Hosting? Licenses? A poll!

[Bruceper]

So here's the deal. One part of my job is to find ways for Nicecoder to make money.

I've had some of these thoughts for some time now and they were rejected in the past. There is no objection now so I decided I would post a poll to find out what people think.

Feel free to vote on the poll and post your opinion on this as well.

Definitions

Leased license
A leased license is a license that you do not own. You pay a yearly fee for this license and this would include access to all updates and upgrades yearly. If you do not renew the license, then it expires and you are not able to use the product any longer. The typical cost would probably be in the $30 to $35 per year range for IndexU.

It would be possible to make a leased license for 10, 25 and unlimited versions of IndexU as well.

Webhosting
This is pretty obvious as to what it would be. Webhosting that would be guaranteed to run any Nicecoder product. You purchase the license and we host it for you.

Hosted license
We host your site for you (just like the webhosting) but we manage the product for you. If there is an upgrade then we upgrade your version. We would not make changes for you! We just manage your installation and upgrade of IndexU. This type of hosting would not include FTP access. No purchase of a license would be required, simply a monthly fee.

The hosted license would have a fee structure that would increase with database size and traffic. The minimum cost would probably be $10 per month going up from there. This would allow you to host a site with a few thousand listings.

Notes
Pricing is simply speculative so the final pricing may be different than what is listed above. I'm just using these numbers as examples and hoping to hear feedback from users.

[Bruceper]

Lets face it, webhosts are a dime a dozen, so I don't think Nicecoder should do it.

However the leased licenses and hosted licenses really intrigue me because I think it could get us an audience that we've never had before.

With the hosted license, for the same cost of webhosting at a decent host, a user could have a fully licensed copy of IndexU. No purchase necessary, and no risk. Technically a user would be able to purchase one month and then cancel. We may need to have a setup fee that would include the first month free to reduce this, but it would work.

The leased licenses are also a great idea. They allow a user to get our products for a low initial cost and a low yearly fee and it would include access to all upgrades.

[DGTALGOODIES]

Would this affect the owned license and the 30$ a year for upgrades that we own ?

[Dr. Jekyll]

Leased license
A leased license is a license that you do not own. You pay a yearly fee for this license and this would include access to all updates and upgrades yearly. If you do not renew the license, then it expires and you are not able to use the product any longer. The typical cost would probably be in the $30 to $35 per year range for IndexU.

In that case nobody will ever buy indexU if is going to pay for the yearly upgrade as much as them with "leased license"

[EBIZ]

Bruce take a look at edirectory they offer hosted plans as well but I think they were smoking something strange when they came up with the prices.

[Bruceper]

3 replies, and no votes.

No it wouldn't affect any other licenses.

Yes people would still buy licenses, because a license purchase is a one time fee. You never need to pay anything again if you don't want to.

And if you read everything, it said the pricing was a guess, not that it was set in stone. I think a fee of $40 per year (possibly up to 50) is more likely.

It's all about balance. You need to balance the cost between sales, leases and hosted licenses. Altough the hosted license, in the end, is the most expensive, it gives users a taste of what they can get for a fraction of the cost.

[DGTALGOODIES]

I don't think any one would want the Leased license most of us do this for long terms and buying a license is obviously allot more advantageous and less of a pain in the ars. Unless the leased license add something special to give!

All tough a License that could always be good even (if) NiceCoder (was) to shut down prabably would generate some sales

A Hosted license would fit in good as i am sure people would like to have there script hosted by Nicecoder and have a guarantee that everything will work, i could of used that a while ago and u do see allot of peoples on this forum having problem because of there WebHost.

Webhosting u said it your self

I think it would be good if the Updates where always free as any product should always be problem free and then u make all new feature as modules and charge per modules. Like that peoples will only pay for what they NEED!
Remember most of the time when something is changed in indexu It comes along whit some kind of bugs somewhere. If Indexu could be more like a platform that never changes then new bugs would mostly be found in the modules. So peoples who would want a bug free Indexu wont need to keep paying and peoples who want new features can purchase That Specific module and support it buy buying it!

[John Milton]

You forget "Free Hosted License of a Light version"

[FSGDAG]

Obviously, I'm not interested in having NiceCoder do ANY hosting! I choose the 'leased license'.

Lets face it, alot of directories are up one day, and down the next. Either the 'millionaire' buisness model didn't work out for them or they loose interest in it. There's many other reasons too, but for those that are strapped from cash and dont want to have to lay out a big sum at once, the 'Leased License" would work perfectly for them. Maybe even have two prices. One for just leasing the license, and another for leasing the license and full membership to IndexUTemplates.com.

Bruce... If you and John would like to talk about some kind of partnership for the hosting, I'm willing to see if we can work something out together

[Bruceper]

There's only one way I would host the free version, and that would be if we ran ads that weren't removable on it, otherwise we're just shooting ourselves in the foot.

So here's what I've boiled the pricing down to.

Leased License
$49.00 per year - includes access to all updates for as long as the lease is paid. Cost to upgrade to full license $59. Would include a choice of one premium template and one premium plugin that Nicecoder offers per year of lease renewal.

Yes that would cost more than just purchasing a full license. But the point here is that it's more work for us to convert the license from one type to another.

Hosted License
$15 per month. No license purchase necessary, your choice of any template that Nicecoder has (including premium templates). If a user stops paying, the site is deleted 5 days after payment is past due.

There would be a $30 setup fee which incudes a free first month of hosting. Access is only provided to the admin panel. There would be no FTP access. 250MB of disk space and 5GB of bandwidth.

Requires a domain name to be pointed to Nicecoders server.

User would receive full technical support.

Free Hosted License
Free! No license purchase necessary, your choice of any of the free templates Nicecoder has. If no activity is detected for 60 days the site is deleted.

Ads are displayed in the header of each page. 25MB of disk space and 500MB of bandwidth.

Requires use of a subdomain.

There would be NO technical support for the free hosted license.

notes
The only issues I can see here would be users wanting a copy of their templates if they chose to move hosts. For the Hosted License this would be provided free of charge. For the Free Hosted License there would be a $15 fee (or free if a license was purchased).

Offsite backups would be provided in case of data loss. However the Hosted License accounts would receive priority restoration.

[FSGDAG]

There's only one way I would host the free version, and that would be if we ran ads that weren't removable on it, otherwise we're just shooting ourselves in the foot.

There's plenty of free web hosting scripts out there than run off of cPanel / WHM. They all usually include advertising built into them.

[Bruceper]

It appears that we can do the leased licensed and the hosted license with phpaudit without any modifications so we could begin doing this at any time once I figure out a system and get the order forms the way I want them.

The free one is a bit different, I can't figure out how to set that up at this point yet and to automate it without using third party software.

So for now, nothing will happen unless we can do it all, or I ditch the free version idea which I don't want to do. Keep watching this space for more info and please vote for your favorite choices.

[Dr. Jekyll]

. and please vote for your favorite choices.

I believe you should add at the pool "no one above"