but also snippet/plugin/module writers.

- hosting : for the MODx team, offering hosted MODx could be a mean to make some money. The key argument is : who else than the creator of MODx could guarantee a fine tuned hosting (that will become even truer with Tattoo, given the requirements...).

- premium Beta program : webdesigner and coders who want to have early access to new versions would pay a moderate premium to enter the program. We already mentionned this a few time (don’t have a link handy but I’ll look see if I find it). I think this one should be set up soon, might be too late for 0.9.5 (too bad, given the scope of improvement there would be plenty incentives to pay the premium !), but what about Tattoo / MODx 1.0 ?

Of course, all this has to be handled with care as to what motivation is behind the move : a message like "MODx is not turning commercial, it will always be GPLed, but building a sustainable development model". If done properly, no one would object or see any deviation from the project, but a way to make it even better...

Quote from: OpenGeek

Plus, I think we’re pushing the limits of what our relatively small volunteer team can do already, and the sooner we get something like this in place, the sooner I think we can get back on track in terms of release timelines, documentation improvements, and bringing MODx to the top of the open source CMS heap...

I agree... I sometimes am worried to see you guys put so much effort into MODx dev, and wonder how you can handle both work AND dev... That’s why I have been thinking about this a lot lately. Last thing we want is, having you away from MODx/Tattoo dev because it’s not sustainable anymore. As Ryan said, donations is not a model, we have to be creative and try to build a sustainable business model for MODx/Tattoo...