Plugin pricing model

Plugin builders
81

speaking of wordpress, here are a few plugins with recurring monthly plans

if you read their interview on Indie Hackers, they moved from selling one off licenses on codecanyon to a SaaS model above.

Also, Apple and Google both dominate the mobile market, and they both take a cut. So Wordpress example should not be considered a rule.

Levon Terteryan
Founder @ Zeroqode & Bubblewits

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82

Note: First of all I want to make clear that I like your dropdown plugin, but for example purposes it’s going to be mentioned below.

I’m guessing that if I dared to compare Bubble with Wordpress you are entitled to compare Bubble with Apple :slight_smile:

Easy Digital Downloads is a freemium plugin with a one-time fee license that varies in price depending on the features you add. It also has an all-incluse package for 899$

There is also a subtle difference between that plugin and 90% of the plugins you can find in the bubble marketplace.

If I’m using EDD plugin which is a Shopping Cart they can safely assume I’m trying to make money as I’m selling stuff so it’s pretty fair they put a price tag to their plugin.

Also If I went for the all inclusive one-time license I would be paying 899$

If we take the dropdown plugin just as an example we would be paying 7*12= 84$/year

Compared to the all-inclusive one-time fee Shopping Carta bubble plugin costs 10 times less. In other words I would have to be subscribed 10 years to the plugin so it matches the cost of EDD.

Fair enough. I’ll give you that.

But you have to consider giving me the following two things.

Provided I have the right product for the right market.

Can you estimate how much money I could possible make during 10 years from my clients because I have nice drop-downs?

Can you estimate how much money I could possible make during 10 years from my clients for having EDD with ugly drop-downs?

Easy Digital Downloads All-Inclusive package with a One-time fee for 899$

includes all official extensions
unlimited license key usage
56 extensions included
thousands in savings

Shopping Cart
choose Buy Now or Add to Cart buttons
customize action button text
allow potential customer cart saving
support registered user or guest checkout
require agreement of terms before purchase

Customer Management
maintain a separate record for each customer
view, edit, or delete any customer record
track customer lifetime value and activity
link customer records to user profiles
create customer account page

Discount Codes
choose flat rate or percentage based
specify products to include or exclude
set automated start and end dates
require minimum cart total for discount use
limit discount usage by count or user

Data Reporting
view earnings by date range and category
filter reports by specific product
track collected taxes by year
export store data to CSV file
monitor download, sales, & API request logs

Additional Core Features
Rest API
Developers and external applications can take advantage of a complete RESTful API that provides easy access to sales and product information in either jSON or XML format.

Payment History
Record payment records of every transaction in your system and use the familiar Payment History interface to see key details about payments, resend purchase receipts, and much more.

File Download Logs
View everything there is to know about customer file downloads from your system. You will have access to details such as download dates & times, IP address, and attached payment record.

File Access Control
All product files are restricted to authorized customers only. No configurations is required. You may also set the file download limit and download link expiration.

Customer Account Page
Through the use of a single shortcode, output an entire purchase history table that is only viewable by logged in customers. Unauthorized users will not have access.

Seamless Integrations
Extension Catalog
While Easy Digital Downloads is a full eCommerce platform, the true power lies in its extensibility. With hundreds of available extensions, you can tailor EDD to your needs. View all extensions.

Payment Gateways
Payment gateways are an absolute must for eCommerce businesses to securely process payments. EDD supports the industry’s most popular payment processors and several more. View payment gateways.

Refund Tracking
For most online businesses, refunds are inevitable and processing refunds can be a daunting task. With select payment gateways, EDD makes processing refunds a hassle-free experience.

Affiliate System Integration
The limitness nature of digital products makes affiliate integration an attractive component. EDD is fully supported by AffiliateWP right out of the box. View AffiliateWP.

Mailing List Integration
Build relationships with your customers by keeping in touch with them after the purchase. Using our newsletter extensions, connect EDD to you favorite email marketing service tool. View newsletter extensions.

External File Storage
For some, WordPress’ Media Library is not enough to host product files. For that reason, EDD supports content delivery tools like Amazon S3 and Dropbox for hosting product files.

56 Plugins included

Recurring Payments
Stripe Payment Gateway
Software Licensing
Frontend Submissions
All Access
PayPal Pro and PayPal Express
Free Downloads
MailChimp
Checkout Fields Manager
AWeber
ConvertKit
Amazon S3
File Store for Dropbox
Custom Deliverables
Authorize.net Payment Gateway
Slack
Zapier
Resend Receipt
EDD Message
Reviews
Commissions
Add to Cart Popup
Invoices
PayPal Payments Advanced
Advanced Sequential Order Numbers
Advanced Reports
Discounts Pro
Wallet
Manual Purchases
2Checkout Payment Gateway
Git Download Updater
License Free Download
Recommended Products
Acquisition Survey
Gravity Forms Checkout
Recently Viewed Items
Duplicate Downloads
EDD Social Discounts
Fraud Monitor
Campaign Tracker
Keep Add To Cart
Compare Products
EDD Email Reports
Conditional Emails
SOFORT Banking
Additional Shortcodes
PayPal Adaptive Payments
Braintree
Coinbase Payment Gateway
Conditional Gateways
Payza Payment Gateway
Check Payment Gateway
Sendy
EDD Download Images
EDD Featured Downloads
EDD Variable Pricing Descriptions
Discounts Widget
Lock Downloads to IP
Terms Per Product
QR Codes
Hide Download
EDD Disable Purchase Receipt
EDD Purchase Gravatars
Digital Badge
Auto Register
Downloads As Services
List File Names
EDD Favorites
EDD Purchase Rewards
EDD Store Hours
EDD Xero
EDD Wish Lists
Gateway Fees
Digital Marketplace Bundle
Upload File
Discount Code Generator
Download Email Attachments
Custom Prices
EDD Envato Integration
Per Product Notifications
Variable Pricing Switcher
Purchase Limit
Wysija
PDF Invoices
GetResponse
ActiveCampaign
EDD ClickBank Gateway
Content Restriction
Pushover Notifications for Easy Digital Downloads
User History
MaxMind Fraud Prevention
Geckoboard
Restrict Content Pro Member Discounts
Per Product Emails
Conditional Success Redirects
Password Meter
Simple Shipping
Campaign Monitor
EDD Cross-sell and Upsell
Widgets Pack
Coupon Importer
Mad Mimi

As for the AffiliateWP you are making the same mistake. From using AffiliateWP potentially I can earn money. Drop-downs don’t have the potential to make me money per se.

Sorry but something is wrong here. And I feel sorry for all the parts because nobody is winning here. We are all losing.

I rest my case.

3 Likes
83

I agree, mentioned products for Wordpress provide a lot of value for their pricing. But we should not forget the size of the audience they cater to. And also how much time they had to build all those features into their offerings.

The drop-down is not only nice, but it also has functionality that standard Bubble drop-down doesn’t. Like opening and closing dropdown from a workflow, or opening it on hover. It also comes without the bug mentioned above in the thread. So if without this plugin, your app doesn’t work as it should, then you will never make any money with your product at all. We have spent exactly 73 hours building this plugin. Can you imagine how much money it would cost the user above to build it if he desperately needed it?

At the moment we are loosing money building plugins, but we consider it as a long term investment and count on Bubble growing bigger. I think when that happens the plugin prices may go down. Until then it doesn’t make absolutely no sense to sell plugins for a few bucks per month. Currently the demand is not elastic at all. And if we reduce the prices 2-3 times we would have maybe only 10-20% more users (or maybe even same number of users)
And if the plugins were sold at one off prices, we would probably not be building them. It maybe fine for individual developers, but for us as a business it’s absolutely not sustainable as a business model.

it’s same as saying why Apple takes commission from people who are improving Iphones (that’s actually what all those third party developers do, they improve Iphones and experience users are having with it).
Bubble co-founders spent 5 years bootstrapping this business without having any profits for a long long time, and I don’t see a reason why they wouldn’t be taking commission for allowing plugin and template developers to sell to their audience.

and also, i mentioned this already, but i believe $14/month for their personal plan is hugely undervalued. We pay that much to Digital Ocean simply to host our forum at https://forum.zeroqode.com ! And Bubble for that price gives you not only hosting, but an all in one managed solution where you can build products and make money.
I wouldn’t be surprised actually if they are loosing money on the personal plan and compensate that with higher plans and maybe later plugins. So when you think of the monthly costs to run your product and whether it’s economically justifiable, you should not take into account separate plugins and try to see if they bring money to you, but calculate the total costs (Bubble subscription + plugins + anything else that you spend related to Bubble).

I don’t think there is anything wrong here, we just need to wait until Bubble has millions of users, then it will be different. Meanwhile, if you need the plugin and you have to pay for it, then it means the plugin solves a problem for you and the developer deserves to get paid. If your product cannot afford the price of the plugin, then i’m really convinced that you need to find a different business model because the current one is not sustainable and it will die with every little change of its smallest component. And if you don’t need the plugin, then what’s the problem?

I respect your opinion and feelings about this, but if you still disagree, let’s just leave it there, because: we are not going to reduce the prices at the moment or switch to one off sales because it will kill our incentive to build plugins. Bubble is not going to switch to one-off pricing or stop taking commission, because of the reasons I mentioned above.

Thanks

Levon Terteryan
Founder @ Zeroqode & Bubblewits

let’s stay in touch on twitter!

zeroqode-for-web-160x120

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84

I honestly hope and desire to be wrong. Believe me. Because that would mean there is no repercussion whatsoever for anyone. However, we will obviously have to agree to disagree. As I’m pretty sure both of us have a huge professional background but it seems our experience within pricing management has been different and as such our beliefs clearly are opposite.

However I find these paragraphs very interesting:

Blockquote And also how much time they had to build all those features into their offerings.

Blockquote We have spent exactly 73 hours building this plugin. Can you imagine how much money it would cost the user above to build it if he desperately needed it?

From those two paragraphs I tend to assume that this plugin was developed due to a client request and you are taking the client request needs as a big basis for the pricing approach. Which is probably a huge mistake from a pricing management perspective. Ask any Pricing Manager about this.

The agency plan should maybe allow developers to implement plugins on specific accounts for a fixed price and then after some time it could be released to public at a lower subscription rate or whatever seems fit.

Because at the moment, if this is the case of a Client Change Request, you are asking casual users to subsidize the needs of a client with an urgent need. And that will never fly.

Blockquote I wouldn’t be surprised actually if they are loosing money on the personal plan and compensate that with higher plans and maybe later plugins.

As per Bubble’s feedback in forums it seems that Bubble has been profitable since the early beginning due to the aforementioned Bootstrap approach.

85

thanks for the constructive discussion and a positive end.

no this is a wrong assumption, we built it because we saw the potential of it.

I would like to ask moderators @NigelG or @andrewgassen to move part of this thread to the “plugin pricing” thread where I believe it should belong.

Thanks!

Levon Terteryan
Founder @ Zeroqode & Bubblewits

let’s stay in touch on twitter!

zeroqode-for-web-160x120

Bubble Templates
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1 Like
86

Indeed it makes more sense for the pricing thread or even split this one in two. It was never my original intention to mix a commercial announcement with a core problem that has nothing to do with your plugin. It was only mentioned as an example.

If it’s going to get split or merged I would also like to have your opinion on template pricing model vs plugin pricing model.

Why are templates a one time fee and plugins subscription based? Again there is far more potential of making money from a full working template than from a plugin.

87

you are right, we also want to switch templates to a subscription model, but Bubble doesn’t currently have enough bandwidth to implement such changes as they are focused on improving the plugin ecosystem first. We expect that to be done later on. We started selling templates even before template mechanism existed in Bubble - we were simply copying an app and transferring to the user manually. It was more of an experiment which we got an approval for from Bubble.

Levon Terteryan
Founder @ Zeroqode & Bubblewits

let’s stay in touch on twitter!

zeroqode-for-web-160x120

Bubble Templates
Bubble Plugins
Bubble Courses
Convert Web to iOS & Android
No-code Development Services

1 Like
88

i thought we already discussed everything about plugin pricing here.

Levon Terteryan
Founder @ Zeroqode & Bubblewits

let’s stay in touch on twitter!

zeroqode-for-web-160x120

Bubble Templates
Bubble Plugins
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Convert Web to iOS & Android
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89

Hi @levon

Thanks for posting the discussion link, but clearly no one is listening.

1 Like
90

I understand your position and feelings, but what do you suggest us to do?

91

How about a flat fee? I am down for that. I have enough monthly bills, I am not looking to add to the collection. I understand recurring revenue, etc… but I am impulse buyer. I see something I wanna buy, I buy it. I see a monthly subscription and tend to think …“hmmm. this will be here next month”… and never buy it. Just my thoughts, no judgement here.

1 Like
92

The only way to do a flat fee is to NOT use the official Bubble plugin store, which has it’s own consequences. It’s a tough situation for plugin developers.

93

Andrew is right, it’s against Bubble terms and we don’t want to violate them :slight_smile:

Levon Terteryan
Founder @ Zeroqode & Bubblewits

let’s stay in touch on twitter!

zeroqode-for-web-160x120

Bubble Templates
Bubble Plugins
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Convert Web to iOS & Android
No-code Development Services

94

Hey @levon, will you be kind to point me to the bubble terms and conditions regarding plugins and plugin sales? Can’t seem to find it. It’s not in their general terms Nad conditions. Thanks.

1 Like
95

they are still refining the beta terms and I know this from asking them about the possibility to sell plugins directly.

Levon Terteryan
Founder @ Zeroqode & Bubblewits

let’s stay in touch on twitter!

zeroqode-for-web-160x120

Bubble Templates
Bubble Plugins
Bubble Courses
Convert Web to iOS & Android
No-code Development Services

1 Like
96

Great. Thanks Levon

97

The original post indicated “people are up in arms at plug-in prices” which intimated that there were swathes and hordes of users going off-line Roman candles at pricing …there only actually seems to be a handful of users commenting on the thread the rest of the developer community.

The software industry in my view has gone through a massive inflection point over the last few years moving from perpetual licensing to subscription. I think it’s unrealistic and unfair to expect a one-off fee for a plug-in similar to a perpetual license and then not play a recurring annual maintenance and support fee. This is the way the software industry has always worked and even then if you chose not to pay for maintenance and support if you ever need to upgrade to the next release (no point release) you would either have to back pay the maintenance and support or pay for new perpetual license.

I think as always people have a choice here… If anyone feels that these plug-ins at $5 $7 $10 or whatever $ is too much then they can always take the time to build their own plug-in or alternatively source and independent suitably qualified developer to build one for them.

Much of it comes down to how you perceive these plug-ins… Personally I view them as revenue generators…lifting the capabilities of my application to a level not natively available in bubble currently… Many of them also make my app look cool and trendy.

I also think the base subscription fees for bubble base platform is actually quite inexpensive… I’d seen a similar “supposedly no code development environment” which had a starting dollar price of $750 per month.

I think if you monetise the cost of a handful of plug-ins that you feel are mandatory and useful over projected user base kinda pays for itself in my view.

I’m quite sad visit here pretty regularly and I am amazed at how responsive the various developers are to questions raised about their plug-ins and how quickly updates are pushed in response to forum requests… You cannot judge the quality and price of a plug-in purely on its features and capabilities but equally the voracious support from all the developers both free and paid.

And still amazed that such a vibrant community with 130,000 odd users there is not more uptake… I have no doubt it will come in time.

So the net net is for what it’s worth… After bubble has taken their cut (I’m not questioning that at all) and what the developers are left i’m amazed at the low cost of these Plugins.

I think they are reasonably priced for the features they provide and the service and speed at which updates are pushed.

2 Likes
98

It’s not unusual to find only a small % of users actively contribute to a discussion in any forum setting.

I think the point is we don’t mind paying but it has to be under the same conditions as buying any software.

  1. SLA
  2. It adds value and doesn’t monopolies a feature which should be a standard feature in the bubble elements.
  3. It can be purchased using a number of options. Currently you can pay monthly or if on an annual subscription basis (not many knew annual was available until recently. You need to be on an annual subscription to benefit from this).
  4. Once a developer leaves there is a transition of ownership set out so we are not left holding a ticking bomb.
  5. Most of us on here came to Bubble so we wouldn’t have to rely on developers but Plugins do just that and a suggestion that we should build our own if not happy goes against the Bubble ethos!

The reason we don’t have a lot of purchases tells us 2 things 1. The current model is not working and 2. Clearly something is driving Bubble user behavior, and my hypothesis would be it’s the very reason people chose Bubble in the first place.

99

When I was first contacted in regards to putting my plugins on the beta store I thought the point of the beta release was to gather a collective from both sides of the fence with the goal of bettering the ecosystem and moving forward with the full release. So far unfortunately I cant say I feel its progressed much although that’s not to say there is nothing going on behind the scenes, just not a lot we are being informed about. It makes keeping ourselves complaint with terms/platform updates difficult not to mention small outbreaks of plugins/apps having issues or falling apart because updates are pushed without warning.

Ive seen in a few posts people mention selling plugins outside the plugin store is breaking Bubbles terms. I just want to go on the record here and say that I have spoken to Bubble and the understanding is simple, There may come a time when they no longer allow external sales & prevent the advertising of external sales on the forum however, for the time being they are still in the process of having their general counsel organize what will become the new terms.

Me personally just to help place at rest any issues one may have in regards to purchasing my plugins and me going missing or worse - I will be following what I believe is bubble single greatest promise in the event I cannot for what ever reason continue to provide a product, that is I will publicly publish the code making every effort to ensure your apps are unaffected.

I can say though that the posts plugin consumers are posting here are very helpful as apart from an inaccurate “Number of installs” that’s appended to a plugin & a single figure or this months earning’s from our paid plugins provides developers with 0 insight into how we can improve your experience / plugin / app. All we get is a dollar amount and number of subscriptions… I have to manually go through the store just to find what plugins are actually being adopted, then back again to find what is being uninstalled if any.

4 Likes
100

Thanks @jarred this is exactly the kind of assurance some of us are looking for!