PayPlans works well. However, I am not sure if you are aware, but Stackideas are planning on adding subscription fee feature to EasySocial in a few months time.

Hello Stephen,

I am not really sure if Akeeba Subs has an integration with EasySocial but I do know that Payplans does have such integrations at this point of time.

I just checked payplans and they are really pricey. @Mark, do you think Es subscription could be out by end of this year? I would rather buy your subscription plan.

Hello Neel,

I am really sorry but I cannot provide any timeline for this yet at this point of time

I have bought Payplans and the price for it payed itself after 3 subscriptions, so, id say its not really "pricey" for the component that is lean, clean, easy to use, and offers bunch of integration.

$150 is not pricey? Never mind my hard earned website subscription paying for it, it's still $150 which classifies it has the "most expensive extension" for my site. So yeah, it is very pricey! Also when es releases their subscription, I will go with them for sure. So spending $150 for something temporary to have until then is high for my budget.

@Mark, I am willing to put $100/- as a down payment if you or your team can create a simple subscription atleast for 1.4 to get started while you improve that in future releases! Please... I know you said you cannot provide timeline, but please do seriously reconsider this because this is one feature that is hard to find a good replacement for: payplan is pricey, emerald doesn't look impressive for their price, akeeba subs does not provide support, membership pro doesn't seem to support ES yet. So, not much to choose unless I am spending a big chunk of $150 for it

Well, when i bought PayPlans, it was $99 for 1 year of download and updates, and on the site where it's installed and still running the cheapest subscription at that time was $40. One would believe that in course of one year, site will generate at least 3 subscriptions to pay itself off and even make some profit.

Ofcourse, if you selling subscription for just a few bucks, it might not be a good trade for you, but in my opinion, that component is well worthy.

Thanks for your reply Darko. Now its $99 for 6 months only and $150 for 1 year. Thats ridiculous. I understand that they probably have a lot of features, but still the price needs to be reasonable. EasySocial charges $99/- for 6 months too but the features they have is like a beast. I dont mind paying ES that because ES runs the entire site for me, manages registrations, email notifications, profiles, events, walls, albums, privates messages, and so much more that the list is never ending. But with Payplans, all I will be using that is for subscription plans and add users to the respective groups when the payment is completed that too via paypal (which is probably the simplest and easiest payment method). Just for this, charging such a huge price of $150/- is a joke.

I am not comparing ES with PayPlans since I understand they are both entirely different components for different purposes. But I am using this as an example since ES components has so much more features and a lot more work in developing this longest list of features when compared to PayPlans. Yet Payplans price is very ambitious.

I am not gonna go with them for this sole reason alone.

Hello Neel,

At times you also need to understand that the cost is not just about getting the "product". It's all about maintaining the product and the support as well. It's not always easy to price something very cheap and suffer at a later stage.

I personally have seen some companies with business models where they are charging $200++ for a lifetime subscription and while you might classify that as cheap, let's just think rationally again, do you think they will live longer than you?

"I personally have seen some companies with business models where they are charging $200++ for a lifetime subscription and while you might classify that as cheap, let's just think rationally again, do you think they will live longer than you?"

First of all, I would not say $200 for lifetime to be cheap neither (again it depends on the product and on the other subscription they have on offer). But if they are charging like $150 per year, then you get the $200/- value back even if they last just 16 months. So yeah, rationally speaking, the lifetime value is worth if its not more than 1/3 to double of their maximum plan they have for other subscriptions.

"At times you also need to understand that the cost is not just about getting the "product". It's all about maintaining the product and the support as well. It's not always easy to price something very cheap and suffer at a later stage."

I understand that. No one is asking for a "very cheap" price. But the price should still be reasonable. Even after considering it, $150/- they are charging for PayPlans for 1 year is just ridiculous. Its as simple as that in my view. (ofcourse YMMV)

The more important question would be: Mark will you be implementing a migration path to move subscribers from PayPlans to EasySocial once subscriptions are added? and do you intend to offer integrations with the most populer third party components that integrate into EasySocial, like jReviews, YooRecipe, JFBConnect etc.

+1 Jannik questions. And

@Mark, I am willing to put $100/- as a down payment if you or your team can create a simple subscription atleast for 1.4 to get started while you improve that in future releases! Please... I know you said you cannot provide timeline, but please do seriously reconsider this because this is one feature that is hard to find a good replacement for: payplan is pricey, emerald doesn't look impressive for their price, akeeba subs does not provide support, membership pro doesn't seem to support ES yet. So, not much to choose unless I am spending a big chunk of $150 for it that too for a temporary option until ES brings out their own

There's only so much we can do with our limited resources and if we have sufficient resources, I don't see why not building 3rd party integrations While I wish to give you guys a more decent answer, I always try not to because most of the time users would quote what I posted in the forums and grill me right on the BBQ pit and it isn't fun at all

To be honest, although some design works for 1.4 has began, we haven't really started our 1.4 feature discussions yet. We will as soon as we get 1.3 stable

subscribe

Hi Mark I understand you are reluctant to commit to anything since we can hold it against you if its not accomplished. But also, since I am trying to work out what to do for a subscription component, I also need to consider how long ES might take to bring their own, etc.. so we can plan accordingly.

When would we know if you are considering to add this feature to 1.4 roadmap? I am assuming once your team have your discussions on what features to work on for 1.4, you should probably be in a better place to tell us if you have also considered subscription feature for 1.4 or not isint it? If yes, then would you know in like 2 weeks time or so? Can you throw us a bone? Anything and I promise I wont quote you for it.

I am really sorry but I cannot give you any estimates right now.

Mark wrote:

There's only so much we can do with our limited resources and if we have sufficient resources, I don't see why not building 3rd party integrations While I wish to give you guys a more decent answer, I always try not to because most of the time users would quote what I posted in the forums and grill me right on the BBQ pit and it isn't fun at all

To be honest, although some design works for 1.4 has began, we haven't really started our 1.4 feature discussions yet. We will as soon as we get 1.3 stable

Yeah, I understand. While I would say the vast majority of people on these forums understand the challenges with getting new features to market on a timely fashion while developing and offering support for other components in your portfolio... I do realize that some selfish individuals go crazy over individual features that they feel they not only deserve, but have a claim to.

I am subscribed to PayPlans but have never used it, I am not actually as much a fan as others. I do believe they are the best on the market right now, but I do feel there is much room for improvement... and considering I mostly build around the Stackideas eco-system, it would make sense for me to wait for EasySocial's subscription system.

That said, I have considered implementing PayPlans and giving away coupon codes at the Web Summit in Dublin. However, it would be a shame to have a bunch of subscribers on PayPlans and not be able to migrate them over to EasySocial.

So my main question is really, do you intend to have a migration path? If so I could just use PayPlans until EasySocial Subscriptions becomes a reality. (As I am subscribed to PayPlans, I am in absolutely no rush, I could wait till next year to get migration, doesn't have to be day one)

Hello Jannik,

To be frank, I never actually "explored" Payplans and never really understood how it actually works in technical terms. When we are talking about building a subscription system, it would most likely be built from the ground up around users subscriptions only. If I recall correctly, Payplans has other stuffs in it as well and not only user subscriptions?

I am not even sure if it's possible to build a migrator to migrate items from Payplans since I never actually seen their data and their logics / workflows but as always, if there are enough requests for a migrator, we'll do it provided that it's possible

Mark wrote:

Hello Jannik,

To be frank, I never actually "explored" Payplans and never really understood how it actually works in technical terms. When we are talking about building a subscription system, it would most likely be built from the ground up around users subscriptions only. If I recall correctly, Payplans has other stuffs in it as well and not only user subscriptions?

I am not even sure if it's possible to build a migrator to migrate items from Payplans since I never actually seen their data and their logics / workflows but as always, if there are enough requests for a migrator, we'll do it provided that it's possible

Understood, thanks for the clarification

Payplan is too complicated. It will be good for e-commerce site or sites that needs advanced subscription features. I see ES subscription to be a lot different than that. It should be more of a simple subscription placing users to usergroups that we can control using Joomla's ACL and having more EasySocial oriented features like giving access to ES sections based on subscription, based on registered profile, stream & album access, etc.. That will be really good.

and do you intend to offer integrations with the most populer third party components that integrate into EasySocial, like jReviews, YooRecipe, JFBConnect etc.

@Jannik: As for the integration with other components, I think we might be able to control the access if they are added to a Joomla menu item, isint it? That might be okay to start with until they improve this further in the future with points, badges, etc.. What other special integration do you think might be required?

Neel wrote:
Payplan is too complicated. It will be good for e-commerce site or sites that needs advanced subscription features. I see ES subscription to be a lot different than that.

I'm sorry, don't get me wrong, im not gonna try to be overly defensive towards PayPlans, because i have nothing from it, I'm just passing you my experience with it.
First, PayPlans is not complicated at all. I have set it up and running in under 1 hour
Its not good for e-commerce site because it is not a cart (shop) system. it merely manages the subscriptions - awesome for digital products.

Neel wrote:
It should be more of a simple subscription placing users to usergroups that we can control using Joomla's ACL and having more EasySocial oriented features like giving access to ES sections based on subscription, based on registered profile, stream & album access, etc.. That will be really good.

This is exactly what payplans do.
It have so called mini-apps you can set to do any kind of task, among them adding the users to specified groups, or restricting various features from third party components.
In my case, payplans is only used for that sole purpose. On active subscription it adds user to designated user group. When it expires, it removes it from the group.

I kinda agree that for such simple task 150 bucks price tag is an overkill, but thats just one simple feature.
If you need only that, i suggest you to hire a freelancer to make you a very simple plugin, as all payment gateways provide API to hook on, and such plugin to add/remove user from a group based on the subscription status could easily be coded in an afternoon

You are absolutely right. When I said 'they are complicated' I wasnt referring to the ease of use. What I meant is that they have heaps of apps, integrations, settings, backend stats analysis, etc.. etc.. with it. It will be perfect for an e-commerce or big sites where they want to keep a record and control of anything and everything it does. Ofcourse, it can also do the simple integration for basic sites too. Like you agreed, thats where it tends to be pricey for smaller sites. What I mean is, EasySocial subs doesnt need to have so much into it, Just the basics should do. Have a unique ES Sub that is made for ES.

Hi guys...

I just have one project with PayPlans and EasySocial.
To small project or just to sell subscriptions (User paid or not) these integrations works nice...
Butttt... if you try to use with several plans with several profiles that gonna be not easy...
EasySocial dont have ACL in profile or any others features based in usergroups.
If you have for example : student and teacher and wants that content of easysocial will be hide for each usergroup... forget ...
Only me, only friends, registered and public is not enough for this cases...
I really wants use EasySocial but these limitations (ACL) is going to me use JomSocial. Jomsocial standalone dont have these ACL features too, but there are one developer who creted these ACL functions...
http://www.readybytes.net/jomsocial-profile-type.html
To finalize my post... my project needs social registration too... JFBConect + PayPlans + EasySocial...
JFBConect use one... just one default usergroup...
If your use choose Student ... but in settings are teacher the default usergroup... your user will be set as teacher...
BIG project but big problems too...

Hello Alexandre,

EasySocial does have ACL in profile types. Not really sure what you mean / trying to achieve here?

Sorry Mark but i opened one post with these issue...

The title is Profile Access based in profile type .. and you said :

"I am really sorry but unfortunately this is not possible currently to restrict users from viewing other profile types."
http://stackideas.com/forums/profile-access-based-in-profile-type

If i can restrict in profile by usergroup.. please show me...
Thanks in advance

Kazuo

Ah okay, sorry I think I have misunderstood you here. I think you are looking for ACL for viewing profiles but not the ACL within profiles itself.

After much consideration, I bought Payplans to give it a try. After trialing out I see what @Darko meant by it. It is good and has a lot of features if you want to have a serious subscription plan on your site. Although I still think the $150 price tag is too high, I took advantage of the black friday sale that brought it down to $100 (which I feel is a more reasonable price for this component).

As my last post about Payplans were negative, I thought it is fair to update my change in view about them since they deserve some credit too. I wished the starting price is not so high AND I hope to see more integration with EasySocial. Surprised to see they dont have an EasySocial App yet (such as badge awards for plan subscription, ES Notifications when Payplan sends notification, etc...). Hope they will add more integration with EasySocial in the future considering they are partners with Stackideas.

Thanks for sharing your views here Neel

No worries Mark. Sometimes I noticed Payplans support can be frustrating. Most times they are okay but at times they can give quick incompetent reply. You guys are far superior with the quality of support that you provide. You maintain a professional standard and are way ahead of anyone I've dealt with.

Update: After my experience with Payplan support for couple of days now, its not all bad. They might not be in par with SI team here but most of the time Payplans support is quite alright.

Hello Neel,

The age experienced combined in our team is close to 200 years old and that is why our services differ from the rest but as a customer, you should also understand that it is really stressful for developers to simultaneously provide support and also update the software. Unless we are making tons of revenue to form a standalone dedicated support team but that would eventually mean it would cost you more to purchase the products

We run a business and our mission is to ensure that the business continues to survive in this cruel world

True developers does have a lot on their hands.. On the other hand who doesnt. I don't remember the last time I had a break, or watched tv, slept for more than 5 hours at night, or even went out. All I am saying is, a reasonable support is part (and essential) of running a business. You guys excel it ...

Thanks for the kind compliments Neel