About licensing #14
Comments
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I've come for similar clarification. I've previously purchased an extended license for v3. Are v3 licenses grandfathered for use with v4, or do we need to purchase new v4 licenses? Thank you. |
Yes, extended license was enough to use it in wordpress themes that we are selling to multiple clients. But I guess we need a "Developer License" right now to use it for this purpose. I can not pay 2K euros per year. So we need a clarification... |
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Yeah, I've just been looking more closely at the licensing options, and I think my use case falls more under the new "Business" licensing definition. Which is difficult, as my business is small and produces limited income (it's a side business, and not sufficient income to support me on a full-time basis). That annual fee is prohibitively expensive for my product. |
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Also looking to include Fancybox v4 in a WordPress theme for sale but 2K euros is quite a steep price. Especially considering theme's sell at a one time $59 fee and the lightbox functionality is a minute function compared to all other features in the theme. Perhaps you could consider a separate theme license (perhaps that doesn't even include support as developers we shouldn't need it anyway) that is for a single component like the lightbox. When I was looking at the prices I was thinking perhaps these prices are being used as placeholders (since they are so steep) as the site seems a bit unfinished at this time. Hopefully I was right ;) The new scripts look great by the way!
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Hi,
And the problem is right there. Support. Maybe you don't need it, but your customers do. A lot. This is the reason why at some point I almost gave up on this project. You see, few people bought an extended license for Fancybox v3, included it in their themes, and, as the result, I found myself in a nightmare. For a few hundred hundred euros, I suddenly had hundreds of people asking for help. All I did was to answer questions of Github, SO and what's worst - lots of people contacted me directly. I could easily spend full day for one person and I did that in fact for free, simply because they had purchased some theme for a small fee. As the result, project progress stopped, I got burnout. On the other hand, those people, who included Fancybox in their themes, generate income that I can only dream of. And they do that without providing any support themselves. In conclusion, I do not see a solution to this other than to change/increase pricing. Or to forbid including in themes (that is actually a re-selling) or other products (for example, Envato license forbids too). I dream of creating a small team of professionals with a person dedicated to support. Those 3 components that are available right now is just a beginning, I have many ideas for new ones and with time, the total number will grow. So, to answer to the original question - you have to obtain Business license to include Fancyapps software in a product that is sold to multiple end users. |
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Support can take up a lot of time, I understand. I run a dedicated support forum for my own customers, and typically have emails to deal with as well. So I can sympathize. I don't know what goes on in the Wordpress ecosystem, but I am confident my customers would have come directly to me for support. Regardless, this is unfortunate. I've been waiting a long time to see the new work, but now it's here and I can't use it; I simply cannot afford the annual licensing. |
Yes, it's really sad... Looking for other alternative lightbox systems on github but no luck, fancybox is the Best for my purpose. I totally understand the reason behind New pricing. But you also need to consider that, my theme had 300k lines of codes. I'm using lightbox only on a few places. If themeforst accepts my theme, this theme Will be making 1500 dollars per month, and around 1000 dollars with envato's author fee(mine is around %20). It makes 12k dollars in a year. 2k euros makes 3k dollars in my country (Turkey). Basiclly fancyapps wants %25 of my passive income which is I barely used fancybox in my 300k lines of codes theme. Fancybox is an awesome system, no doubt. But the pricing makes me sad. What if you say "contact to your theme owner" to ppl Who did not buy your lisence directly from you? Maybe it can help you. Sorry for my bad gramer, english is not my main language:) |
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Sorry, but I don't think there is a solution that will satisfy everyone, if you have better ideas then I'm ready to listen. Let's take a real example. This theme - https://themes.getbootstrap.com/product/front-multipurpose-responsive-template/ - has been sold (at this moment) 5293 times generating revenue at least $200k. The author has bought Fancybox v3 for about $100. If only 10% of their customers come to me and ask for support and I have to spend an average of 1 hour on each of them, then it means that I have worked for less than $2 an hour just for support (not including actual coding). It would probably be best to adjust pricing to each user individually, but I am afraid it would take too much of my time to handle everyone. This project is not profitable enough to hire additional staff (I hope this will change in the future). Also, this project is not backed by any big company. |
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My first thought, I wish my side business made his income. As for ideas, maybe separate Small Business and Marketplace licenses? Or rework the Extended license to be usable for small business cases. For mitigating support, the new Fancyapps site has an account section. If support contact were gated behind the account authentication, and only available to license holders, that would hopefully prevent a theme's users messaging you directly. I appreciate your willingness to discuss this, btw. I was happy to purchase the extended license previously, and would be happy to continue to support your work at a price that makes sense for my business. I already license Font Awesome, and a few other resources, for example. |
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I can understand getting lots of questions from people that are buying HTML templates like the one you mentioned, but I'm sure it's very different from people buying WordPress themes as generally themes already include everything you need to setup the lightbox with built in customization options and various elements to trigger the effect. Honestly, I hadn't thought about the HTML templates, but can clearly see that being an issue. Sorry to hear about the problems you faced :( And I definitely understand your perspective, support can be a nightmare, especially when you are doing it for free (I've done this for years). The solution is simple though, if you make a free product don't create a public forum for people to ask questions and instead charge for support. This is what a lot of companies creating WordPress products do. So you can sell extended licenses that developers include in their products, but additionally, charge for support licenses and the only way to ask questions is to have an active support license. Now anyone that buys those templates that include your script can not ask for help unless they also purchase a support license, so now what you are doing is converting the customers of those templates into your own customers. The more developers that are able to afford the developer licenses the more your script will be used in templates and the more potential for converting more customers into support licenses (win-win). I believe in the long run this may turn a higher profit compared to only selling very expensive end use licenses. I wouldn't even open up the issues section on Github, only allow pull-requests (if wanted) and limit all questions to those with active licenses on your own site, but make it affordable for a wider audience. Just some food for thought. I wish you the best in your endeavors!
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It is not so simple about support, because 1) I never know if the person will make a purchase in the future, and good support makes a good impression; 2) Fancybox (and others) are affected by other scripts and stylesheets on the website, and that can cause issues, especially when developers are not experienced or have enabled lots of (wordpress) plugins. And the number of questions is unbelievable, it also amazes me that I still receive completely new questions almost daily for years. Some questions are silly like "where do I put JavaScript?", but some are quite complex. I have rethinked about pricing model. I propose to change Business license to volume based, e.g., the license would cost €129 for every X sales (not yet decided about the number, maybe 500), what do you guys think? |
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That would definitely cut the cost for me. |
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@fancyapps Yes, cost per X sales seems logical to me. But how you gonna track which theme sold how many? And I really wonder how ThemeForest gonna react against this licensing because there are very careful about licensing in these days. I hope we can find a middle way. |
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Hello @fancyapps, I've been a big fan of fancybox for years! Cost per X sales would be definitely be a better option than the current one. you can take the sales model of sites like codecanyon.net so for example, if anyone want access to the plugin they would need to buy a license, and if anyone want to include fancybox in their themes or in a bigger project then they can buy the "extended license" now for support, authors in codecanyon only answer questions for persons who have a license, and support only last for 6 months, so if you want further support you need to renew for another 6 months so you would only answer questions of people who bought support or a license we are here because we love your work and want to use it in an affordable way best of luck |
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@dbo90 - Agreed, this is a great example on CodeCanyon - https://webdesign-flash.ro/p/rl/index.html - I would love to support fancyapps myself as well, hopefully they can adopt a more affordable pricing structure. |
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Hi @fancyapps, Congratulations with the release of your new version 4 of the fancyBox gallery, it looks fantastic! As you may know I used your version 3 to make a jAlbum skin, see https://jalbum.net/en/skins/skin/FancyBox In the description I stated that commercial users should buy a license: “The fancyBox library is licensed under the GPLv3 license for all open source applications. Although it was not required, because I am not a commercial user, I bought a license in the past and used published my personal albums on my website: https://www.andrewolff.nl/FotoSerie/fotoindex.htm I see now that you changed the license system, so I have several questions:
Best regards, André Wolff |
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I believe, that if your accepting Pull Requests from other developers helping to improve your project, and they are capable of NOT needing support, then perhaps you could offer a version that allows those developers to use under a Free to use Open Source license, my choice would be MIT. For support, yes, charge for those that want support, and there's no reason you can't, even when using an OSS license, and set up a Forum (seeing as you already have a domain and hosting), or some other type of support web portal, where only those that have paid for support can get support answers, where if they sign up to the forum under that capacity, that they have to enter a support code before their account is activated, to be able to get support. Then, as you've mentioned you get support requests via email, or wherever, guide them to the forum, where they have to pay for support from you directly, or guide them to here to allow others to help. I think though, you will get other developers answering questions, due to humans generally wanting to be helpful. Canonical do similar, which works. Helping people on the Summernote project, ended up with me being added to the project, and yes, it takes time to help people, but it's also rewarding. I've merged heaps of improvements, and fixed a lot of issues, and that is what it's about. I do get though, that your value your time, and of course, with bills to pay, and food to put on the table, if you don't have a reliable source of full time income, you gotta do what you need too to live. |
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Hi @fancyapps, I've read why you change pricing policy. You should create a premium support forum and give limited support on github. I first time seeing that high price for a item till now. That price means "Do not use this product use in end products." A WordPress theme buyer never come here for support. They goes always author support forum. It can be true for HTML things but not for WP. IMHO it should be under 199 dollars. |
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your pricing page is unreachable for me:
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It looks good for €199 - 1 end product. Now we are waiting for your final touch "one-time payment instead of yearly payment" haha 😄 I have hope for this... |
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@fancyapps I wouldn't expect you to support any of my paying customers. Their problems with Fancyapps (or other JS libraries that I'm using in my premium WP theme) are my problems not yours. IMO the max you could do is, maybe, creating some sort of a community based help forum for non-IT users that are not familiar with GitHub and are not license holders. And a separate "license only" forum dedicated to helping out paying customers. This way you keep your time for further feature development and, hopefully, profitable enough to hire support staff for paying customers. Thank you for such a great plugin, best of luck with future code and business development. |
I'm also waiting for this!! We want to use Fancybox!!! |
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Hi Guys, https://fancyapps.com/checkout/business/ I think it is possible now ? 238€ - 1 end product for 1 theme like ThemeForest. Is it true ? |
Hello, I wonder are we allowed to use it in our wordpress themes that we are selling to multiple clients with extended license? It was enough for V3 but I wanna be sure for V4.
Thanks.
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