[Vtigercrm-developers] How to extend feature such as Global Search without core modifications ?

[Alan Bell]

On 16/02/16 13:19, John Crisp wrote:
> Yes I understand the business mechanics of it. (I'm not a tech guy at 
> all really) Posting different extensions at different prices is no 
> judge really. Yes, same product at differing price points may help.
yeah, but we can't do that, the marketplace is what it is.
> I also understand from your point of view that you might as sell one 
> at 100 instead of 10 at 10... once you multiply it up you have to do 
> an awful lot more sales to make the same margin. 10 at 100 versus 100 
> at 10. That's a lot more work for you in support etc. Our own business 
> works the same way - yes we can drop prices, but it just is not worth 
> it as we would have to up our turnover massively just to stand still. 
the evidence we have suggests that we wouldn't get more sales by 
dropping the prices at the moment, I think if you are selling 10 per 
month at $100 then dropped the price to $10 I think you would still sell 
10 per month as there is nobody failing to purchase because of the 
price, it just isn't like a phone app market where there are millions of 
users doing price-sensitive impulse buys. If you have data to suggest 
that low prices would give large volumes in the vtiger store then I 
would certainly be interested in it.
>> We also had a look around the Sugar and SalesForce app exchanges, there
>> are quite a few Sugar things in the 1000 region and a lot of the
>> SalesForce extensions are around 10 per month per user or 500 per month
>> per instance.
>> It all kind of depends on what they do, but in general I don't think
>> €100 as an unlimited users, pay-once price is likely to be harmfully
>> overpriced.
>>
> It really depends on how many users you have..... In my case only 5
> currently. And pay once ? For every future version of vtiger ? I guess
> not......
yes, it appears that this is the way the marketplace works, pay once, 
get upgrades. I am not sure if it is possible to do something with the 
manifest to have multiple versions of an extension in the marketplace 
that are valid for different versions of vtiger. I think it is basically 
pay once, it works forever. (or until something breaks and the developer 
doesn't release an update).
What I would actually like to see is pay once, support lasts for a year, 
then you can pay again if you want to get another year of support, and 
something in the marketplace console to indicate whether people are 
current on support, but failing that pay once and works forever is fine 
by me.
>
> No, it isn't a big expense per se (and I don't know whether you price
> differently for different parts of the world as that can make a big
> difference for some), but if I wanted 3 or 4 modules.... that can be a
> lot per head in a small company where every penny counts.
we can't price differently for different parts of the world in the 
marketplace (not sure I would want to really)
>
> You then have to start questioning the value of the product.
>
> I am sure most companies that vTiger have a much larger user base
> and that is your target market, so us little fish have to make a choice.
>
> (Note that I am quite happy to pay for support for OS products when
> required. Part and parcel of OS, and running a business)
>
> What makes a difference is that if I upgrade from 5.4 to 6 I instantly
> have to pay for various things that were effectively free before. That's
> a turn off for a start.
yeah, and there are some modules that really should be core 
functionality, for example report charts used to be available as home 
page widgets, but that feature has gone and there are some modules that 
bring it back. I am quite tempted to code up the required widget and 
just submit it to code.vtiger.com rather than try and sell that one. You 
can always contribute stuff to core, but some things wouldn't be 
accepted as a general purpose extension. Some things like encrypted 
portal passwords just need to be there as standard so that is something 
we are working on getting into the core. Others like the geotools maps 
extension are new extended chunks of functionality that some people have 
a use for and work well as paid extensions.
>
> Paying for extra/new items - fine. But you get the feeling that as a
> little fish you have been thrown on the spear of corporate profit, and
> that doesn't feel very good - you just feel like a commodity to monetise.
>
> I'm sure a lot of vTiger users left Sugar for this reason. vTiger just
> feels like it is heading back to become just another Sugar.
>
> B. Rgds
> John
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> http://www.vtiger.com/

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