Announcement: Pricing and value
21 Comment(s) | published by Danny H. on Thursday, September 10, 2009
As we draw closer to releasing the beta and ultimately version 1.0 of LemonStand, we are determining more things in regards to our pricing, licensing technology, distribution, customer management, tech support and the LemonStand Marketplace.
Aleksey Bobkov and myself, Danny Halarewich the co-founders of LemonStand have been planning the details of these things for quite some time now. And we are ready to make a few announcements, even if certain things are not written in stone (it's more like sand at the moment).
Pricing
There is a huge range of prices for eCommerce products. From free (open source with no support), to thousands or tens-of-thousands of dollars per license (so called "enterprise" level). When determining a price, we had to consider the value we are providing, uniqueness and who our target market is. It's no secret that our main customers will be web designers, developers and agencies. We believe that our solution is unique and addresses a major problem that noone else has done effectively. While considering those things we came to a few conclusions.
Our main customers are repeat ones
Web professionals and agencies usually complete more than 1 project each month. And with the continued growth of eCommerce, many of those projects are perfect candidates for leveraging LemonStand. With that in mind we will be offering tiered pricing for our customers. The more you use LemonStand, the more benefits you'll get, including lower pricing.
Value added services
Web professionals need ways to promote themselves and win projects. We'll be offering partner programs to help you do this. Certain opportunities will be available simply by becoming our customer, and others will be available for people enrolled in higher-level partnerships with us. These opportunities will result in you ultimately getting more projects. There will also be access to "insider information" accessible only to customers and/or partners that will provide early announcements and tips on using LemonStand. We have many things in the oven right now, and will make specific announcements closer to launch.
Support
We had planned to provide email support for customers for 1-year right from the start. This is a major differentiator between a commercial product and open-source. We also plan to offer high-levels of support (probably after launch though) for customers that need it. The details are being worked out, but this might mean telephone support or faster email response times.
What's the verdict?
After considering all of the value we're offering, and the cost of providing proper support, we have come up with a price that we feel will work for us and you. That is around $300 USD, per-license. Each license is good for 1 website. You may also use this license for a development environment.
Some extra things to consider
We anticipate that we'll provide an initial discount for our beta testers. We may also open up for pre-orders prior to release as well, which would earn you a discount. And don't forget that LemonStand will use tiered pricing, so the more sites you build with it, the bigger your discount.
This price leaves much room for profits if you are creating websites for any sort of profit, whether you are building them for customers or selling products yourself.
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Comments
Rachel
Friday, September 11, 2009Thanks for clarifying pricing. $300 USD is in the ballpark of what I was expecting and it sounds reasonable (although ask me again if the Aus Dollar goes for another dive!).
This may be a niggly question and not something you can answer at this stage, but would this licence fee include 'lifetime' security updates etc or will updates/upgrades be limited to the one year support period? Alternatively will the licence be able to be extended for additional periods of support/upgrades?
Thanks
nicolas
Friday, September 11, 2009I'm thrilled to know about your beta.
How can I enter it at this stage ?
Continue the good work.
Danny Halarewich
Friday, September 11, 2009@Rachel - A license will provide you life-time updates, yes. But we must distinguish updates from upgrades. Updates are within the version you purchased, i.e. 1.x while an upgrade would essentially be a new product, i.e. version 2.0 of LemonStand. Updates are included for life, upgrades are not.
We will provide a discount to existing customers for upgrades though.
1-year of support is included, and additional years can be purchased, yes.
@Nicolas - beta has not started yet ;)
Mason
Friday, September 11, 2009Does that mean there's no way for a dev to "practice" without paying for a full license?
I rather like Expression Engine's model of giving the core away. I think in your case it makes sense to charge for the core, but not allowing devs access for the purpose of learning without overcoming the hurdle of paid licensing limits your developer community. This introduces the chicken/egg problem - why should devs pay for a license if they don't know if they can recoup the cost? And why will customers go with your solution over something which already has a broad developer base?
Even MS started giving awar their Express products to foster developer adoption. Seems like a similar approach could work here.
Don't mean to be harsh. I just want this to succeed... but I don't see myself putting forth money just yet.
You mention support being the difference between commercial and open source efforts. I think you can get great support both ways. The "free" in open source also means "freedom", and "free market" - that is, you create a market for professionals to offer competitive support and services.
All the same, I wish you good luck, and look forward to seeing how far this model takes you.
afruit
Friday, September 11, 2009Looking Forward to seeing the tiered pricing for repeat users. I've been wanting to take control of my ecommerce business for a long time. (Control = a full -hosted by me- system where I have utmost control.)
I don't know if this is it, but it sounds more "sweet" then "sour".
Danny Halarewich
Friday, September 11, 2009@Mason - Good question. Luckily, I have a good answer. No, it doesn't mean that. To be honest, I forgot to include mention of it in the blog post.
Yes, we plan on giving something away for developers to learn on. It will most likely be time-based and be cut off from automatic updates. Other details are being worked out. But the point is to make something you can learn on, and it will do that.
Regarding the difference between open-source and commercial... I'm not knocking open-source in any way. But I don't know of any (shopping cart) that offers direct support or even answers the community in a consistent manner when they run into problems, unless you pay for it. Regardless, it is futile to try and compare. We aren't talking lemons to lemons here.
@afruit - Thanks, hope we can help you do just that
Hussain Aswan
Wednesday, January 06, 2010Sounds gr8. but will this be including mods like cubecart which indirectly costs you handful of $$$ ??
Danny Halarewich
Wednesday, January 06, 2010@Hussain - I'm not sure what you are referring to when you mention "indirectly". Regardless, we are hoping the marketplace will be a lively place where all sorts of mods are contributed. Both free and commercial.
While some mods will certainly cost money (and why wouldn't they if they provide value which you charge your customers for ultimately?) there will just as certainly be some that don't.
Andre
Tuesday, January 26, 2010Beta Looks Awesome - I like its simplicity!
I am a huge Cs-cart fan an there pricing product is also very good, looking forward to converting to you guys if pricing & product is better.
Chad Holden
Monday, February 08, 2010I do find this news exciting. I've been looking at Magento and some other custom carts. Your solution looks much more user friendly. I am curious about the update process though. If one of my customers is as tech savy as a baboon and wants to get the latest security patch, will there be a one click upgrade (a-la wordpress) or will it be a download, unpack and FTP upgrade process (a-la drupal)?
Danny Halarewich
Monday, February 08, 2010@Chad - Your customer can update LemonStand all through the admin interface. No FTP or advanced technical ability is needed. LemonStand will even alert your customer when new updates are available. It provides you a list of what has been updated and you simply click the button to apply the updates. Here is a sample screenshot of what that looks like: http://twitpic.com/10x00w
SoccerGuy3
Friday, March 19, 2010Any word on a release date for version 1.0?
Danny Halarewich
Friday, March 19, 2010@Soccerguy - Unfortunately, no. Any announced dates will be posted in this blog in the near future.
tamuir
Saturday, April 10, 2010Great! work, i already love all the features in the demo, looking forward to working with a stable version.
Shane Sponagle
Thursday, April 22, 2010I like that you are taking devs into consideration. However the time limited option does not seem like a good solution to me. The reason being that I, as a developer, often need to begin working on projects before the client has their server setup, also in some case will want to work locally to resolve specific issues then transfer to the clients remote server when finished. The third reason would be to be able to develop add-ons for LemonStand, without a working copy it will make this difficult. The license const is very reasonable, but it would keep many developers from having the tools on hand to expand on LS. I would rather have a version that had limited access to payment gateways or could only support x number of products but shared the same core development API... something like a LemonStand Lite. Devs would have to register for it and it would not be allowed to use it on live projects. Anyway, just a thought as a developer.
I am a fan of LS, you guys are building a fantastic product. Cant wait to see it released.
Danny Halarewich
Friday, April 23, 2010@Shane - Thanks for the great feedback! Interestingly, after several meetings on this very topic the last couple of days, we came up with almost the exact plan of attack that you have proposed here.
Our idea is to create a developer version that mirrors the production version, except for a few details. Certain things will be limited, like # of orders and possibly some other things. Files will not be encoded, except only a couple that are related to the limitations. So you will have access to the app and source code without any time limit.
To get the developer version, we'll require you to apply for it. We will then manually approve developers.
Another interesting thing we can do is allow you to "upgrade" a developer version into a fully functional commercial copy simply by purchasing a license for it.
We're going to write a blog post on this soon. Thanks!
SoccerGuy3
Friday, April 23, 2010This is a great development! A transaction limited version is perfect for the developer, but I would suggest you limit products, not purchases as I could see doing a lot of purchases as you work out the details of shipping, payment processor, etc.
Joseph E. Weinstein
Wednesday, May 26, 2010Just wondering, once I purchase 1.0, what's to stop me from installing it on multiple sites? Sorry, I don't mean to sound arrogant, I'm just trying to figure out how the licensing works here. It's good to know what the boundaries are.
Danny Halarewich
Wednesday, May 26, 2010@Joseph - We can clearly monitor each instance of LemonStand that is installed, which is of course tied to a license holder. We have algorithms in place to notify us of potential license abuses.
How would we stop you? Well, we hope you would comply with the license agreement that you read during installation. The terms are quite clear. However, if attempts to resolve a matter directly with an offending party failed, legal action could be taken.
The terms of use that you agree to during installation are clear on the matter and are similar to most other self-hosted commercial software. 1 license = 1 website. It is defined in more detail in the license agreement.
To help out our customers, we will be providing free developers licenses. They will be meant for evaluating and developing modules and things of that nature.
You can find more information on the matter at the following blog posts:
LemonStand Licensing
Free Developer Licenses
If you have any further questions, just let us know.
Peter Kuntz
Thursday, July 15, 2010Testing LS for a few weeks now. Looks more promising than any other shopping system we've tested.
Not too complex but filled with great feautures that webshops needs to have inside.
Key feature for us is the update process. Runs smoothly all the time.
We can't wait for the 1.0 release. I noticed that the first post in this list is almost 1 year old. This gives me some thoughts but I hope promises will become reality soon.
Maybe a roadmap with some global time schedules would be nice.
Keep up the good work!
Danny Halarewich
Thursday, July 15, 2010@Peter - Thanks for the compliments. Regarding timelines: we have always avoided promising dates until this point because we feel that it was better to build something of quality that was tested and stable, then release, rather than meeting some arbitrary deadline we set.
We've been hard at work on LemonStand since day 1, and we're confident it won't disappoint. In fact, our customer service track record already speaks for itself I think. Thanks again!
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