$50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

[lancermedia]

Re: $50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

Rick, the problem that bothers me with the Magento comparison is that they offer a free version, while Miva does not. That bottom 25%, but probably even a lot of the middle 55% - would be on Magento Community, I'd bet.

I have mixed feelings about all this, and I'm hoping our collective worries end up being no more of a big deal than everyone's concerns about the introduction of the compiler way back when, but I'm definitely worried about losing customer base. So I'm following rather than bitching...concerned but not yet freaked out. (Pardon my French.)

Last time we checked, Magento Community, while free, offers no support, and many of the features of Enterprise aren't baked into Community. Basically, you need to rely on an expert Magento developer to make it work and maintain it.

I would like to see Miva make enough money to sustain themselves as much as the next guy. To me however, the per seat charges are going to be a cost that is basically useless to the store owner. Sure, if the person logging in is managing orders then fine.....they should be another seat. But developer access should be allowed with the initial login.

-Kevin

[Rick Wilson]

Re: $50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

Susan,

I understand where you're coming from, and while Magento Community is free, it's a big of how shall we say, a resource hog? And hosting it is not free. My guess is our bottom 80% will pay something very similar to what people using Magento Community pay.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: $50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

Also for the record, here's what we've "gotten" out of all of this discussion so far:

1. We didn't communicate this ideally.

While I understand that issue, I'm not completely sure if any other path would've produced better results. I would love to have personally been able to call everyone we thought this would impact and discuss it 1 on 1, but that's simply impossible.

However we are continually learning how to be more transparent in our thinking and our process (as is evidenced by this thread, and that we've posted a lot more detail here than in our initial communication).

I also would like to say, thus far everyone has been very rational and reasonable to work out these details with, and that is much appreciated on our end.

2. We have what we're calling internally a "Temporary Support Login Problem".

What we mean by this is module developers, third party devs, etc... who need to get in and get out and slowing their throughput significantly is likely a more major inconvenience/pain than we expected.

We're working internally on some permanent long term structural solutions to this issue. They WILL NOT come until after 9.0.0 is released, but will be likely very solved in the first revision time frame. Part of the reason for this delay is we still haven't seen this in true real world scenarios yet, and we need to fix this once, properly and be done with it.

The key takeaway on this point, is our business model was never predicated or conceptualized on people buying seats for this purpose, so we'll find a fix.

3. The "Synchro"/"API User" problem.

We understand that there are automated tools and processes that need to work. We're going to be watching this closely in real world usage to come up with the best solution, if one is truly needed.

4. The "long term" developer problem.

We have people who work across a number of sites owned by the same person (or even different people), but as a rule might only be on one site or two at a time. They shouldn't need to buy say 10 seats for 10 sites, when they're only focused on 1 or 2 at any given moment.

I think we have a solid solution for this conceptually, but like 2 and 3 above, we're going to see it live in the real world, and fix it once, properly.

[netblazon]

Re: $50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

while Magento Community is free, it's a big of how shall we say, a resource hog?

That's putting it nicely ;)

And thanks for the longer update in your next post. It sounds like some middle ground is being found, and I like what I'm hearing.
Susan

[Mark Hood]

Re: $50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

All I can say is please bring on version 9!!!! The speed increase that it will bring for us will be amazing.

[slabar]

Re: $50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

I would like to add my support for the two seat model. I am always in my dev and live store(s) at the same time and do not wish to pay $50 / month in extra fees just to maintain my store.

I also notice no one has asked this but how will this new seat fee affect Annual Update Licensing? The reason I ask is I am assuming since you are adding extra fees the Annual Update License will raise as well? I hope I am wrong and that this will remain the same.

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Re: $50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

I would like to add my support for the two seat model. I am always in my dev and live store(s) at the same time and do not wish to pay $50 / month in extra fees just to maintain my store.

Live and Dev sites have the same, but separate seat licenses, so you can be in both at the same time.

[wajake41]

Re: $50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

Rick: Thanks for the explanation regarding Miva's pricing change. I've migrated from skepticism to acceptance regarding a seat charge. The option you've chosen seems most reasonable.

BTW Magento GO is being discontinued as of Feb 1, 2015 according to this: http://go.magento.com/ Isn't that their free plan? Glad we're not in that situation!

[josiahjg]

Re: $50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

What, exactly are they doing? Its possible that they could do their jobs without being logged into the admin. Entering, view orders could be done from the front side of merchant (although, not things like crediting/refunding).

Bruce, Some are doing front office CS stuff (refunding, editing), and some are just viewing order details (98% of our orders are customized, and so technicians need to see order instructions when setting up orders).

How would you view orders from the front end?

[lancermedia]

Re: $50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

BTW Magento GO is being discontinued as of Feb 1, 2015 according to this: http://go.magento.com/ Isn't that their free plan? Glad we're not in that situation!

Magento Go was their SaaS hosted offering that competed with Shopify and BigCommerce.

-Kevin

[Rick Wilson]

Re: $50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

I also notice no one has asked this but how will this new seat fee affect Annual Update Licensing?

The vast majority of our clients are not on this model (it's less than .1% of our clients). The retail licenses that you pay for annually include 1 base seat and additional seats will need to be added the same way.

Slabar, I thought you were hosted with us? Why are you paying annual fees?

[William Davis]

Re: $50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

Here's a link to the letter that went out: http://www.mivamerchant.com/miva-license

We've just completed sending it to everyone who we believe will be impacted by the change. If our records don't show you ever using multiple seats, then you haven't received this email.

In addition we're also changing our hosting plans to include more Disk space and similar along with this change, but we're not quite ready to announce that good news until the actual V9 launch.

I must of missed it somehow. We are three employees signed-in all day long, plus ShipWorks, ocassionally use StoreMan. Is that in addition to current monthly fees.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: $50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

We are three employees signed-in all day long, plus ShipWorks, ocassionally use StoreMan.

For a store with 3 simultaneous humans and an API user then yes your price will go up $150/mo on this model.

[Pamela Hazelton]

Re: $50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

Out of curiosity, did you consider just raising the monthly price by $10 across the board? That provides benefits to everyone across the board.

[slabar]

Re: $50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

Slabar, I thought you were hosted with us? Why are you paying annual fees?

No sir I'm not. I have my own dedicated server.