nopCommerce Enterprise Edition v2.00 released (UPDATE: There's no Enterprise edition)

Thanks for the responses Andrei

Im moving house next week so 3 weeks sounds great.

Perhaps I suggest a pay monthly subscription for the enterprise system.

Say £20-30 per month for access to the enterprise features and support. Helps fix our costs and gives you a potential fixed revenue stream.

It could be levelled too, so different enterprise levels cost different prices, similar to the 1and1 ecommerce platforms?

Regards
Anthony

abcd_12345 wrote:




That would we be a good method. I think you would need to have control and manage the way the list looks and works within the forum, that way you'll get a heads up on what people are requesting.

Welovewines wrote:

I'm not agree with that.

I will buy nopcommerce enterprise version when i think that nopcommerce meets my needs. Now is not the moment.

If i have to pay monthly, i am sure that i will not buy nopcommerce, i will use comunity edition. i think that montly subscription is not good idea.

A couple of comments. First I completely  understand and support your need for a paid version. I do however have a few comments/concerns regarding not only this switch but also the functionality itself. I hope I dont include too much in 1 post.
1. There are a couple of features, specifically inventory control per variant/attribute, that we have been discussing in the forum for some time (Here is the thread for reference). There was even several posts from NOP staff saying that it would be in the next version. Some of us have been hanging on waiting for this only now to find out we have to pay for the functionality. I think it would have been only fair to mention that in your post to that thread 2 weeks ago.

--As a subnote to this, the functionality seems incomplete. I think what everyone was asking for was the abiltiy to define the attribute lists at the product level and then select a different combo for each variant. Instead you gave lists for each variant. It seems to defeat the purpose, not to mention that I a) have to define the list over and over for each variant, and b) still dont have the ability to assign an inventory control #(sku) to each combo of attributes. Many of Us have a product ID (style) and then an additional ID for each attribute combo(variant sku). It seems to me that the functionality was implemented while still rendering useless. The same problems it was meant to solve still exist. (I think, see point 2)

2. The online demo allows me to experiment with the settings, but without being able to see the changes in the store demo it is useless. Is there a way to test/demo a version where I can actually see the changes I am making, or do I have to shell out the $399 only to find that I still cannot acheive what I am trying to do?

3. The comparison states free updates for 1 year. Does that mean I will have to pay the full price every year for updates/fixes etc. or will there be a smaller yearly maintenance renewal fee? If it will be the full price every year will the price be locked or if you decide to raise it to $3000 will I be stuck with an unsupported product outside our price range?

All that said, I dont want to sound negative. You guys have created a great OS effort here and all your hard work is very appreciated. I will however appreciate it even more once it is actually usable to me. At that point I will be glad to pay the modest $399 fee you are asking.

Thanks,
D

I think the growth in popularity of NopCommerce is due to two factors: the high quality of the NopCommerce code base (anyone that has ever worked with aspdotnetstorefront will understand how much impact this has on customizability and maintainability), and the open source nature of the product.

I understand the need to monetize your continued investment in the product. Your existing income sources seem to be primarily from professional services and the partner program. I think you should promote your professional services more effectively. Listing typical prices for certain services would be helpful. I would also suggest that you ask for case studies from your partners and publish those on your website.

Here’s a novel monetizing concept of building features on demand: Look in your forums to find which lacking features people are asking for, and allow individuals to pay to participate in the requirements specification and early availability of the feature. The workflow could go something like this:

1. We’re going to build multi-lingual business entities. Pay $50 to participate in requirements determination. Minimum participants: 10.

2. Multi-lingual business entities has been scoped (publish requirements). Cost to build is $2,000. Development will start once project is funded. Contribute to funding in $50 increments.

3. Those that contributed get the feature when it’s built, and provide feedback through a ticket system.

4. Others can buy the feature for (say) $150, or wait until it is included in a future release.

I think this is a win-win for both parties. You get paid for your work, and we are empowered to get missing features addressed in a way that meets our requirements and will be included in future versions (because we don’t like to have a heavily customized codebase due to the increased difficulty in applying upgrades).

At this point, I would avoid segmenting your product into different editions. This this scares developers away from trusting the “open source” label that has created such a strong attraction to your product. Even though you say you have a continued commitment to always having a free version, us developers will never trust that business model completely. Look at the feature list in Vevocart. Almost nothing is available in the free version, and it seems like it’s just an old version that they’ve kept around in order to retain the “free” label. I also remember Community Server from Telligent, which used to have a wonderful free version that was ideal for individual bloggers. Eventually, they left it behind in their drive to monetize, and in doing so lost an entire community of developers.

So, instead, why don’t you dump the “community edition” label, and introduce “standard edition” with the promise that it will always be free. Then provide paid-for add-ons for the standard edition. We developers don’t mind paying for add-ons that we need. It’s funny, but even if the cost of add-ons that we need is $399, we are much happier paying that than paying the same amount for a paid version of the product. It’s a psychological thing I guess.

And yes, eventually it will make sense to have an enterprise edition. You can charge several thousand for this as long as it is targeted at providing features that are only necessary for large organizations.

Congratulations on your launch. I'm looking forward to seeing what the upcoming community edition upgrade looks like.

Regards,
Gary

Just an Idea, but I think everyone is disappointed in a couple things. One we have all been discussing new changes for several months now and being told it will be available in the new release just to find out we have to pay for these changes. A Bait and switch would be a good description of what you have done.

Secondly there is the fact that even though you have provided some nice descriptions of some of the new features there is no way for any of us to know if the changes will work for us the way we were needing them to.

Perhaps there is a way you can provide the enterprise edition on a 30 day trial? This way it can be tried out to be sure it works correctly for us and if not we can get our money back and revert to the community or another e-source. Or perhaps a Windows system only demo were we can create a site without seeing the code or being able to publish, but are able to see the full functionality of the new system?

Just some Ideas. I am certainly not opposed to paying for the system, you guys have done a great job, but I am not about to pay $900, $400 or any other amount for a system that I can not test its full functionality before purchase. And I am sure many others feel the same way.

I do agree to much to soon... but I guess time will tell. Perhaps a discount to those who are currently using the free version for a while and have contributed to the updates.

the one thing that almost everybody is wondering about now is : what will the next community version include as far as fixes, and features.

a list from the team would probably give a lot of piece of mind to a lot of users.

I think you guys have done a great job with this cart and I for one would be willing to pay $50 to remove the 'powered by nop' as a required fee for every cart, starting with the 1.5 version. Maybe we can buy multiple licenses for let's say $99/4pack.
That would hopefully give you enough revenue to keep going and we could still offer a great cart to clients and be competitive in price.

gxclarke wrote:

This is an interesting point really. I think people see "enterprise" edition and do get certain expectations of what features should be included.

Perhaps a different sales model (perhaps offering these additional features as paid for extensions) would have been better. However, regardless of this, $399 for all these extra features (if you need them) is nothing. I've had clients who have requested for just 2-3 of these features (such as stock management for product attributes) and I would have quoted well over $399. In many cases I told them to wait for this edition because it will cost them less.

So was it a little to early for an "enterprise" branded version? Perhaps. Was it too early to for nopCommerce to make a bit of money? Of course not. Open source or not, everyone has to make a living.

And remember this - Open source is not just about getting stuff for free. It's also about the community working together to make something great. Having been on the community project team for some time I know how little work is actually contributed back from the community, yet im sure there are many companies making plenty of money from it.

So please try and think positively about this release. The community really needs to shake up. If you want the project to continue to get better then start contributing. I'm not necessary talking money here. If you are a free lance developer making money out of nopCommerce extensions, why not consider contributing some of your code back to the project.

I would like to add that I am not an employee of nopSolutions and do not earn anything from the sales of the enterprise edition. I am just a long time supporter of the community project and personally would like it to continue.