First, let me make it very clear that I have no objection at all to commercial (for-pay) MODX add-ons. I like the repositories that are live now, and in all the tests I've done the quality is excellent.
Pricing is on my mind at the moment. Granted, the developer has every right to charge whatever he wants for his application. But (yes, there's always a but...) at least in my case it's sometimes a show-stopper.
For example, let's take SimpleCart. I've tested it, and really like it. But at 78Eu, I can guarantee that I'll never use it. At 20Eu I'd use it for all of my sites that need a shopping cart extra, even if it's a freebie and I paid for SimpleCart myself. Right now I'm working on two such sites, with a couple more possibles.
I'd even be willing to pay extra for a "support" premium option, if support is the concern leading to the (perceived) high price. For freebie sites, I'd do without the support. For a paying client I'd get the support option.
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I like the ModMore pricing and think its spot on. Around 25Eu for a single licence. I liked it so much I bought the unlimited licence shortly afterwards. They have other tiered pricing which I believe is spot on too.
But at 78Euro, simplecart is not too expensive for a quality product and one of the only ecommerce solutions for MODX? Is that for a single site?
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From a developers' perspective, pricing is, in my opinion, the single hardest thing about commercial addons. Why €25, why not €35 or maybe €15 is better and what's with all the fives, surely €19 would be better? It's pretty random and indeed partially based on the support promise but also on the value people give a product. For example Redactor. As Peter once said, the editor is the place clients spent most of their time, but it's not front of mind for most people building sites to think about the usability (heavily paraphrased). So while there's value in a different (better, though that's subjective) editor, people are not willing to pay top dollar/euro for it as it's not at the core of what they do. €25 is probably right for Redactor.
One thing that speaks for the price Bert asks for his product is that ecommerce is a tool to make money, and thus a larger part of budget and development is spent towards that. Perhaps it's priced out of range for some (freebie) projects, but it could have been priced five times that for another project. It's also a one-time fee, so while some SaaS solutions charge €15/month which may seem cheaper, you wont have to renew and pay more money over time. Same is true for modmore.
The next modmore addon will actually be in a similar price range as SimpleCart. I'm sure some will find it overpriced, while others have already told me they would be willing to pay up to three times that price for it. In this case, the pricing is determined by what I think is good value, the promise of support and basically pricing it in a way that I think appeals most to the people that should be using it. When it's released, it's up to the community to decide wether they agree or not.
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I'd personally love to see a lot more paid extras from MODX Developers.
Or rather, I'd love to see MODX Developers get paid for all their incredible work and be in a position to create even more of those Extras.
Both BobRay and Bruno Perner (to name just two) create exceptional Extras and are supporting users of those Extras on these Forums. Those Extras transform both how we use MODX and how we create websites, yet are "free". I don't know how sustainable that model is and yet they still continue to crank out new Extras and improve features of existing ones.
The time is right for paid Extras in MODX World only because the existing free extras are so powerful, backed by a great community and deliver so much mileage. Whereas with some other CMS you almost have to factor in approx 300 Euro plus before you even consider starting the build. With MODX, you don't necessarily need *any* paid extras to start creating great MODX sites for your clients.
So with MODX, paid extras are just another option for you, not a costly necessity you have to pass onto the client or absorb yourself.
Mark is spot on too regarding support and the cost of that support. If you're thinking of getting into paid Extras, please don't underestimate the amout of support required and how much of your time that can take up. Eseentially you now have 2 jobs. You've got your fulltime development / design business and now you've added tens (hopefully hundreds) of new clients all relying on your App.
When I had a brief fling with WordPress I was in awe of the amount of paid Extras that were available. It seemed unreal to have so much choice from everything to spam control to form creation to user management. But untimately, I'd say over 50% of those Extras I used had crap support. So in the end, it didn't matter how amazing an Extra was - if you had an issue and an Extra and could not get that isue resolved by the developer, a whole project could grind to a halt. And thats not an option for most of us working on live sites for demanding clients.
One thing I think MODX developers do quite badly too is present their Extras. The Package Manager is a dull and uninspiring place with missing thumbnails, 'techie' explanations of functionality and some fairly craply named extras too.
Look at the Wordpress and Expression Engine world and how developers there name and present their Apps. Ok, not everyone is a designer and can create a lovely logo and site. The MODX market is much smaller too (i imagine) but EE and WP devs have a tendency to create attractive packages for their Extras and even stand-alone sites which appeal to users. In MODX world, it's the exception rather than the norm but with paid Extras, I think it's a basic requirement.
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Susan,
Just out of curiosity, is the price point too high because you only use a subset of the features with tools like SimpleCart? In the event that you are, and therefore 78Eu is too high for the features that you're using, you could always suggest to Bert to do up a SimpleCart Light version.
As for prices for Add-Ons, my personal take on it is that the client should end up paying for it based on functionality, likely amount of support required, and how easy maintenance is. If someone came to me and said, this first option is free but it will be a massive pain to do maintenance on, but this second option is paid (even at 78eu) but these guys figured out the proper workflow and maintaining it is a breeze, I'd take the paid one because I would expect to recoup that investment in a relatively short time period in the form of people not spending hours in one tool that took much less in another.
If you're doing these projects unpaid, I personally don't think it's wrong for a client to have to pay for something that will make their lives easier.
Regards,
Tom
I'd say support is quite manageable unless you have a really support intensive addon or a very large amount of users. Can't speak on behalf of Bert as to how many tickets he gets, but at modmore we got an average of 3 tickets per day (with peaks of like 10 per day) over the past three months. That's at over 400 users with support included in all purchases. It does eat a lot of time though - some tickets are simple and take two minutes to write a reply, while some are about complex bugs and require a lot of back and forth to find the cause.
Well, I'm to the point where SimpleCart's price is looking better and better, after spending these last several hours trying to figure out MiniShop2 since I don't read Russian! It's definitely worth something to me just to have documentation that I can use.
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First of let me point out that is great that there are more and more commercial packages released for MODX. I think this vital for the ecosystem around MODX. Part of the income of modMore will be donated to MODx (well that is what Mark said during MODXpo
). Commercial Packages gives positive influence of the credibility of MODX.
My reasons for choosing a premium:
- Support is better then on a freebie
- Implementation time can be much faster. For example: SimpleCart takes about 8 hours to implement. Another freebie takes about 16 hours. If your hourly rate is about €1 use the freebie. Else go for the most economical choice. Licenses aren't that expansive if you do some math
Give some love to Marky & Bert
Developer @ Sterc bureau voor internet & marketing
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