Hello Charles,

The price that you see is for a period of 12 months. However we have actually introduced a new plan which is only $89 that is for 6 months and it's still relatively cheap if you do a comparison. The first release of EasySocial might contain some bugs but if you look at our progress, we have addressed tons of issues within the beta release and up till date, I believe there are probably just some quirks lying around with the server configuration.

I do appreciate your feedback on this and will definitely discuss this with our team and see if this would be feasible

Mark,


I am aware of the $89.00, 6 months plan, and that may work for new Joomla Users but for those users that have Jomsocial $89.00 will not be enough! especially when you take into count Stackideas own products, the overall price shoot up for new users, whereas JomSocial Uers already have most of your components so a $59.00 subscription with 12 months of updates and support is a more feasible offer! Because it will be Jomsocial Users that will drive your sales! With easy Social they are more likely to renew their subscription for your company other products; thus allowing you to make more money than the current price structure you have in place!

$89.00 for 6 months

$169.00 for 12 months

This is the same pricing options JomSocial Uses! and most of JomSocial Users hate it! So why would you over price your new component that will directly compete against JomSocial? i would think you learned from all of JomSocial Mistakes?

the #1 mistake most Joomla developers make is over pricing. consumer are open to working with a developer but when they are hit over the head with an un-reasonable price, that when the bad posts start flying... And having a few minor bugs is unthinkable... Why you ask because people are now paying for a product or service.

If you are planning on growing this Community Component then make a long term commitment to having a cut throat approach when it comes to pricing! right now you don't so if I was JomSocial all I would do is offer JomSocial Pro for $99! And if I really wanted to kick sand in your face I would offer Easy Social Users JomSocial Pro to them for $79.00! Plus add components that compete directly with all of the products you offer to a JomSocial Pro Bundle! Then add a feature that stops your products from working in JomSocial altogether! But the way you are going now if I was JomSocial i would not worry or lose any sleep over Easy Social!

Your company pricing helps JomSocial more than Stackideas! Take a step back and take into count Easy Social is the Core Product that will drive your other products, sales...

Current Jomsocial Users Special Pricing:

Easy Social $79.00 (12 months) (every cent you save a consumer matters in the long run)

Bundle (12 months)
easy social $59
easyblog $59
easydiscuss $59

Make your pricing "FORK" Proof?

Hello Charles,

Here's the thing, we don't want to end up in a price war What consumer's need to understand and learn is that you pay for what you get This is one of the reasons why we have had quite a huge sign up during the initial release because they know that by paying for our subscription, it not only helps us to continue the growth and operation but we do have proven track records of not only our support but our extensions as well

Rest assured that this forum post will be shared amongst the team and we'll discuss this in detail tomorrow

I'd pay TRIPLE and still think (and know!) I'm getting great VALUE.....

I too feel that the price is a bit steep for a new component. I still have an active jomsocial account, but decided to move over too EasySocial, as in my opinion it is far superior and a much cleaner look. Stackideas have great support, and their components are excellent. Been a user of EasyBlog for years and couldn't be happier.

Be nice though if there could be bundled component prices offering a bit of a discount for 2 or more components. If you are using EasySocial and 1 or 2 other stackideas components on a site it does end up quite expensive.

I understand the point Charles is making, but would take a different approach:

When you are developing your Brand based on all round quality of products and service and introduce another quality product into the marketplace, you must set a price to reflect that quality and allow for future investment. If the price is a premium above the competition, the product and brand should be strong enough to attract a growing customer base.

The product will succeed on the back of continued investment to make it better, quality support, solid marketing and a variety of promotions, but the core price remains.

If you reduce the core price, the perceived quality of the product will fall and long term decline is usually the result.

A quality product is sold by highlighting the superior benefits to the customer and price is a consideration, but not a primary one.

Stackideas is a quality brand with quality products, first class support and a long term plan for product development. It is worth paying a premium price because you know the product and support will be key elements in the first rate service you wish to offer to your own customers.

It is perfectly understandable, as Mark is ex JS, to assume JomSocial is a main competitor, but I don't believe this to be the case (and if I understand Mark's past comments neither do Stackideas) as EasySocial has not been developed in a narrow way just to compete with JS.

The tremendous flexibility of the core coding, that Stackideas (correctly) took time to develop, allows EasySocial to fit into a multitude of different markets, far beyond anything that JomSocial or any other similar Joomla component can offer at this time.

Therefore setting a price purely to compete with JomSocial is not the right strategy and using alternative marketing or promotional options would be a better approach as it could be tailored to JS customers only (if that is what Stackideas want to do).

Richard, - well said.

Donald - EXCELLENT RESPONSE! I am in total agreement with you on this. You hit the nail on the head here. Those who complain most are usually those who can't afford to pay for the component in the first place. I bet if I dig far enough into the Jomsocial forums, I'll find this person constantly complains about price there too. But why waste my time. Oh well, I'll spend five minutes on it and I bet I find he has used this strategy before to try and grind a discount.

GOLDEN RULE OF SOFTWARE PRICING & VALUED CUSTOMER SUPPORT - Don't waste valuable time on those very few that always complain about software subscription prices. If you do, you risk allowing these very few to dictate the lowering of the price you have set for your excellent extremely well supported software, and this will undermine your business value model and upset your base customers. Instead, focus 100% of your time and efforts on developing and supporting the software that satisfies the needs of your real customer base. These are your core target market customers.

If something is expensive to develop, and somebody's not going to get paid, it won't get developed. So you decide: Do you want software to be written, or not? - Bill Gates

Huummm. As suspected. I found this with a simple search. Does this look familiar Charles?

There is nothing wrong with asking for a discount. But please respect that the Developers from StackIdeas are in business to create great software, and offer it to real paying customers and should not have to waste their time with everyone that comes up with a way of trying to GRIND a huge discount out them by complaining in forums.

You forgot something very important Charles. Real paying customers that appreciate StackIdeas for everything the do to go above and beyond to assist with incredible value added support will poke holes in your GRINDER APPROACH. Save yourself the embarrassment! Either pay the going rate, or don't! - The 20% Halloween discount that is being offered right now is incredible. Take the deal or don't.

A HISTORY - it was so easy to dig this up.
It appears as though you Charles or Charles99 - are one and the same person who has tried to use this very same Complain About the Price Strategy in forums to get a Discount price out of another company. I don't think it worked.

Click the image below and you will find that you Charles or Charles99 have a history of doing this in forums:

Why Hit People Over The Head With Price?

TOPIC: What is the Renew Subscription Discount Rate?

See the link below, or click on the image to view almost the same approach being used to grind a discount.

Quoted from Charles99 in a thread titled: What is the Renew Subscription Discount Rate?
- They was hitting people over the head with their $149 price from day one just like Matamko is, and now their customers & developers are selling Fork version of their social program for $49!

http://www.matamko.com/forum/7-pre-sales-questions/1752-what-is-the-renew-subscription-discount-rate.html

----
Sound Advice: Don't waste any more time on this guy. Focus on creating and supporting your best priced and extremely well supported great software extensions. Your real customer base will appreciate it.

Two things to consider that I left out:

I look at 2 sides of the coin for any product I consider for my website:

Positive: Will the added value the product will bring to my website allow me to recover the cost as a minimum ($12-$13 per month in this case).

Negative: Will the product cause problems on my website that will mean additional costs/loss of customers and if so is the support good enough to solve the problems before the additional costs are incurred and/or customers leave?

If the answers to the above questions are favourable and the product fits in with the market strategy for the website, a purchase will be made providing the investment/capital funding is available.

If I didn't have the capital funds available I would email the supplier and see if payment terms can be arranged or could we come to some other mutually beneficial arrangement.

In this case, I am sure earnings of $12-$13 per month can be achieved and the support is top class so any problems will be resolved quickly, so both sides of the coin are favourable and the only decision to be made was buy.

The other thing is the ES price for 12 months is similar to the JS price for 6 months, so what is the fuss about?

Been a member of the tech world since 1978. Don't even want to know how much I spent on software from Microsoft and Apple. Neither of those companies would just connect to my system and fix an issue caused by a 3rd party. The team at Stackideas will. I can't rate Mark and his team high enough. How can you put a price on that level of dedication and commitment to clients.

Just wanted to thank Stackideas for their great code.

Oh wow, the team and I am pretty amazed by the warm feedback here and appreciate all the support given here. We can't thank you guys enough and the only way to show that is by showing you our roadmap, http://stackideas.com/roadmap/easysocial

We do not have any intentions of starting a price war with anyone. We charge what we felt was right even for the rest of our products. We need to build a sustainable business so that everyone get's the best of everything, whether it be the support or the product.

Yep, I totally agree that the word FORK would definitely work on a GPL based code but do remember that the base codes for EasySocial is close to 9mb If you think you have what it takes to fork it, by all means you are allowed to do that under GPL licensing but of course, copyright has to remain intact.

Again, we will definitely bring this up in a meeting because just like you, we listen to every feedback we get and discuss it amongst ourselves and come up with a winnable solution for everyone This is just how we roll here. Whether or not it get's implemented will be dependent on our internal discussions of course.

Mark,

GREEN will be every EasySocial customer's favorite color. Ha ha. I check for the color Green every day to see the version 1.1 RoadMap Progress. it's only been a few weeks and the RoadMap progress is amazing.

Can you give some teaser details on the Ability to create stream filters in dashboard Category: Stream? - such as an example of what users can do with creating stream filters.

You will be sure to have many fans in Boston at the Joomla World 2013 Conference.

Are you targeting EasySocial v1.1 for before Boston or after? Either way, its way more than anyone probably expects in such as short period of time.

Hello Randall,

Initially our plan was to release 1.1.0 before the release date but something came up as I have added a couple of new features (my bad) and we had to postpone it a little. Probably after coming back from Boston

Sure, if you want to see, meet me in Boston Just kidding, stream filters is a method where you could filter by hashtags and store them as your "Favorite" list

Hello everyone,
I would like to add my 2 cents on the matter.
I'm too on the fence here for purchasing for thinking the price is a bit too high...
I think most users thinking about the additional addons needed for their projects as-well so the overall seems pretty steep.
In my humble opinion a price tag of $139 will be smart and more appealing (yes below Jomsocial - there's nothing wrong with direct competition).
Also, a Bundle price would be brilliant addition and smart marketing.
Just my 2 cents.

Thanks.

Hello Ilan,

You need to re-calculate here again $169 for EasySocial Pro 12 months, versus $149 JomSocial Pro 6 months If you do the math, it costs you about $298 for 12 months JomSocial Pro (Not sure if there are discounts but even if there is, I am pretty sure our price is much cheaper)

Hey Mark,

Thanks for your reply.
I am aware of that but most people ultimately see the bottom line and the immediate cost/value - the price.
Also don't forget that Jomsocial has been here for while and is much more stable/mature and has many extensions & integrations.
I believe you would drive a lot more active Jomsocial users to you with a bit of a lower price , and definitely most new ones (if not all of them). Along with your well known supportive reputation and fast upgrades & integrations, would be a no-brainer for most users in need of a social component.

Thanks.

Wow, I think this is turning into a Community Builder vs JomSocial type theme and we all now what happen to Community Builder Customer Base?

And when it comes to price one has to take a step back and look at how the enduser is being nickel and dime when it comes to Joomla! For a product thats supposed to be free Joomla can cost a person more than $300 just to get it up and running. And while stackideas offer a quality product we all know there are Developers charging people an arm and leg for beta products that shouldn't even be listed on Joomla.org!

We all have a component, module or plugin that don't work or blows up our template when you enable it... And when you need support its always the other developer product thats causing the conflict... And it doesn't really matter what we think or what we post in this forum becasue at the end of the day stackideas is going to find the price that works for them... and for those that want to use Jomsocial pricing structure as some type of measuring point, don't know how to grow a fee base system! because the moment you ask consumers to pay for your services or product the rules changes! and its not just about pricing or how good your company support is, but a host of little things that most ventures never think of before placing a price on their website...

Anytime a company can save a consumer money, it matters....and Mark please, please, please never invite people to Fork your product! Because you never know who is going to run into your post? your words! 6 years ago, if I would have read your post not only would I had forked your product, but I would integrated all of your products into it and then posted it online for anyone to download for free!

As a developer , I have come to respect the code over the years...and I know if you continue to make a good product and find a price that works for stackideas, your company will give Joomla Users a reason to invest in stackideas products...

@Randall M,

What are you some type of internet forum Tea Party Member! Can you see Russia from your front door? Or were you wearing lipstick when you found a 2 years ago post with the word Charles in it! LOL!

First of all that's not my post and if I was you i would be very careful trying to make a point on content that was not written by me! In some ways its the dumbest thing I have seen today and the day is earlier, so you might find another post with the word Charles in it! Man was you smoking something when you did your Netscape search? Please update your browser... you do know you are the only person on the planet thats still using Netscape? i would love to be a fly on the wall once you find out the U.S.A. has a black President? Come on tell me, no tell all of us are you the type of person thats going to ask to see the Birth Certificate? Your missed guided post tells me you are the type of person that would do that!

But getting back to the real world most people live in, you are the reason i don't allow my members to place attack post in my system! And if I was stackideas i would ban you from using my company forum!

But I question this is one of those little things stackideas knows nothing about?

Randall is a shame I cannot pass on the cleaning cost of my shirt to you after I saw that picture you put up, I got juice all over me .

On the note then I have been a member on Stackideas for about a year now, and I like every product they have available. The price for it fair, and I do not think that we are over charged in anyway. When you choose to buy a product, you have to remember to also look at what sort of support it comes with. Here you can get Easy social for $169 and it a great product. Now the product wouldn't be worth anything, if there are no support for it. And I think StackIdeas perhaps, no wait they do have the best Joomla component support you can get... and if you haven't notice, is free when purchase a product from them. In that sense $169 is not expensive.

I will support Stackideas in any form and format possible, because I think is worth every penny I have spend here.

RR

Rampagerabbit wrote:

Randall is a shame I cannot pass on the cleaning cost of my shirt to you after I saw that picture you put up, I got juice all over me .

RR

Rampagerabbit,
My friend Larry and I are laughing so hard here about this that I am having a hard time typing this response to you.

I am so sorry about your shirt. I just had to add it.

It will most likely solicit another adolescent response from the guy but hey, what can ya do with these chumps that always show up demanding a discount because of this or that? The only issue is that it gives him way more air time here then he deserves. His 15 minutes on this lame subject are long since past.

Randall

Hello Charles,

Ah, sorry if you misunderstood my post earlier but my intentions was never to challenge you to fork the extension This is just the nature of GPL licensing and we're doing what we do best to ensure that software is well up kept and support is continuously present.

Again, we have never shut anyone's door regardless of any requests because all these feedbacks are valuable to us

ilan wrote:

Hello everyone,
I would like to add my 2 cents on the matter.
I'm too on the fence here for purchasing for thinking the price is a bit too high...
I think most users thinking about the additional addons needed for their projects as-well so the overall seems pretty steep.
In my humble opinion a price tag of $139 will be smart and more appealing (yes below Jomsocial - there's nothing wrong with direct competition).
Also, a Bundle price would be brilliant addition and smart marketing.
Just my 2 cents.

Thanks.

Thanks for the heads up on this

Just wanted to remind "Ran" you need to update your Browser! Nobody is using Netscape anymore!



Since you are unable to read and need to use pictures let me come down to your level.

Try Chrome or Firefox! And no Firefox doesn't mean there is a Fox on Fire!

Did some one write the word lame for you? Lame is responding to someone else post then finding a 2 year old post, and then posting a comment online that someone is trying to get some type of discount from Stackideas! You crossed the line and you better be able to deal with what I am going to throw at you! The one thing I hate is online bully! The people that companies use every time someone question their price, product or service! You will find people like you on every major joomla site! the site owner never have to say anything all they have to do is site back and let the Dog with a make believe bone throw dumb comment after dumb comment!

Adolescent is what you did! you did a search on a screen name, and found the word Charles, and you became a dog with a bone! thinking you could make an incorrect comment and get away with it. And I am glad you made someone laugh, pictures have a way of doing that but its my turn to start laughing?

You do know what you outlined is a crime, and people can go to jail for doing what you outlined in your post?

Mark, it would be a good time to close this thread now, there is enough good feedback and with his first set of posts in the forum Charles has outlined his case in detail.

Mark,

None of my earlier posts was meant to ask you for any type of discount! I already have Easy Social but with more than 31 million people in my overall system the secondary cost is what I have to take into consideration anytime my tech guys want to add or switch to different product.

My post was to get feed back from you, because I recommended Easy Social to about 300 people but they was a bit disappointed about the price after logging onto stackideas.com! And yes a few of them have JomSocial and from their feedback I know first hand about the problems they went through and why they are seeking to switch from JomSocial!

And as a user of your product i don't need anyone to tell me about the quality of your products and the support you provide! I have you products on my personal network and build my own blog and support forum program. I interact with developers everyday, receive demo products and tons of offers for disocunts when it comes to my members. And normally I don't post comments in forums and rarely need support. I haven't ran into a problem I wasn't able to fix myself. i live and breath codes... But after directing my members to your website i felt the need to post the question, and I feel comfortable with your answer or reply. So I plan to continue recommending your products as long as it stays at level it is, and support does not decline.

But earlier next week my lawyer there or here in the U.S. will be contacting stackideas! A registered member of stackideas posted content on your system that outline a crime and I intend to let my lawyers deal with this matter from this point!

I wish stackideas nothing but the best in growing Easy Social...


V.M.

It is 4.30am is Stackideas time, looking forward to closure of this thread when the sun comes up.

Charles - Would you be willing to halt your lawyers if this entire thread is simply deleted now that you have your answers? It seems from an outsider point of view a terrible burden to impose on our innocent StackIdeas superstars.... Whatever would be involved, it's going to slow them down and distract them for perfecting their current miracles and making new ones....

Tens for thousands of hours have gone into EasySocial and the other StackIdeas products. And the code is full access! $150 is not a lot for such a powerful tool. JReviews runs in the same ballpark. JomSocial too. And all the pro level Akeeba products too. I'd say the pricing levels for top level Joomla! components are well established. If you don't like it, there's always Wordpress. Or pull down CodeIgniter from Git and build it yourself.

- JW

100% correct John, couldn't agree more.

Wow! This is funny!

It reminds me of the time after I purchased Jomsocial and tried, played with it for hours and looking at how much $ I paid for it. Frustrated with the feature set, mediocre thoughts of designing Privacy, etc etc... Yet, since there's nobody created a better product, so people starts developing add-ons on it and people just suck up the mediocrity of the product.

Joining the Beta team to test out EasySocial on its early stage gets me to know StackIdeas team, how they listen to their customers, how fast they fix issues, etc. Coming from an Enterprise environment, getting a support like this from an OpenSource Joomla developer is a gold mine! I am proud to say that I am one of those who jump into buying EasySocial few hours after it was released. Even with all these bugs, I still don't have the feeling of frustration for what I have paid for. The key to it in my opinion is that knowing StackIdeas is listening, laid out the cards of the product future by putting up RoadMap after it was released.

Jomsocial hmmmm... interesting topic frustration is all I can say.

$189 for me is a small amount for such complicated application not to mention, that comes with a world class Support. I can name Joomla Components that are ridiculously priced, but I'm not . Some of these components are supported by EasySocial now and far less complicated than EasySocial and yet priced twice as much on annual subscription maintenance and hear this, you can only use it in one domain. Isn't that ridiculous? That is what ridiculous means for me. It does not stop there, this component I'm talking about created a new feature set for the main component and customers have to pay for it. Without that new features, it's like what's the point of buying the core. So you just have to pay for all of it and like I said it will cost double or more compared to EasySocial. On the other hand, StackIdeas will be adding more feature into EasySocial for Free! Mark don't get an idea from this LOL!

100% Agree with that too LAC.

Been so busy working on some documentation. I kept hearing beeps in my iPad. Came on here and found that the school kid must have came home right after last class and started blathering on again. He is determined to make sure his 15 minutes are not up yet.

MORE IMPORTANT MATTERS - ROADMAP vs ROADMAP
I looked at Jomsocial's Roadmap again today and I am so thankful I made a decision to bail on renewing my subscription a long time ago. Jomsocial served a purpose for my sites years ago. But it's legacy code and a stale old wannabe facebook clone in my opinion. Merav has her hands full with a real challenge in moving Jomsocial 3.x forward and she will do her best to take the legacy code and update it. There list is long and they have barely made progress on it. All the power to her and her team to do what they can for Jomsocial users.

Now onto more exciting things: Did you see how GREEN the Roadmap is getting for EasySocial v1.1? - 18 items COMPLETED - GREEN. Ability to create stream filters in dashboard, Show incomplete data on fields, are in Testing. And 5 items are showing orange mode as they are in progress.

It is not only the price of a quality product that can produce a good discussion:

When Joomlart changed the terms of membership it caused intense debate:

Title

When Joomlart asked what type of templates do you want it caused intense debate:

Title

When Joomlart included a component under a JED suspension it caused intense debate:

Title

The point I am making is that every debate in the free Open Source Joomla world is not always about product quality with good long term support but because of the 'free' concept the same debate can easily drift into the commercial marketplace as well.

However the commercial products are between $5 - $15 pm (if we look at an annual cost) and if we use the concept of "this is too much" to lower it by (say) 50%, it means we are talking about saving $7.50 per month max.

If we include the addons for quality core products, it may push it up to between $20 and $50 per month, but when you get to that scale you should have a website that can generate revenue in excess of those figures and even if you do not and it is only a hobby, it is not an expensive hobby as by far the main cost is our time.

If we can't afford a quality product we make a different choice or go in a slightly different direction for our hobby (as I have done many times).

Stackideas are light years ahead of everyone in brand development, product quality and customer service, all for a very fair main price with individual and special bundle offers to make the overall package very attractive indeed.

Long may it continue.

Thanks for the prompt feedback guys. We never delete threads unless it is a spam and neither do we want to delete this thread because we are transparent and there's nothing to hide about

charles,

We do not in anyway intend to annoy or tell you off but if any of my message above did cause any confusions, I do apologize for that. Again, as I pointed out above, I will definitely bring this up in our team meetings about the price and factor

As of now, because this thread is getting overboard, I will have to lock this thread but if you have any other suggestions, please feel free to start a new discussion and i will definitely be happy to answer your inquiries.