Cost and number of extensions are getting out of hand

I am posting this because this is the exact reason that I moved from Prestashop to Open Cart and now it is creeping in on Open Cart to.

The cost of some extensions on here is absolutely extortionate and some coders make a shed load of cash by writing an extension for an open Source project which actually goes against the open source idea of coding.

Sure I know that many coders will come on and start commenting such as you don't have to buy them and it takes time and expertise to write them and probably also tell me to look for another cart if I don't like it but the fact is that NONE of these could be written if coders didn't have the source code in the first place.

My point is simply that once upon a time Open Cart extensions were affordable and with just a few of them you could have a good store up and running. Buying some of the mods together now to make a store run nicely would cost a small fortune and some coders are ripping users off.

There is at least one extension that, by their own admission, the coders have made at least 80K from and that is not what Open Source was supposed to be about. Sure everyone has to make a living but if anyone on here thinks cashing in to the tune of 80K for a mod for an Open source project is in the real spirit of open source then they are kidding themselves.

Open Cart has now turned into the new Prestashop and will soon be dropped by users who either have to pay a fortune for some mods (that should be part of the core anyway) or have that many vqmods running that they clash with each other and stop the store from working.

What was once a very quick reliable cart with cheap mods is fast becoming a paradise for the coding hawks simply looking for the next OS project to jump on and make fast cash from.

I won't hold my breath for anyone to agree with me but that is what I think about OC now.

This sort of nonsense is why I just raised prices; the less you charge the less value people think your labor has.

The problem with restricting the pricing of extensions is that (I believe) it would stifle extension availability and innovation. Most developers, if they could not make money off of writing extensions, would not have enough time to create what they do for free. So although it would allow more people access to a greater number of extensions for less (or no) money, there would be far fewer extensions available, with worse support.

I understand your frustration with having limited cash when starting up a business, and not being able to customize everything the way you want for free. But the reality with any piece of open source software is that it's not going to work for everyone's exact needs out of the box, so you'd need to be hiring someone to customize OpenCart for you anyway if these extensions didn't exist. That being said, the quality of extensions in the store is sometimes hit-or-miss, and while there is always room for improvement, Daniel is doing his best to monitor them.

I dont understand this kind of complaining.
you want to start a bussinis and make money but you dont want to invest.
opencart is a great piece of software wich gives you the chance to start without a large budget.

as your bussines grows indeed you will find that you need more or better functionality but oc has already made you money so you can invest.

as for me i encountered the same.
some things could be solved with great free extensions where my thans to the makers is great.
Some mods and thems did cost me money yes who cares teh shop made teh money.

some mods i had special coded because nobody else needs these mods and yes they are expensive but they do what i want I can pay them because the shop makes money and buy havening these mods specail made is makes my lfe easier and helps to make more money.
Im not sure but here in holland it is called investing in your shop.
it is the same as having a conventional shop you keep spending money to optimize it so cutomers wil come and buy.
its how business is done.

rph wrote:This sort of nonsense is why I just raised prices; the less you charge the less value people think your labor has.

And this sort of nonsense is exactly what I am posting about rph.

You didn't put the price of extensions up for any other reason than to make more money so don't make out otherwise.

I understand the value of labour but I notice you didn't comment on whether you consider making 80K from one extension is in the real spirit of open source.

I have had extensions created and actually offered them for free to various developers to turn them into vqmod before similar extensions were created but there were no takers.

What I am talking about here are extensions that cost $75,$80,$100 and even $150! That as far as I am concerned is nothing to do with valuing someone's labour but someone charging way too much for an extension that is not an individual development.

No different to those who will put the price up to sell it on Open Cart because they have to pay Daniel a percentage; the very guy whom without they wouldn't make anything because there would be no source code.

I am not saying that every developer is doing the same but some are just ripping the users of Open Cart off.

The investing in your store response is always used so that was expected but again buy a few overpriced extensions and you're not just investing in your store but paying more for an OS system than a privately developed system; not what OS was supposed to be for was it?

darrengould wrote:I am posting this because this is the exact reason that I moved from Prestashop to Open Cart and now it is creeping in on Open Cart to.

The cost of some extensions on here is absolutely extortionate and some coders make a shed load of cash by writing an extension for an open Source project which actually goes against the open source idea of coding.

This is not true at all. Do some more research because you clearly don't know the definition of Open Source. Magento has a free version of it's software as well and believe me when I say "their extension developers make a good living at providing plugins." Open Cart as a whole, along with it's documentation AND support is at "no cost to the public."

darrengould wrote:Sure I know that many coders will come on and start commenting such as you don't have to buy them and it takes time and expertise to write them and probably also tell me to look for another cart if I don't like it but the fact is that NONE of these could be written if coders didn't have the source code in the first place.

You clearly don't know that most of us are software developers to begin with and have other jobs. Yes, there are crappy extensions along with their developers but even still...Open Cart gives "everyone" a chance. If what you say is true, perhaps you should stop complaining like a baby and develop your own extensions?

darrengould wrote:My point is simply that once upon a time Open Cart extensions were affordable and with just a few of them you could have a good store up and running. Buying some of the mods together now to make a store run nicely would cost a small fortune and some coders are ripping users off.

This one made me laugh actually. What business do you have starting an online eCommerce business without something of a budget to begin with? Fine, stay out of the extension shop....go hire a developer to do it all for you. Either way, you "pay". Open Cart framework is free. If you want something that has "all" of the plugins already then purchase Volusion...or one of the more expensive frameworks. I get very tired of penny penchers coming around Open Cart crying because of the prices. Perhaps re-do- your business model and come back when you have more than $10.00 to spend on 12 extensions. Open Cart is growing. The community is growing. Extensions are growing. For every one complainer...there is a person that knows the concept "you have to spend money to make money."

darrengould wrote:There is at least one extension that, by their own admission, the coders have made at least 80K from and that is not what Open Source was supposed to be about. Sure everyone has to make a living but if anyone on here thinks cashing in to the tune of 80K for a mod for an Open source project is in the real spirit of open source then they are kidding themselves.

I laughed at this one too. Is Daniel supposed to give out free software without making any money to keep the project going? Do you not understand that if someone makes 80K off extensions, roughly 16K of that goes towards the project? Do some reading on how Open Source projects actually STAY ALIVE.

The rest of this post I just deleted due to a false comparison derived from a baseless claim.

Why do we charge high prices? Simply because there are ridiculous people that comes daily asking you for support. Our time are worth money. If we sell everything at $10 each, and we have to provide everyone with 30 mins of support, what are we earning? We all need money for a living. Stop complaining. You are earning money through this software when your store is up. So by purchasing from us, we earn from you, and when someone purchases from your store, you earn the money. Stop dreaming. If no one spends and earns, how is the economy gonna work.

In my experience any developer who charges a decent rate for an extension is willing to provide support to get it working on your site, and conduct future updates as new OpenCart releases come about at no additional charge. You get what you pay for. OpenCart wouldn't be the grand system that it is without the help and support of developers who lend their time on the forums / irc / e-mail to help people resolve problems, and provide a great set of value added extras via their commercial contributions. Without that system where would OpenCart be ?

I'd just like to point out that while mods do get made for free, there's very little gratitude for them. It's the same with most opensource software and to me that is the biggest let down, not that people make money off it.

I also find it a bit hypocritical to have a go at people making money from OpenSource software when you're using it to make...that's right...money from OpenSource software, albeit through a store front not extension sales. While I would be more inclined to agree if you're using something like wordpress which isn't (or wasn't at least) designed to be revenue generating, OpenCart is first and foremost a shopping cart there to let store owners generate cash. It's up to you if you want to add features to improve on the standard cart.

You also forget that while us commercial developers make money from OpenCart, it's also us that are over 90% of the replies to the forum posts, none of which get paid for. Sure they can lead to a sale or two, but the vast majority are just developers offering free advice to help those that need it

The bottom line is pretty simple... if you don't like it you can learn to make the changes yourself, then contribute it all back to the community. I'd be interested to know exactly what you've provided back to OpenSource since you're utilising it for profit. All of your forum posts seem to be "ME ME ME!". So before you get on your high horse, consider just what you're giving and taking...so far it only seems to be the latter, with the exception to complaint of course

darrengould wrote:You didn't put the price of extensions up for any other reason than to make more money so don't make out otherwise.

Nothing wrong with earning more income, but if that's all I wanted to do I would have priced my mods up a long time ago.

Fact is low cost mods generate a disproportionate amount of support work for me. People seem to think your time has no value. I'm tired of people trying to haggle on price because a $10 extension (the lowest you can even charge) "isn't worth that much". I'm tired of people freaking out on an estimate because my extensions only cost $x, even though my rates are very low for my country and experience level. I'm tired of the people who will threaten to give me a 1-star rating if I don't do x, y, or z for them.

I understand the value of labour but I notice you didn't comment on whether you consider making 80K from one extension is in the real spirit of open source.

I haven't made anywhere close to $80k for all my extensions combined (I certainly wouldn't be working 60+ hours a week if I could pull in that much income from mods alone). If a developer does make that, good for them! Clearly there's a demand for what they do. Earning money for quality work is not anathema to open source. GPL explicitly allows it and it's the single best way to keep smart, dedicated people contributing.

What I am talking about here are extensions that cost $75,$80,$100 and even $150! That as far as I am concerned is nothing to do with valuing someone's labour but someone charging way too much for an extension that is not an individual development.

How do you know if it's too much? How many hours did it take the developer to create the mod? How many hours a week do they spend supporting it? Do you really think you could hire a developer to program most those extensions for less than the price they're charging? Don't you think if it was easy and profitable there would be more competing versions of it on the market?

JAY6390 wrote:I'd just like to point out that while mods do get made for free, there's very little gratitude for them. It's the same with most opensource software and to me that is the biggest let down, not that people make money off it.

The only thing I ask for VQMod Manager is for the user to leave a rating. So far with 20k+ downloads I have 92. I can't imagine what it's like for VQMod itself which you and Q have sunk a massive amount of time into.

JAY6390 wrote:
The bottom line is pretty simple... if you don't like it you can learn to make the changes yourself, then contribute it all back to the community. I'd be interested to know exactly what you've provided back to OpenSource since you're utilising it for profit. All of your forum posts seem to be "ME ME ME!". So before you get on your high horse, consider just what you're giving and taking...so far it only seems to be the latter, with the exception to complaint of course

ME ME ME!!!! I offered some mods that I paid for to be coded to quite a few developers because I neither had the knowledge to put them on here (and support them) nor upgrade them to newer versions.

I couldn't even tell you if the code was good or bad coding but they worked and I wanted to share them but couldn't. They have probably been superseded in some way, shape or form but please feel free to PM me if you wish I will let you have them for free to develop yourself if you wish to I have no problem at all with that whatsoever.

Some very interesting points made.

As someone who is trying to set up a shopping cart for a small business, purchasing all the extensions I would like would be very expensive. However on the other side the selling price of most of the extensions would be a very small percentage of the actual development and SUPPORT costs the developers of the extensions incur.

I would expect that supporting most extensions would actually take up more time than creating them.

JAY6390 wrote: I'd just like to point out that while mods do get made for free, there's very little gratitude for them. It's the same with most opensource software and to me that is the biggest let down, not that people make money off it.

Sadly that is so true, I wrote an extension as a learning exercise and because the existing extensions (and there are a few paid and a couple of free ones) did not do exactly what I wanted.

Having written it I thought I would release it for free with some comments that I had only tested on v1.5.4.1 and did not have the time or resources to test it on any other version.

Low and behold the first comment I get was does it work on version 1.5.3.1, well doh! it is free so try it yourself!

Funny thing was until I read this thread I thought my extension must be crap because I only had 2 ratings from 120 downloads but based on the comment from rph that level of response seems to be the norm.

In fact, they way 'buyers' treat developers has put me off, for the small payment the developer receives for an extension buyers seem to think they own the developer, some of the comments made by buyers or potential buyers on some of the extensions comment pages are just rude and obnoxious.

I have written another 'extension' which is essentially some glue that combines a packing class which I have extended and the New Zealand Post API so that the quote is very accurate based on both the product dimensions and weight for boxes or satchels/bags, even if there are multiple items in the cart. Sadly I will not be releasing it because it is just not worth the hassle of dealing with people for the small income I would gain, the support costs are just too high.

So for those buyers out there please consider the developers time, not just in developing the extension, but in supporting the extension. And while you may not have the funds to buy all the extensions you would like for your store please do not expect someone else to subsidise you, after all, most of you are not building a store to give stuff away you are aiming to make a profit.

rebdog wrote:Low and behold the first comment I get was does it work on version 1.5.3.1, well doh! it is free so try it yourself!

Funny thing was until I read this thread I thought my extension must be crap because I only had 2 ratings from 120 downloads but based on the comment from rph that level of response seems to be the norm.

This is quite common for free extensions. It's also quite common for people not to rate an extension. Personally I think there should be a "leave a review" section as well as a comments section on the extension pages where someone can't leave a rating without giving feedback too. This is for two reasons:
1. To make downloaders more aware that they can rate the extension - it's not exactly clear to those that don't know that they can just click the stars at the top of the page to leave a rating
2. If someone's leaving a rating (especially anything but 5 stars) it's nice to know the reason for the rating

rebdog wrote:In fact, they way 'buyers' treat developers has put me off, for the small payment the developer receives for an extension buyers seem to think they own the developer

I've had this a few times where people expect you to help them not just with your extension but far more, and be very rude if you don't do as they want. I will actually give advice to customers beyond my mod if it's simple questions however I do draw the line when people ask question after question and expect answers for nothing. Forums are here for that and as such the answer will benefit more than one person and will likely be answered better with more people giving advice not just myself

rebdog wrote:Sadly I will not be releasing it because it is just not worth the hassle of dealing with people for the small income I would gain, the support costs are just too high.

So for those buyers out there please consider the developers time, not just in developing the extension, but in supporting the extension.

Exactly right. I don't charge for my time with support for my extensions (My hourly rate for custom work is $75USD/hour) so any support I provide is going to be a "loss" of sorts for me from the amount I've had from an extension sale. That said, it does actually make me want to keep the mod working flawlessly and as simple as possible to install/use since the better I make it, the less support I need to give. One of my biggest sellers is my Page Cache mod (which by the way has made nowhere near $80,000+) and as you can see from the comments littered throughout it I have given a lot of support to a lot of people - NONE of which have had to pay anything more than the mod fee for this support and all of which have been more than satisfied. When you consider that the cost of a modification has 20% go to fund the free cart being used, then the rest is for the original coding, maintenance, support and upgrades I think that the vast majority of extensions are undervalued if anything

JAY6390 wrote:When you consider that the cost of a modification has 20% go to fund the free cart being used, then the rest is for the original coding, maintenance, support and upgrades

And then there are tax responsibilities and PayPal fees on top of everything else. A lot of people don't realize how big a chunk of money the developer isn't going to get.

I think that the vast majority of extensions are undervalued if anything

I agree with you there. I raised mod prices because I was tired of people throwing a fit over custom work quotes on them. I understand budgets can vary drastically internationally but I'm an experienced developer in the first world. I might have been charging $10 for some mods but there's no way I would do custom work for anywhere close to that (and quite honestly it's a bit insulting having people trying to nickel-and-dime my rates to what they're "really" worth, especially since they're low to begin with).

All that being said problem users really are a small minority. It's just they're a minority you hear from all the time.

it does actually make me want to keep the mod working flawlessly and as simple as possible to install/use since the better I make it, the less support I need to give.

Definitely, though some days it feels like this horrible race to the bottom.

That's why everyone should sell in my new shop coming out soon. There won't be any of these issues listed above. Some however are "par for the course." Others can be avoided.