Free vs. Paid Support

[Franklin <Nabble>]

Do the core developers answer questions in the PHPBB support forum?  I honestly don't know the answer to this.  I want to make it clear that we will not remove free support, only that core developers (Hugo and me) will not answer most questions there.  If volunteers want to answer free support questions, that's great.  We will support this by giving such volunteers access to premium (paid) support.

The reason we want to reduce time spent on support is exactly to pass PHPBB and other software in features and customization.  We can't do this if we spend all our time on support.  We also plan to make our source available eventually.

We looked at Google AdSense and it can't generate significant revenue for us.

~Tanveer~ wrote

I dont get why you dont hire staff, or moderators who are willing to help for free in the site etc.

How do you hire someone for free?  I would love to do that.

[☪Not_A_Admin]

If you see all these movie streaming sites, all these forums over the net.

They have communities etc.

They usually have staff places available such as linker, designer, Moderator etc.

It happens every where nearly, a good example is Freeze-subs, they are a anime subtitling group , who sub new releases for free, people all around the world joined their team,

they had someone install the forum and design it, someone upload the series that come out, bunch of people subbing it, others encoding it, people testing the quality, and distributors.( so much more)

And guess what, they all do it for free....

that's just one example, might not be relevant.

From: [hidden email]

Sent: Saturday, October 02, 2010 11:00 AM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: Re: Free vs. Paid Support

Do the core developers answer questions in the PHPBB support forum?  I honestly don't know the answer to this.  I want to make it clear that we will not remove free support, only that core developers (Hugo and me) will not answer most questions there.  If volunteers want to answer free support questions, that's great.  We will support this by giving such volunteers access to premium (paid) support.

The reason we want to reduce time spent on support is exactly to pass PHPBB and other software in features and customization.  We can't do this if we spend all our time on support.  We also plan to make our source available eventually.

We looked at Google AdSense and it can't generate significant revenue for us.

~Tanveer~ wrote:

I dont get why you dont hire staff, or moderators who are willing to help for free in the site etc.

How do you hire someone for free?  I would love to do that.

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[Harvey]

Franklin...

What is the ETA on paid support?

[Mack Daddy]

Harvey44

I second that motion , Me too

[jonaspm {Helper}]

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[John Yeoman]

I agree, Harvey - even though I don't need 'paid support'. But even paid support would be better than Tanveer's unsavory option: 'If you guys want to make money,then use google ad sense and all these other ways'.

Any forum or web site that has to support itself with the pollution of Google ads is a whore. It's also saying 'my content is rubbish. And nobody will buy it. That's why I have to run all these Google weight loss and porno links'.

Customers know it. Believe me, they do.

The day that Nabble runs Google ads, I close down my sites.

A more ethical option would be to charge a fee on a sliding scale according to forum views. As I've suggested earlier

[☪Not_A_Admin]

But i think $100 is alot, considering we've been hit by the recession.
However, i was thinking maybe just lower it a bit?
So its more reasonable, Me getting paid support or free support is pretty much the same thing, i still get to use my forum, which is all i want. (but more improved obviously)

[ES Admin]

It would still help though if someone would answer requests in the free forum.  Such as this one.

[SteveM]

See this is the problem with this particular business model the owners of nabble have embarked upon; they are now at the beck and call of a mere handful of people who have forked out $100 to create individual 'bespoke' nabble applications, rather than put in place a simpler and more cost-effective (for nabble) model where the nabble ad is removed (for example.)

Now the rest of us will have to work things out for ourselves or part with a significant amount of money or, as I have done, choose another, less pricey, software solution.

And, it also follows that the more people who reluctantly part with their money, the more diluted the service; quite simply, Hugo and Co. will currently be able to offer near 1 on 1 support, but as more nabble users become frustrated and sign up, this 1 on 1 support will become less and less value.

It is a business model doomed to fail. That's why I have decided to opt out early before it all falls in a heap.

What a shame, because it had potential.

[Franklin <Nabble>]

As I mentioned before, the advertising model doesn't work for us financially and doesn't solve our core problem of spending time on support that would be better spend on development.  The 1 on 1 support we provide to paying customers drives real development, so this is actually useful to us.  It helps our development be customer driven.  We want to develop features that paying customers want.  Non-paying users are welcome to use Nabble for free but shouldn't expect us to dedicate time to their questions.  I have no problem with losing non-paying users as a result of this.  I just hope that we can continue to develop Nabble so that it increases in value to users and more and more users will be willing to pay for support as a result.

[☪Not_A_Admin]

This is what i was going to say...

People who don’t want to pay will look for another solution.

 

So I think we need a team of moderators for the nabble free support forum , i don't mind signing up for the position, and doing what i can in my free time.

 

From: [hidden email]

Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 2010 7:22 AM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: Re: Free vs. Paid Support

 

See this is the problem with this particular business model the owners of nabble have embarked upon; they are now at the beck and call of a mere handful of people who have forked out $100 to create individual 'bespoke' nabble applications, rather than put in place a simpler and more cost-effective (for them) model where the nabble ad is removed (for example.)

Now the rest of us will have to work things out for ourselves or, as I have done, choose another, less pricey, software solution.

And, it also follows that the more people who reluctantly part with their money, the more diluted the service; quite simply, Hugo and Co. will currently be able to offer near 1 on 1 support, as more nabble users become frustrated and sign up, this 1 on 1 support will become less and less value.

It is a business model doomed to fail. That's why I have decided to opt out early before it all falls in a heap.

What a shame, because it had potential.

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[SteveM]

Franklin <Nabble> wrote

As I mentioned before, the advertising model doesn't work for us financially and doesn't solve our core problem of spending time on support that would be better spend on development.  The 1 on 1 support we provide to paying customers drives real development, so this is actually useful to us.  It helps our development be customer driven.  We want to develop features that paying customers want.  Non-paying users are welcome to use Nabble for free but shouldn't expect us to dedicate time to their questions.  I have no problem with losing non-paying users as a result of this.  I just hope that we can continue to develop Nabble so that it increases in value to users and more and more users will be willing to pay for support as a result.

Do you not see the massive contradiction in the above post? You don't mind losing users because they are non-paying, yet you advertise nabble as a free 'service' when you admit you only look after paying customers.

The business model I proposed, a token fee of, say, 25 dollars to remove the "free nabble" advert (which would be taken up by a large number I would expect) frees up your time by being able to employ people to answer questions on your behalf, and maintain your claim that you offer a free service.

What you are embarking on is doomed, because the more people who take up your offer will end up becoming dis-enchanted with your service, as your time is split between more and more paying users demanding many and varied changes to your source code.

And that in itself is dangerous; Do you not run the risk of losing the simplicity at the core of your systems?

[Franklin <Nabble>]

SteveM wrote

Do you not see the massive contradiction in the above post? You don't mind losing users because they are non-paying, yet you advertise nabble as a free 'service' when you admit you only look after paying customers.

The service is free, so we aren't lying, but I agree that the home page could be improved to explain what we are doing.  We will update the homepage when we have time for that.

The business model I proposed, a token fee of, say, 25 dollars to remove the "free nabble" advert (which would be taken up by a large number I would expect) frees up your time by being able to employ people to answer questions on your behalf, and maintain your claim that you offer a free service.

$25 per what time period, per year?  A programmer costs around $50K, so that's $50K/$25 = 2000 Nabble sites paying for this.  We wouldn't get close to this.

What you are embarking on is doomed, because the more people who take up your offer will end up becoming dis-enchanted with your service, as your time is split between more and more paying users demanding many and varied changes to your source code.

And that in itself is dangerous; Do you not run the risk of losing the simplicity at the core of your systems?

We are developing a templating system internally which we will release eventually.  But for now, we use this system to support custom requests which means that we don't pollute our code.  As we improve this system, we will be able to more easily handle custom requests which will allow us to scale up and handle more users.  And when the system is solid and proven to be able to handle many custom requests, we will release it publicly so that all users can customize their Nabble site.

[SteveM]

Well I wish you well in the future, but for now I am forced to opt out. I simply cannot see the value in $100 for something as indeterminate as "paid support".

[Hugo <Nabble>]

~Tanveer~ wrote

So I think we need a team of moderators for the nabble free support forum , i don't mind signing up for the position, and doing what i can in my free time.

We have a thread about this, see:
http://nabble-support.1.n2.nabble.com/Help-with-Free-Support-and-get-access-to-Premium-Support-tp5652870p5652870.html

[John Yeoman]

Duh, has nobody ever paid attention to my simple idea, recently posted here: that Nabble could win revenue fast - and ethically - by charging a fee related to the number of views per forum site?

So newbie forums would get a free ticket, but big often-viewed forums would have to pay. Pro rata to the volume of traffic.

Paid support is a non-starter. Anyone who has taken a PhD in Ramusian logic - and cracked the impossible Nabble forum Registration/Membership process sufficiently so that they can even moderate their own site - doesn't need it, any more.

But 'pay per view' sounds viable to me. Trust me. I was once a marketing guru - Chairman for 15 years of the UK Marketing Guild. And I do have a PhD in Ramusian logic.

Of course, I'm senile now...

[Julia Dvinskaya]

"....  The free support forum will continue to exist,"
Dear Nabble team, as a new-ish customer, considering going for the paid support -
though- can we make it say, 5 a month, not 100 whack in one go; i am not sye if
my forum will even survive for that long! - good idea?
BUT while we are discussing it - could you pleease reply to my small question in
freesupport - i need to find the 'remove' button (it is not under 'more') to
remove posts without deleting replies; can I also enable my registered users to
do the same? Our discussions often are not responses to the latest but to the
Topic.. I posted my question a few days ago.. Have a look.
help... :)Julia Dvinskaya

[SteveM]

Julia Dvinskaya wrote

"....  The free support forum will continue to exist,"
Dear Nabble team, as a new-ish customer, considering going for the paid support -
though- can we make it say, 5 a month, not 100 whack in one go; i am not sye if
my forum will even survive for that long! - good idea?
BUT while we are discussing it - could you pleease reply to my small question in
freesupport - i need to find the 'remove' button (it is not under 'more') to
remove posts without deleting replies; can I also enable my registered users to
do the same? Our discussions often are not responses to the latest but to the
Topic.. I posted my question a few days ago.. Have a look.
help... :)Julia Dvinskaya

 Sadly Julia, your question will only be taken seriously by the nabble team if you part with $100 first.

This is why people are leaving nabble in their droves, while the nabble team runs around at the beck and call of a mere handful of wealthy nabble users, getting their software tailored to their individual needs.

[Franklin <Nabble>]

Julia Dvinskaya wrote

can we make it say, 5 a month, not 100 whack in one go

How about $10 for the first week and $2 for each week after that.  This would allow you to buy as much support as you need and would work out to roughly the same yearly price as we have now.  By charging more for the first week, we make it more cost effective to buy many weeks at a time.  So the cost would look like this:

$10 - 1 week
$12 - 2 weeks
$14 - 3 weeks
$16 - 4 weeks
$112 - 52 weeks or 1 year

[Julia Dvinskaya]

".... How about $10 for the first week and $2 for each week after that."   To be fair to the new customers (and thus attracting them) I think the first two weeks after the registration and forum going live, give each forum 2 weeks of free support - because some forums simply die out immediately and the creator of it would like 2 weeks of trial run (ok, 1 week if you are determined to get your pay)... This in fact will induce feelings of some sort of loyally in your customers.. Hmm?