Implement a QuickFolders Standard License #187
Comments
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To me, these types of ideas and changes seem reasonable. As a heavy user (with a large number [10,000] of folders), I am in support of anything that encourages and rewards you, the developer, for continuing to do this hard work. I am sure that you already know this, but the level of devotion you put into QF is much, much higher than some other developers do for their projects. You should be rewarded for that and encouraged to continue. I would suggest more difference between the Unfunded vs Standard features, and perhaps between Standard vs Pro. In my opinion, there needs to be fairly significant benefits for an Unfunded user to upgrade to Standard. For example, in the Unfunded, only 4 tabs instead of 12 you mentioned. Also moving more features (not sure what to suggest) from Unfunded to Standard. If the user is getting value from these features, the user should be wiling to pay for the Standard. I suggest that $5/$4 for Standard is a little low simply because of the processing/payment costs. Perhaps $7/$5. (If a user does not perceive $7 or $5 to be justified for the benefit, they are not a serious user and not likely to pay any money for anything!) I do recognize that there are parts of the world where $7 or $5 is a lot of money. However, if somebody is using a tool as powerful as TB, hopefully they understand the benefit of making an investment in using highly productive tools such as QF. As a Pro user myself, I would be fine with a 20% increase in the Pro cost. (I don't mean $20% as a limit, I just mean that I would not hesitate to pay more.) QF IS a valuable tool! I DO very much like the idea of "lifetime" subscription. Or if not "lifetime", then maybe 3-5 years (with the understanding that there may be a point at which you cannot continue development for many different reasons). For me, the most important reason for a longer time is not about saving money, it is that I don't want to have manage and deal with renewals, payments, etc. any more often than absolutely necessary. Thinking about protecting your interests, while I would be happy with 5x cost for "lifetime", that is cheap and it would mean that after 5 years you will be doing a lot of work for free. Be sure to protect your interests over the long term. Related to this, though not directly part of what you asked, I should soon be paying for 3 or 4 Pro licenses (once I get other users fully converted to modern TB). But, since COVID, we don't have 5+ people so the domain license does not make sense. I am OKAY paying full price for the 3-4 licenses, BUT, if there is a way to put them all on the same schedule so I can renew them all (individually, I understand) at the same time, that would be VERY helpful. Maybe there is a way that you can make a "Small Domain" license that costs x times the number of users, but has a SINGLE point and time of payment each year. That would be very attractive for me. You asked some questions... "Skip": I have no need for the feature and have never used it. Thus to me it is not important one way or the other, so I am not qualified to have an opinion about it. "Reading List": Until you just asked for opinions, I did not know that this feature existed. It sounds useful and now I will think about how I can make use of it in my workflow. I think this could be very restricted (1-3) for Unfunded users and somewhat restricted (4-6) for Standard users and unlimited for Pro. "Number of QF tabs: Suggest 4 for Unfunded, 12 for Standard, unlimited for Pro. To the extent that it is practical for you from a development standpoint, I would think that availability of features during the first 30 days -- for testing & demonstration purposes -- would be important. In this way, the Unfunded user learns what is possible and what is useful for them, and then -- after 30 days -- they are more willing to pay money to continue to have the features that they have found especially useful. These are all difficult decisions because I suspect that many users only use a small sub-set of features, so what is important to one user is of no use at all to another user. :-) Jay |
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Axel,
I agree with Jay on pretty much everything he said. You should
be compensated for your time and effort. Otherwise, you'll
eventually lose interest, and all of us Pro users will lose the value
you've been providing. And without a revenue stream, you're
not likely to be able to find anyone else to take over for you.
So we'd all suffer the loss.
I'm happy to pay the $10/year that my Pro license currently costs,
and will probably continue to make my additional $100/year
annual donations. But you'll have to judge your audience. I'm
probably not a typical user, and I have no idea what price is
acceptable to most of your users and what price would start to
chase them off.
I agree that finding a way to demonstrate value with a free
(limited features) or trial (limited time) version is probably
a great way to get people to eventually buy a subscription.
Also, your YouTube videos are pretty compelling. I'm not sure
whether any text description of the features could ever sell the
product as well as your videos do.
For me personally, the most useful features (really the only
features I use) are the shortcut keys for quickMove, quickCopy,
and quickJump. I originally discovered QuickFolders a couple
of years ago, when I was doing Google searches to find a way
to increase the number of "recent" folders in native TB. I was
tired of dropping down the Recent menu from the File toolbar
button, only to find that the folder I wanted had been replaced
by other more recent folders, and having to navigate the whole
tree of folders in the File toolbar button's dropdown, starting
from the account name.
Even though I am VERY much a user of keyboard and shortcuts,
almost never using the mouse if I can possibly avoid it, it hadn't
occurred to me how much easier it would be to just be able to
type a couple of chars to specify a folder like I now do with
quickMove. QuickFolders has turned out to be an extraordinarily
good solution to a problem that I didn't even realize I had. It
saves me huge amounts of time and aggravation every day.
…--Fred
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Fred Stluka -- http://bristle.com -- Glad to be of service!
Open Source: Without walls and fences, we need no Windows or Gates.
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Axel,
Just saw your private email on this topic. Some answers to
your specific questions:
* restrictions for 'unfunded (as in "free") version' users
Yes. Add restrictions, as Jay suggested, to provide more
motivation for people to subscribe once they see the value.
That's a great way to get new subscribers.
But, it will inevitably annoy some of your existing free users.
Some will refuse to pay. As Jay said, there are lots of people
who think all software should always be free of charge, not
just Open Source with freedom to use/modify/enhance.
Maybe you can afford to let those users go?
Or maybe you could find a way to "grandfather in" existing free
users? Give them a temporary license for free (1 month, or 6
months, or 1 year, or something), but warn them that they'll
have to pay after that? Be apologetic and appreciative, but tell
them honestly that you need to get some income or you'll have
to abandon the project. Make them feel special, so they'll feel
loyal to you.
Maybe also offer them additional free license extensions or
upgrades to Pro if they refer additional paying customers to
you. Get them to tell their friends about this great add-on
they've been using. Post to their social media, etc. Word of
mouth is a great tool, especially since all QuickFolders users
are probably thrilled with it.
* annual license (or tying to the Thunderbird version? this one is a
lot more difficult to implement though
Annual license. There's no value in encouraging your users to
NOT upgrade to newer versions of Thunderbird.
* have a more expensive perpetual license (what pricing on that?),
the shop is going to get a whole lot more complicated :)
Yes, you could do that. But, I'm not sure it's a good idea.
Users like Jay will love it, since they're already such fans of
QuickFolders, but more tentative users won't bother. And
it will be a burden for you to have to support such users for
no additional income in future years. And what if you had to
suddenly abandon the project, for some unavoidable reason?
Would users demand refunds? If you do offer it, I'd expect it
to cost about 5X, like Jay said.
* If I introduce a permanent license for Pro users later, how would
I reward people who renewed an annual one for a number of years?
Don't worry about it. They already got great value for the past
years. Now they're about to get even better value by signing up
for a permanent license. You could discount the permanent
license based on number of continuous years paid in the past,
but that would encourage more people to convert to permanent,
which I think is a bad idea anyhow. What if everyone converted
to permanent? You'd get a large cash influx, but zero future
income. Eventually, that's going to be a problem.
* "what's new" text - I would like people to understand they can
roll back to an older version but that doesn't guarantee it will
be compatible with TB91 ESR.
I wouldn't even bother to mention it. Those who don't want to
pay for even a standard license may guess that they can just
keep using an old version and that it may fail at some point as
they move to newer versions of TB. I think you're trying WAY
too hard to keep everyone happy. If you do mention it, just
saying they can "back to an older version but that doesn't
guarantee it will be compatible with TB91 ESR", is fine, I'd say.
Thoughts, Jay?
…--Fred
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Fred Stluka -- http://bristle.com -- Glad to be of service!
Open Source: Without walls and fences, we need no Windows or Gates.
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Fred... You have raised some excellent points and things for Axel to think about. I don't have any specific further comments at this moment. Axel may just need to cogitate on this for a while and then perhaps make a specific near-final proposal upon which we and other users might make comments. Of course Axel must do what works best for him in both the short-term and long-term. However, these subjects are difficult because, at the outset, the long-term impacts cannot fully be known. Jay |
I know the argument but I do have data from my add-on SmartTemplates - I introduced a standard license and a 28 days trial period to transition users (not completely free / unfunded version) got a ton of bad reviews and lost 50% of the users within 6 weeks - there was a nag screen if you exceeded the trial period, and I suspect I get a lot of people who are just countend and annoyed by it - that's not the actual problem here though but the fact that it also seems to affect earnings / conversions to "pro license" users. The extension has been nothing but complicated work since then but I am still powering through. I think the idea is not to feel coerced by a piece of software. Since we do not have the option of "pay first then download" on the Mozilla Add-ons site, it's always something that needs to be told to the user after installation, which may look somewhat fraudulent for somebody who doesn't know the parameters that we as Add-on authors have to operate under.
So I was thinking about the restriction of tabs, I believe 10 is probably the best compromise; I don't think somebody with a lot of folders who is really benefiting from QF will have this amount of less, and then I can still support the numbered shortcuts to try out for the majority of users. The question whether I should hide Categories (or restrict it to 3 categories) - it's actually problematic to completely take a way such a feature when users already use it - the users will just assume the product has become buggy.
Pricing is a difficult topic, I am hoping for more users if I keep it close to the "cup of coffee at the petrol station" level in order to make it annual, but I will probably also introduce a 5 years option for 20% off - which would at least remove a lot of the hassle of having regular payments - and then offering a permanent license as an upgrade or people could use it as a starting point to getting (extending into) the Pro License.
I was actually thinking of some increases along the lines of inflation, but I prefer lower prices with more users to make up for that. Marketing is hard though. If I treat my users well it's easier to grow an audience for it, generally shrinking is not such a good idea. One of the reasons I keep the prices "oscillating" is that people love saving money so I do special offers around when I release new versions as you may have seen, the problem is that 10 different people have 10 different thresholds and ideas on what it a "fair price", so this has to be somehow serviced by the market.
I will need to look into it but I think I have to migrate all my product pages (16 of them, each with 9 different languages) from the classic interface to the new one first, because the current shop system isn't flexible enough to have something like a multiple email form and multiple license fulfillment.
If you don't use
Although I thought it is a great feature when I implemented it, I found that I wasn't using it an awful lot. That's mainly because it is another "list to worry about" and I try to not let anything accumulate if possible these days. So I am doubtful there is a big win in restricting it; it might even work to convince people against a license as they may view it as clutter.
I have something similar with SmartTemplates, but it is complicated to implement and didn't convert to added sales at all. I think to most users it's just a "complication" and they will just use the features much less or disable the Add-on. I think the black and white method of switching something off / on is probably easier to understand for most people. I haven't fully thought out how I am going to enforce the restriction to 10 tabs on a user who has more (should I hide the additional tabs, or disable them, and if so, in what ways?). quick brain storming on this:
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Yes and no, I can see that even people who regularly renew licenses take breaks and you wouldn't necessarily want to lose a lot of these. If I keep the tool reasonably useful (while restriction) there is a bigger chance that they may come back to it quickly.
I would be nice if I could automate a process for "trial licenses" like that but it's technically difficult as it relies on data I do not have. And it would require me to set it up as part of the fastspring shopping experience as I do not have a possibility to run server side script safely on my own (github hosted) pages. So it would be a big investment of my time and possibly cost, which is something I do not have in excess right now. IF people ask for free/ trial licenses personally (via email) I usually do this no questions asked, but this stuff is hard to "automate".
that's true. The main reason for that though it that it's a f..ton of work making my Add-ons compatible every year. Last time this education was done by not being available for Tb78 for 1 or 2 months but I think that's unprofessional, this time I want it to be seamless. See issue #114
I would have to offer it with a large T+C that says no guarantees for future versions of Thunderbird after the current ESR 91.* - My Add-ons will always try to support one ESR [current + previous] (because whatever changes they implement, they will not care about whether current functionality is possible or maintained - it is a political act to convince them that we need Add-on toolbars for the future, and I have no guarantee of good leverage which we have at the moment with some Add-on friendly engineers in the team), which I would update very year to the next years version. This may be a deterrent to buy one but clarity is important.
I know but if I can grow and get more users I might be able to make up for it. This would take marketing efforts but I might be able to finance them this way. |
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Axel,
Sounds like a tough nut to crack. Dealing with a wide range
of budgets and opinions from a large number if users. Trying
to not annoy any of them and cause your usage numbers to
drop. I would find it very difficult. Good luck with it! In any
case, thanks for a great product!!
…--Fred
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Fred Stluka -- http://bristle.com -- Glad to be of service!
Open Source: Without walls and fences, we need no Windows or Gates.
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I am just working at the new rights management with the Standard License, already created the product on the web shop (and an upgrade path from standard to pro, as well). I have rewritten the sliding notification that said about premium functions to be more flexible and made the necessary strings + translations [ So here are my planned "feature access levels":
Test version (you can already buy a standard license and upgrading should work, too): TO DO: Review the string |
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I started creating a feature comparison chart here: |
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Axel, I think I need to get an "energy transfusion" from you. Your pace, energy, and creativeness are impressive. That could be a new revenue stream for you -- selling "pints of energy"!
Picky stuff...
Since I have never taken much time to experiment with all the QF features beyond what I already needed when I came to Q, I actually learned quite a lot from this listing of features. Here is a marketing idea for you... as if you need more work to do: Perhaps a monthly (weekly is fine with me, but that's more work for you) email [opt in] to your users that discusses a particular feature, how various users use that feature, possible workflows involving that feature, "this is what you could do with it" examples, etc. This might keep your users engaged and give them opportunities to recognize the benefits of upgrading to a paid level. |
I wish I had any to spare. :) I am just highly motivated by the August 10th deadline (Tb91 supposed to go live to 10% of users) - and I still have to complete a SmartTemplates promo (and new version), too. The idea is to never stop and just keep bringing the Add-ons working to avoid flattening the income curve.
Good catch! There are parts in this description that are outdated so it's always great to
I had to update the screenshot and description, I think these features evolved after I initially documented them.
Have been thinking about that one but it's a lot of work. Then again I am very occasional with my YouTube channel because making a video is even more. I will keep that one in mind for the future. Fixed the errors and added on more item (and links) to the feature comparison chart, now I just need to link it from the UI (and translate at least the link into 19 languages). |
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Still working on the Splash screen with all the necessary info about the new standard license, it's a bit of a monster:
It's got some new links (one to the comparison chart, one directly to the standard license, and the license choice going to the internal registration dialog (which I also need to add the comparison link to). I will probably change the "New 2-tier Licensing System" for something less complicated. The blue box is only shown to users who don't have a current / valid license. Thoughts? |
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These are really "picky" comments...
That's all I can think of to suggest, so it must be pretty good. Jay |
They are all very good points! It is so hard to be concise when you don't have an English Major...
I think this is just just the CSS on github that hits you - you can always zoom in on your browsers with
yeah this is a weak point, I want to come up with a better new slogan that encapsulates the dependencies of making changes to it keeps working in the next ESR. No idea how to put this into a tag line efficiently that can also be translated into other languages.
This one made me chuckle. It's actually dynamic and inserts the username (default identity), I just happened to screenshot from my thunderbird daily test profile.
It kind of is - except that you don't need a key for the free version. I think I am going to take the 2-tier out anyway, maybe, "Standard Licenses were Added" or such like. Haven't localized that one yet.
The whole sentence is clunky as heck, again I would like to find something that's a little softer, or drop that sentence. |
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Here is a first test version that implements some of the new "standard license" restrictions. The most important one being the restriction of the number of tabs:
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Implemented the remaining license restrictions. I also fixed the missing layout in the sliding notification bar (I had some trouble as it again exists in a "shadowRoot" element and I had to inject a special css file to have any influence on the contained elements in Thunderbird 91. We are just gnat's hair close to the release version!!!
To install this preview, download the zip file and drag it into Thunderbird Add-ons manager. |
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Officially Implemented in 5.7, released on ATN today. |
For funding future development and maintenance of the QuickFolders Add-on and distributing the load from a few "Pro Users" I will implement a three tier system going forward from Thunderbird 91, until QF is completely ported to a web extension and finally maintenance free.
Transition Phase to 3-tier model
The hard thing will be the transition phase, I want to tie this to using Thunderbird 91 forward.
License Messages
The wording of the "x is a premium feature" will be modified for the functions that are now also available to standard users:
Suggested new wording: "x" is a feature that is supported through licenses, if you find this useful you can get a standard license or a Pro license for extended features"
The QF Pro licensing screen will have to be modified too and be made more flexible, similar to SmartTemplates.
so there is always a choice for upgrading at the same time as extending the license.
the file "license.txt" needs to be updated to reflect of the existence of the new Standard license.
Additional Features in Standard License
The following features will be opened to standard license users (and not just be restricted to Pro Licensees)
[Load Configuration...] will be unlocked for Standard Li.cense. When clicking [Save Configuration...] wording must be changed to "you can backup your configuration now but will need at least a QF standard license to use the loading feature". The user can always use the copy tabs / paste tabs functions on the Advanced tab if they need to transfer a setup to a different machine / profile.
which ones?
Pricing, Periodicity
My initial price will be €5 / $5 for the first year and then €4 / $4 on renewals / extensions. I am still considering a permanent license but again it won't make sense unless QuickFolders is fully converted. On the one hand it is important and obviously rewarding to earn money and be invested into this project and it is certainly unreasonable to expect this to work (and be supported) forever with such a currently volatile and constantly evolving platform as Thunderbird / Mozilla (they increased the release rhythm to a new minor version push every 4 instead of 6 weeks), but on the other I hand I acknowledge that it's not ideal to "hire" software when we could own it.
As the license validation currently has a expiry date "baked in" I might offer a higher priced life-time license that could be set forward to 70 years (I am somewhat doubtful of Thunderbird or maybe even desktop PCs even existing at that stage), which could be 5 times the price of a standard license, likewise we could have this with a Pro license. Let's discuss.
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