I might say that I would have to agree with most of the points elaborated by "CalTrade", "Masterindsro" and some other guys who are not too happy with this licensing model..
Guys let's be realistic,why do you expect a person to pay you $790 when you don't provide him this:
Real support - when I say real, I mean the person should get a reply back to his queries in 15-20 mins and he should also be able to contact through phone.
Code is Open-Source and as some people say see more their will be lot's of illegal copies going around the net, so why do you expect someone to pay $790 and others use the same thing for free. If you are charging $790, then make it a closed black-box so that only the person who pays gets the software.
Thirdly, Unoboonex said - "It's either free or very expensive". I think that's the big flaw.
Since, you will be providing the exact same module for free with links back to boonex site. So, lets say I make a professional site and spend $790 + hosting etc and the site becomes a hit.Then, it wont take any efforts for tons of guys to clone the exact same thing for free and they won't care about the boonex links, they will take whatever earnings they can get but it would harm my site badly. So, i think the free version should have limited functionality .Either all the modules should not be given to the guys who don't pay for the software or restrict them to a 3-months limit or something. Come on, you need to give something to your paid customers.
Excellent points Mickscool - I suspect that the people who pay $790 will expect LOTS of high quality support. I also agree with your point about "free or expensive" - they pulled out that low cost step that was so important to small business - or as another person here put it, the "hurt the little guy" (they didn't use the word "hurt" but I have heard enough obscenities for expressing my opinion here). I just did some quick checking around and it seems that most scripts see more are between $200 and $300 - but as I said before, most are too stupid to have a free version. I thought the old Boonex price structure was fantastic - they fixed something that wasn't broken, and as a result broke it badly. I've said here that I think this had badly hurt Dolphin's chances to become "the next big thing". A better way to express that would be that it has hurt their chances to become the "industry standard". I thought they were well on their way to that before- with the free version, and the low cost first step - it was brilliant. That's why if tomorrow Boonex gave me 10 free licenses, I would still think this was a mistake - though I probably wouldn't express it as often.
Before, selecting Dolphin in some ways was "a no brainer" - now I think it will be compared to all the other social networking scripts out there - most of which cost much less. The way they did this also struck me as really strange. MANY of us read this blog extremely carefully, and base our business plans on what is said here- and as others have pointed out that hasn't worked out too well. I don't think anyone reading this expected an eight fold price increase - there was not the slightest hint, and in fact there were assurances that nothing like this could happen. I'm guessing they did this as a "surprise" announcement because they hoped all the people who don't have licenses will now immediately plunk down $790 for Boonex. Some might, but I would have done it differently- I would have sent an email to all 50,000 members of the site, and let them know that a price increase would be happening in 60 days, but anyone who bought the $100 would have been grandfathered it. They likely would have collected a small fortune- but maybe they don't need the money.
Guys let's be realistic,why do you expect a person to pay you $790 when you don't provide him this:
Real support - when I say real, I mean the person should get a reply back to his queries in 15-20 mins and he should also be able to contact through phone.
Code is Open-Source and as some people say see more