Are the xenforo devs being to greedy?

I’ve noticed a trend lately on the xenforo forums where the devs are charging for very simple plugins. This was my big turnoff using the IPB board; it seemed like every little mod I wanted was 10 or 15 bucks when the same thing had been free on vbulletin.org for years. I’ve noticed this happening at xenforo more and more. For example this morning I was searching for a plugin to add the latest post in the side column, well I found one that is close and its 10 freaking bucks!
I have no problem with devs charging for their work and paying or their time but I don’t know, it really erks me when I see what appears to be very little effort in updates or fixing the mod and it’s a paid mod. I would rather spend 50$ on a quality mod and know that it’ll be updated and that we can give feedback for improvements, over a $10 “latest post” mod that will not be altered or updated.

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Its tough times, so everyone is looking to make an extra buck. The better alternative is to learn coding and do it yourself. There is some hard work that comes with coding especially to those who don't know it but also demand it be free. Even when it is free, you still get those people who whine all because it lacks the feature they wanted. Modification writing is a cruel world to be honest. I am making a few now for SMF and I have even considered charging for them, myself.

 

Even though those modifications may be simple compared to many, the effort put into them is still skilled labor. I tend to shy away from subscriptions, however I don't mind giving a bit for something that may not have existed otherwise.

I use IPB and a lot of things are skin edits.

 

Being in the service based business for the past 12yrs now, I've come across the root issue of your statement. That most folks solely equate worth in terms of the amount of time it takes to do a task. They overlook the more important aspect, what a set amount of knowledge or skill is worth or how much effort is involved in acquiring the skills to perform a certain task.

Example #1
Classic examples are accountants, lawyers, electricians or plumbers who charge alot for what seems to be quick tasks. You pay the high fees for them, not for how quickly they complete a task but for their skills or knowledge and/or access to tools of the trade they have.

Take for instance 2 accountants or financial advisors

• advisor #1 = charges $200 per hour, and in 1 hr consult manages to save you $1000 on your tax return
• advisor #2 = charges $2000 per hour, and in 1 hr consult manages to save you $5000 on your tax return because his knowledge in area of taxation was better.

Now ask yourself, what's that 1hr consult is worth to you with both advisors ? Does it matter that advisor #2 only took 1hr to achieve that result ? Is that 1hr worth less or more than the 1hr advisor #1 took to do the job ?

Example #2
To bring the examples back to the web, 3 programmers or system admins

• #1 = charges $50/hr, manages to improve your app or server performance by 10%
• #2 = charges $150/hr, manages to improve your app or server performance by 50% as they knew more tuning/tweaks which they could apply
• #3 = charges $300/hr, manages to improve your app or server performance by 150% as they knew more tuning/tweaks which they could apply

Example #3
Another example, imagine if your web site is crashing daily and you're loosing ad revenues and visitors. You wasted days and hired and tried several system admins without success. Then a new system admin says they can fix your problem completely. How much is they solution (knowledge) worth to you ? Does it matter if solution only took 60 mins to implement ? what about if it took 30 mins ? 5 mins ?

Remember, you're also paying for knowledge and not only for the effort involved

 

I agree with this. Although, these are services and not goods. I'd like to think when I am purchasing these plugins, themes, etc...I'm paying for support. If they are awful or close up, I agree with Brandon.

 

Yeah i guess with paid mods, there's both a service and goods component as well.

 

Well you kind of can't expect everything to be free. I mean they have to pay the bills somehow and if it is by making a few bucks by making everyone pay for plugins it's better than being bombarded with adverts and membership costs.
Hell when I go into Officeworks to get something photocopied I can't get it for free. When I go to the supermarket none of my groceries are free.

 

I wish I had the skill sets to create/modify my own mods, but seeing as I don't even know where to even begin to get those skill sets I really don't have much of a choice. I either pay if I think it's worth the money or just go without it.

Personally, my biggest gripe wouldn't be the cost of the mods, but the lack of support. I've purchased mods for my vB boards only to either not have support or wait extended periods for an update. These are scripts in the 50 - 90 dollar range.

 

Times getting harder I guess, people not so willing anymore to keep doing it for free, time spent creating them that could be spent working earning a living. So you can't blame them really in the poor economic climate. But yes, it's a trend I've seen happening at XenForo and talked about it before myself. People had it really good on vBulletin.org in years gone by, great mods, many complicated ones released for free. But those days are gone now I think.

If I was a talented mod creator, which I'm not. Doubt I'd release anything for free. But unfortunately, it does give the impression that mod developers on XenForo are only their now to milk what money can make from the site. Which doesn't really help the mod community as a whole that, as in FREE mods to help promote and sell the forum product, like vBulletin 3 thrived on for years.

 

I've thought of the same thing before. But it always goes back to this. If I can't do what I need done, then why should I be able to judge something as simple? Some people actually are trying to just get by, so I have no problem supporting them, if they need that kind of money. However, compared to the MyBB and phpBB communities, the Xenforo devs do seem to charge more. I've seen paid mods for MyBB, but most of the time, they're free. A totally different group of people, for sure.

 

Think you will get more free mods for phpBB and MyBB, simply because it's open source FREE forum software in the first place. So it stands to reason that trend will be kept going with most mods released as well, that they are free also. Bit different in that respect really when coming to paid commercial forum software, same kind of trend followed I guess, it's not free to use, so many will charge for their mods. That kind of mentally.

But in saying that, vB.org offered a vast amount of free mods.

 

Yeah, it makes sense, but in another way, it doesn't. Just because a more advanced software is paid doesn't mean that the plugins/themes need to be expensive, when they probably require the same amount of work. Like you said, they charge money because they can get away with it. It's unfortunate, but it's why you've got to weigh out your decisions.

 

When you're on a forum from a forum that wants something with little power on the internet, but yet a large forum itself it can be difficult. We try our best to not have ads and to do things very well. Like for example, we tried to find a developer for a sidebar widget and the quotes we got were far too much we wouldn't pay for. One quote was $500 for adding a comments link.

 

from xenforo.com

http://xenforo.com/community/threads/addons-cost-too-dang-much.42497/

 

Im glad that the addon community for XenForo is gettign off the ground more and more. With the law suit going and the devs going quiet there was a pretty good chance of the community dying.
It will be interesting to see what happens when Digitalpoint releases the 6 million addons for xenforo that he is writing.

Anyway, I only see it as good that commercial addon developers are able to earn money with XenForo. This will attract more commercial addon developers. If this catches on, then the platform will go way beyond what the developers themselves can do.

 

in reply to this... developers have to make money too.

So let's use that Jaxel $200 mod (which does SOUND excessive). I haven't seen it nor have I visited XenForo to see what it is, but I have to advocate here - being a developer myself who makes paid resources for forum software (as well as developing other things).

A (professional, shall we say?) developers time is often very limited. Myself, for example, I have my work, which takes up 80% of my time, then I have my own sites to attend to and also my paid modifications on top, which have to be supported, updated, bug fixed, and upgraded every major release.

So, let's get down to numbers. Hypothetically. If I charge $9 per hour (cheap!) to develop an application, and a typical application takes anywhere from 5 to 10+ hours to create. That's $45 minimum, $90 maximum, and these developers are creating fully featured applications and selling them from anywhere between $5 to $30 (the 'pricey' price mentioned above).

I see the point with simple addons like your latest posts sidebar thing, $10 seems a lot, but if that hook (using IPB terminology here, sorry) took an hour or 2 to make for that developer (which it can do for newbie devs, I could do something like that in significantly less time, but they can't), then that's still $9 * 2 or $9 * 1.. IMO you would still be getting a bargain.

Oh, remember the "$9 per hour (cheap!)" bit? A typical developer charges upwards of $15 per hour.

The short of it is: Developers for forum software products always grossly undersell themselves and their work - you're almost always getting a bargain.

The alternative is unfortunately to learn how to code yourself. If you choose that road then good for you, we always need more people who do things for themselves, as later down the line they themselves may turn into someone who sells their work.

 

Mikey, the idea with paid resources is that, even if you charge more per hour, you are looking for MANY SALES to get the money back. I do design for $500 for instance. And yet have released premium themes that don't cost more than 20 bucks. They did take some time to make and of course my expertise should be paid for. But I don't sell them with $500, because I am trying to get more sales and this will help me get my money back and also provide my clients with some designs that are not too pricey (even if they're the same quality maybe as my custom work).

So, when you price your services, have this in mind. If you come and make the price based on your time only, you'll probably get a HUGELY priced product no one will bother buy. So you need to take into account the number of sales you're planning on getting and drop the price accordingly. You'll not recoup your money (time spent is money) by selling one expensive license, you're getting it by multiple sales at a smaller price.

Other than that, I 100% agree with you. People SHOULD be paid for their hard work and we need to understand that knowledge costs. And yes, the current climate doesn't really help either, most our countries are still in recession, so we do try to earn as much as possible.

On the other hand we don't really need to buy all these plugins. I mean I'm running my forums nicely and dandy without many plugins. I have paid for the anti-spam plugin (one license for just a forum of mine), on the others I was able to do the job myself and not need it. I really recommend people to stick as much as they can with the features the platform has, since we're running forums in the end. Not Facebook or myspace.

 

I hate how everyone is charging for simple products that are pretty much free on everything else. However that is the state of this world basically, nothing comes for free any more to be honest. I do not mind paying for something if I need it badly but otherwise I just try and go without.

 

This.

 

If something is priced too high and isn't worth the cost, obviously don't buy it.

So either you want it, and you are willing to pay the price (you just don't *like* the price, but since you bought it's clearly it's worth the price).

Or maybe you don't buy it because it's not worth the price to you, but you want it anyway. That also seems kind of silly. I'd like a new Ferrari for $5,000 myself.

It doesn't apply to addon developers, but ANYTHING you are buying... it's just supply and demand really.