Re: Free vs. Paid Support
Posted by John Yeoman on Sep 27, 2010; 7:57pm
URL: https://support.nabble.com/Free-vs-Paid-Support-tp5528523p5576653.html
As an old-time marketing man, I don't think that charging $100 pa just for fast support would be attractive. After someone's played about with Nabble for a while (and been discharged from the rest home
) they don't need much support - except when their site goes pear-shaped. That's likely to be a Nabble bug, not a user error, so Nabble shouldn't charge to fix it.
So I wouldn't pay for support itself.
Instead, how about charging on a sliding scale for forum traffic? A Nabble customer who gets only 100 views a day might pay a token $1 per month. Someone who's getting 1000 hits per day could pay $5 pm. And so on. (Let's not do it on the volumes of posts/replies. Some 90% of forum visitors never post, I find. And not all forums want posts.)
That's how Wufoo and FormAssembly do it. Wufoo charges a flat annual fee, on a sliding scale based on volume, with upgrade options as volume increases. FormAssembly charges as you go, and starts low, an option more acceptable for newbies.
For example, I have ten Nabble forums on two commercial sites. A volume customer? No. I haven't really promoted my sites yet, so the forums get little traffic (and they make darned little profit). I'd happily pay $1-$3 pm, just now. If and when I get 1000 hits per day, I'll cough up $100 pa with a happy smile
URL: https://support.nabble.com/Free-vs-Paid-Support-tp5528523p5576653.html
As an old-time marketing man, I don't think that charging $100 pa just for fast support would be attractive. After someone's played about with Nabble for a while (and been discharged from the rest home
) they don't need much support - except when their site goes pear-shaped. That's likely to be a Nabble bug, not a user error, so Nabble shouldn't charge to fix it.
So I wouldn't pay for support itself.
Instead, how about charging on a sliding scale for forum traffic? A Nabble customer who gets only 100 views a day might pay a token $1 per month. Someone who's getting 1000 hits per day could pay $5 pm. And so on. (Let's not do it on the volumes of posts/replies. Some 90% of forum visitors never post, I find. And not all forums want posts.)
That's how Wufoo and FormAssembly do it. Wufoo charges a flat annual fee, on a sliding scale based on volume, with upgrade options as volume increases. FormAssembly charges as you go, and starts low, an option more acceptable for newbies.
For example, I have ten Nabble forums on two commercial sites. A volume customer? No. I haven't really promoted my sites yet, so the forums get little traffic (and they make darned little profit). I'd happily pay $1-$3 pm, just now. If and when I get 1000 hits per day, I'll cough up $100 pa with a happy smile
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