craft-neo
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spicywebau
Neo "light"-Version i.e. Pricing
I just saw the Neo Matrix plugin pop up in my craft plugin store for $49. Fair price I guess, yet I'm not willing to pay 'extra' for my personal portfolio site even though I used Neo back in Craft 2 and liked it very much. I've waited (I guess others can relate) pretty long to see Neo finally come to life, but actually expected it to be free or at least have a free version - given that SuperTable is free and represents kind of a competition. If I'd knew that wasn't going to be free in the first place, I'd probably already had started working and learning SuperTable. I sure know that everyone needs money and the price is "fair" (for a company, but not for an individual just using it as a hobby). I already had a similar conversation with the folks that build SEOmatic where they were not wrong but obviously didn't get my point which ultimately made me leave them and switch to another, free plugin with similar capabilities. Are there any plans for a free version? If not, I guess I'm forced to go to SuperTable instead - mainly because it is free and brings similar features to the table.
I was going to recommend Spoon as an alternative for merely organising Matrix fields, but that's even more expensive (initial cost and the yearly cost).
Charging for work is perfectly fair, as you say, but a problem I'm facing is the stacking up of costs for plugins I once used in Craft 2. It basically wipes out the chance to use many plugins on smaller projects, especially personal or registered charity projects :(
And then there's the opinion that the capabilities of Neo should really be built into Craft itself, as with many popular plugins (like navigation management).
I still feel like an developer/agency pricing model like how ACF for Wordpress does it would be great. Perhaps a fixed first year cost and then maintenance/support for a yearly cost something like that. That would certainly help when working on many smaller projects.
Hello All,
NEO is now paid as we as an agency will be actively supporting it and adding features as time goes on. The idea of Agency pricing is a good one, and once the Craft Plug-in store has this option I am sure we will implement it.
@tonysambell Thanks for the quick response. I appreciate that the pricing model is not set in stone (and currently limited due to the craft store not handling those cases) but I also somewhat assume that it's going to be hard to win back a "user-base", once people are scared off and have switched to another solution. I mean I wouldn't rebuild a website, just because a plugin went free some time after launch but started off being paid.
Assuming NEO will have a free pricing model for solo licenses in about six months (if the market place allows such things, of course) I highly doubt that I will find myself rewriting all my websites, just because it is free now even though it's already working flawlessly with SuperTable. Even for new Projects I probably would rely on a plugin that I use regularly, can copy code from other projects etc. The kind of functionality that SuperTable and NEO provides is unfortunately something that lies at the core of a Website and is essential. Exchanging it is kind of troublesome and I somewhat doubt that people will do that, once they are set on either one (this is where the price argument strikes again). The difference between the two is not as great and obvious to me in the matter that it would justify choosing a paid (and not even cheap and also including annually fees) one over a free one.
That being said I sure hope that the Craft Plugins store will provide some more options for developers to pick the right pricing model but I somewhat doubt that this is going to happen anytime soon. As for myself, I'm going to switch to SuperTable (unfortunately just because it's free...) and probably wont come back once I'm done learning and implementing it a few times as there simply is no reason for me to do so.
Thanks for the feedback, really appreciate it. I did just want to make something clear, we have no plans to bring out a free version, I want NEO to be supported forever and charging for something means we obligated to be there supporting it. If the plugin store brings out a change (especially agency pricing) we will reevaluate then, but right now NEO is a paid plugin for the foreseeable future.
Sorry to see you go, I knew that making it paid would put a few off, but for others, including us as an agency paying the $50 is saving us a lot more than the price in saved time.