Pricing Model changes

Dear Sioux,

I deeply understand your concern. If I were you, I would think absolutely the same way. So let me say you, what I think would make me more confident.

Emerald: comes with no online payment gateways so you must but at least one..... $84+ $28= $112 with just ONE online payment gateway

Usually that is hat is needed, only one payment gateway. And I have to say comparing to other this pice is not high. Although 112$ may sound expensive, if you compare to other 99$ a year(cheapest, better subscriptions up to 250$), you will immediately understand difference. And by the way, Emerald has a long history starting from even Mamba. So it is very mature.

Emerald: comes with no online payment gateways so you must but at least one..... $84+ $28= $112 with just ONE online payment gateway

Cobalt: with gallery $34 + say Geo Field $28 plus a few very basic fields like URL, Email etc and we quickly reach $200!!

You add here plus emerald. And you took those most expensive fields :). And even then it is $62. And remember, not yearly unlike other CCK subscriptions.

Emerald: comes with no online payment gateways so you must but at least one..... $84+ $28= $112 with just ONE online payment gateway

Cobalt: with gallery $34 + say Geo Field $28 plus a few very basic fields like URL, Email etc and we quickly reach $200!!

Cobalt is FREE but cool fields are NOT)

Today cobalt get into RC stage. You are right. It is like Joomla is free but cool extensions are paid. But Cobalt has no limitation. I mean free version is not trimed. It means it has the same features and you can build your own field. And when you try to create at least something which little bit close to gallery or geo, you will defeneteely think that $30 and $25 (+ taxes) is not actually really that steep. :)

Emerald: comes with no online payment gateways so you must but at least one..... $84+ $28= $112 with just ONE online payment gateway

Cobalt: with gallery $34 + say Geo Field $28 plus a few very basic fields like URL, Email etc and we quickly reach $200!!

Cobalt is FREE but cool fields are NOT)

very little documentation and if I understand this correctly priority support is for 14 days only!! Package deals please!!

Right now we support everyone equally. If there are errors no matter who is user paid or free we treat every one equal. So you may be sure that your problems will be solved with quickest speed we can. Despite your status.

Of course if you want more attention, you can discuss with uss and for separate fee we may assist you and help you with your project(s).

The biggest difference to competitors:

One time purchase for "lifetime", No limits or restrictions.

@Sergey

I think, you have to point this out with a very dominant info or badge. Even I had to ask you to get the idea ;-)

Sergey: Your site offers very little information and clarification in terms of features and licensing, support etc...

From a customers perspective: Cobalt was free so I took a shot and downloaded for evaluation and I must say I am glad I did that because..... I have tested all the popular CCK's currently offered in Joomla extensions and this is what I concluded from my testing:

K2 is good but limited in many ways, in all honesty I don't know why so many extension and template developers are "pushing" and supporting it so hard when....

SeBlod kicks K2's arse any day of the week being so much more flexible and offering a non coder such as myself a reasonably good platform to develop applications on. But....

Cobalt7 is very impressive!!And I'll explain why very shortly, it will be a rather long and informed comment so stick with me guys...

Whilst SeBlod has some excellent solutions and is reasonably easy to learn it really sucks in terms of documentation (there is almost none!), forum is very active with questions but answers arent easy to get (some of the forum moderators are quite arrogant and take things too personally instead of seeing the opportunity for improvement), these points alone would be sufficient to scare people off from developing any serious applications with it. Whilst ingenious in many ways SeBlod misses some of the basic functions to make it a serious CCK with a real world commercial application.

Despite my rather modest coding skills I have developed and sold some very succesful and demanding directory applications for Joomla. So you might say that directories are my specialty and yes one could develop a directory using K2 or Seblod but, not for serious commercial application. (for instance in SeBlod it is not possible to sort listings by featured and then followed by regular and that kills it as a serious directory application). So lets move on to the last but not least....

Cobalt 7: all my findings are based on Beta version as so far I have been unable to update to RC

1. Cobalt has suffcient and well thought of settings that make it a serious potential for a directory style app and, if you have ever developed an app for a commercial directory then its understandable that less complex apps are a piece of cake to make as well.

- Biggest flaw for developing a directory style app at this point is the image field or the lack of it because in modern directories we MUST be able to display an intro on landing page containing title and a thumbnail image (sometimes some intro text as well) - Templating within Cobalt could be a little more intuitive - Compatability with templates from most popular Joomla template clubs is an absolute must - Whilst not such a priority right now...a video field would be nice :) - a more detailed road map is rather vital in todays Joomla enviroment because we must know when certain parts of the component will be ready for production enviroment. Why? Well, lets have a look at Joomla road map for a second. Come September it will go 3.0 and if i am to belive the word on the street (web) it looks like we should brace ourselves for another radical change that will again force everyone such as template clubs to update their code. At the same time we are now looking at an excellent Cobalt 7RC which is being developed for Joomla 2.5 and is missing one very important (and rather standrad) image field, and is having a number of compatability issues with most Joomla 2.5 templates and this is all only 5 months shy of Joomla 3.0 release.

Sergey

please do not take any of my comments as a critic because they are all observations and rateher suggestions then critics because Cobalt 7 is impressive. In fact i make these observations out of my own selfish interests because I understand that all of the above is subject to budget available for development. But budget or yuour bottom line is suprisingly enough coinciding with my own selfish needs because the way i look at it is like this. The more people Cobalt appeals to the more fields are sold= greater budget and continuity of the project into the Joomla 3.0 and beyond so my own selfish need is that you Sergey and Mint Joomla make as many sales as possible.

So my suggestion is: create a focus group made up of people such as myself who want to develop real world applications for Cobalt so that future development and road map can be prioritised and influenced by real world case studies. Also the above mentioned image field in todays visually rich enviroment is long overdue and at least a basic image field "teaser" so to speak should be part of the core for general audience who will test cobalt or develop less demanding applications with it and perhaps never buy any more advanced image or gallery fields but will spread the word because I get the feeling it is those kind of people who are voting for and making other CCK's popular in JED. This will in turn attract more people like myself who will develop applictions needing more complex fields and Emerald which are already available for sale.

I guess i could go on and on here but perhaps certain things are not for public access and if I said anything that you feel would hurt Cobalt please feel free to delete this whole comment because I definitely want to see how Cobalt develops further and prospers to the point of being the most popular Joomla CCK like it deserves because this could finally be the one Joomla CCK that actually stands out from the rest of the CCK crowd :)

If anyone wonders why I havent mentioned ZOO or SobiPro....

Zoo: Front end submission limitations make it a rather poor choice for a directory app and IMHO for that reason alone it should'nt be considered as a directory app unless all directory submissions are made by administrators and not front end users (which kind of really doesn't have much use in todays day and age)

SobiPro: Pretty good but very specific on server enviroment and also lacking the order by featured functionality which is a total killer for it from my perspective.

Oh and I forgot to mention the "Big D" so here it is.

I tested on D7 and saw the future of Joomla project if it continues with the Road Map that it has today.

Why? D7 is very good but the choice of decent, useful apps for it is quite poor at least for my scenario. Taxonomy was totally useless and illogical in my scenario and only improved by a SINGLE module which is still in beta.

For the life of me I could not find a simple and intuitive module to use for Google Maps display inside a node.

Choice of templates is rather poor and can be very, very expensive....etc, etc

Why is D7 experience possibly the Joomla 3.5 or 4.0 experience?

Well.......Many great Joomla extensions are made by very small developer teams and sometimes even a single developer... And a simple conclusion is this: Who can develop at the current rate of new Joomla releases!!?? Simple answer is: without a price spike to feed additional members of the team probably noone so the future of Joomla to me looks like....Fewer but more expensive extensions, definitelly greater costs to the end user who wants to keep his Joomla, Extensions and templates up to date, popularity drop as a result of the above

Sioux,

some comments to your points:

Biggest flaw for developing a directory style app at this point is the image field or the lack of it because in modern directories we MUST be able to display an intro on landing page containing title and a thumbnail image (sometimes some intro text as well)

as a temporary solution, you might even consider a simple html field to display your images. With the help of additional free tools like JCE or Modalizer (Nonumber.nl) you can achieve already a lot. I am sure there will be a simple picture, image field in the near future. If not from MintJommla, then maybe from some 3rd party supporter.

Another option would be the incredible Uploads field. Since v1.1, it has the option to display uploaded content in the browser. With its new template feature, you can display the uploaded pictures anyway you want (Yes, there is no automated thumbnail feature, but good enough for a start).

Biggest flaw for developing a directory style app at this point is the image field or the lack of it because in modern directories we MUST be able to display an intro on landing page containing title and a thumbnail image (sometimes some intro text as well)

• Templating within Cobalt could be a little more intuitive

I believe that in due time, more documentation and examples will follow. See the developer section of Resources here

Biggest flaw for developing a directory style app at this point is the image field or the lack of it because in modern directories we MUST be able to display an intro on landing page containing title and a thumbnail image (sometimes some intro text as well)

• Templating within Cobalt could be a little more intuitive

Compatability with templates from most popular Joomla template clubs is an absolute must

See my comment in your other thread

I have the opinion, that MintJoomla should stick to the Joomla standards (which they actually do) and leave it up to the template providers to supply solutions. As said, it might open a market for 3rd party developers to develop template overrides for the individual solutions. It is the same with all other components. Template providers are the one who support the styling for individual components.

But as we experienced it here already and based on Sergey's comment, MintJoomla seems to be willing to go the extra mile to help in this regard.

Biggest flaw for developing a directory style app at this point is the image field or the lack of it because in modern directories we MUST be able to display an intro on landing page containing title and a thumbnail image (sometimes some intro text as well)

• Templating within Cobalt could be a little more intuitive

Compatability with templates from most popular Joomla template clubs is an absolute must

Whilst not such a priority right now...a video field would be nice

If i remember correctly, a video field was mentioned in connection with the audio field here

No offence. All your comments are valuable and I agree on almost all of them. There is some issues with templating, because we think it i on their part. We just provide nice templating mechanism to be able to set different templates to different sections, types, ... But even though you can see that we released Rockettheme template overrides that basically fit almost any modern RT template, but not only modulus.

What I can say that it would be very nice to have man like you on board, with real business app projects. This would create stream of good, real life feature requests.

Field Image is going to be released today or tomorrow and next is video one.

because this could finally be the one Joomla CCK that actually stands out from the rest of the CCK crowd

To be true, Resources and then Cobalt has always been outstanding of the rest of the CCK world :)

Also the above mentioned image field in todays visually rich enviroment is long overdue and at least a basic image field "teaser" so to speak should be part of the core for general audience who will test cobalt ... but will spread the word because I get the feeling it is those kind of people who are voting for and making other CCK's popular in JED. This will in turn attract more people...

Totally agree with that. Thats the way popularity and success is build in the Joomla "eco space".

Gallery is great, but i still think there should be a simple and free brother called "Picture" ;-)

Maybe Gallery Pro and Gallery ?!

Cobalt: with gallery $34 + say Geo Field $28 plus a few very basic fields like URL, Email etc and we quickly reach $200!!

I have to tel you that we are going to change pricing policy. And this decision is heavily affected by your post. And some other people opinions.

We will leave buy now for every field and pack. Everyone will be able still to purchase downloads individually.But we will add ability to download also based on Club Membership starting from 150$/6 - month. (or may be even $99/3month). We are not sure about price yet. It is subject to yet be discussed but this is general change that will take place.

For this, I already added new feature to pay to download field. Now it can sell files with SSI and Emerald membership simultaneously. Of course we will give up Hikashop and use Cobalt for (sale/subscribe/download).

That also will be good demonstration, what Cobalt can do.

ok and for people who have already purchase some fields ?

Of course we will give up Hikashop and use Cobalt for (sale/subscribe/download). That also will be good demonstration, what Cobalt can do.

Good idea!!! "Eating your own dog food" is essential to convince and convert visiters into customers.

...still to purchase downloads individually. But we will add ability to download also based on Club Membership

**Membership:

**For what is the timeframe? Does it mean an update/download restriction?!

A club membership equals a "Bundle-Purchase"?

**Single purchase:

**And Single downloads have no restriction and keep lifetime updates?!

A club membership equals a "Bundle-Purchase"?

Yes. One join club and download everything.

A club membership equals a "Bundle-Purchase"?

And Single downloads have no restriction and keep lifetime updates?!

Right.

Re-New the same subscription for a reduced fee?

Sure. But only limited time. For example you have reduce fee if you updated not later than in 2 month after expire. If it is later, then full price may be applied. It is just an example. not real 2 month. It may be more or less.