Livecode FM Price

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LemmTech
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Oct 06, 2017 11:29 pm

Livecode FM Price

Post by LemmTech » Fri Oct 06, 2017 11:43 pm

Hey Guys,

The LiveCode for FM product looks amazing but you might want to rethink your pricing model. As a developer It would be VERY difficult for me to try and convince my customers to pay $400 to $700 a year for some extra plugin functions on top of my development cost and the cost of FileMaker. Getting customers to pay for plugins in the first place is already tough even when they are a one time fee but the annual fee model makes this very difficult. If you had a developer pricing plans for teams of developers like FMPerception has where its priced per year for each developer or team of developers I could see that. I can bury this cost in my proposals or justify just paying it myself and make it up in development revenue. Since this is really a developer focused product I think you need to come up with a plan that encourages developers to buy the product to make cool stuff but not have to sell it to each one of their customers every time they create something with it. Good luck with things! I wish you the best of luck!

Mark Lemm
Napa,CA
USA
markl@lemmtech.com

bogs
Posts: 5435
Joined: Sat Feb 25, 2017 10:45 pm

Re: Livecode FM Price

Post by bogs » Sat Oct 07, 2017 12:17 pm

I noticed the developer license is $50 ?
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LemmTech
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Oct 06, 2017 11:29 pm

Re: Livecode FM Price

Post by LemmTech » Sun Oct 08, 2017 7:58 am

The developer license is $50 sure that is great but you still have to convince your customers to pay every year for the software after you create something for them which I think is going to be very difficult. For example maybe some GUI widget would be very helpful say a slider or something is a customer going to pay hundreds of dollars a year just for that? Maybe but I doubt it.

If you say "Well I can do that for you but you will have to buy this third party software which is going to cost you hundreds of dollars every year plus pay me to develop it for you plus keep paying FileMaker every year I think that is a steep hill to climb.

It seems to me the market for this product is developers not end users since it doesn't do a specific thing like other plugins (i.e. link to Quickbooks) instead it's a framework to create your own unique stuff to add to your FM solution. If I create a cool custom function in FM I can add it all my solutions and I charge my customers a one time development charge to add it which they are fine with. They don't have pay additional money every year to keep using it. If I create a cool custom function with LC on the other hand my clients will have to pay extra money every year just use that one function which may be all they need from LC and I am doubtful they would want to do that.

I want to see LC FM to be successful but right now they are marketing it to developers but pricing it to sell it to end users which means as a developer I have to convince my customers to buy it and then manage their licensing etc. which I don't really want to do and they won't do. Most other plugins are sold as a way to get development work for the company (360 Works, Productive Computing etc..) because that is where the real money is but LC is not an FM development company I don't think so they have to make they money selling the product hence the end user pricing model.

For me I was excited to try it because I think it's a great additional to the FM ecosystem but once I saw the pricing model I decided it wasn't worth the trouble. I will keep my eye on it though and see if things change.

bogs
Posts: 5435
Joined: Sat Feb 25, 2017 10:45 pm

Re: Livecode FM Price

Post by bogs » Sun Oct 08, 2017 3:28 pm

I should preface this with the fact that I know very little about FM itself, and just as little about Lc for Fm, so I went to their respective homepages to take a look at them.

Apparently, unless you are a lone dev, Fm's pricing runs the same way, i.e. your coughing up $888. minimum per year for a team of up to 5 devs. Lc for Fm is priced well below that, roughly half the minimum yearly. I would assume no matter how you chop it up, you would have to have a subscription model with your customers already, again unless you are a lone dev.

However, the side benefit is that anything you develop for your business would probably be useful to others in similar lines of business, so it opens an additional avenue of income for your company if you develop the wonder widget, and sell it as a plugin elsewhere. And yes, the 'wonder widget' would have to be more than a slider :lol:

If that is the case, and you are not a lone dev, then assuming your customer base is larger than 10 people (I certainly hope so!), your talking about a minimum up-charge in your pricing for the value added by the new things you can offer, spread over 12 months Lc for Fm comes to about $33 and change. I would have to believe that, even without selling things you create to others in your business, you could make enough additional with the added value to overcome this.

The dev license I mentioned certainly would not work in your case, as for deployment they would then require you buy the full package, but it *would* substantially lower costs during developement.

Just food for thought, I wish you the best no matter which way you decide to jump.
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kevinmiller
Livecode Staff Member
Livecode Staff Member
Posts: 120
Joined: Thu Feb 23, 2006 7:57 pm

Re: Livecode FM Price

Post by kevinmiller » Sun Oct 08, 2017 11:19 pm

Thanks for your post.

Using FileMaker is going to incur an ongoing cost for you or your client. Adding LCFM adds new capabilities to the FileMaker platform. If those capabilities are valuable then it represents good value for money. The FileMaker ecosystem just isn't large enough to support the considerable development effort on LCFM without doing that.

Of course if prefer, one option to consider is that you might be able to do without all the benefits of FileMaker on some projects and build the entire system in LiveCode. It will just depend on what you are building and who for. LiveCode offers royalty free distribution.

Finally its worth noting that we do offer vertical pricing for LCFM, which is per product rather than metered per user. That might be a better fit for you. If you want to discuss whether it might work for you, please contact support@livecode.com.

Thanks again.
Kevin Miller ~ kevin@livecode.com ~ http://www.livecode.com/
LiveCode: Everyone can create apps

sphere
Posts: 1145
Joined: Sat Sep 27, 2014 10:32 am
Location: Earth, Except when i Jump

Re: Livecode FM Price

Post by sphere » Sun Oct 15, 2017 9:57 am

@LemmTech You would be flabbergasted (<-- is that correct spelled?) if you see what companies pay Yearly to use S.A.P. and every extension that comes with and every employee that needs to use it ....it's unbelievable...$$$$ k-ching $$$ k-ching $$$ k-ching $$$ k-ching $$$

aphero
Posts: 6
Joined: Tue Jul 11, 2017 1:43 pm
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: Livecode FM Price

Post by aphero » Wed Oct 18, 2017 1:41 pm

@Lemmtech

As an FM developer, I am really excited by the possibility to convert an FM file into a LiveCode file, and then deploy it to Andriod, or HTML (etc etc) - aka the missing link. I purchased LiveCode not knowing any LiveCode syntax but saw potential that I could reach other platforms, well before LCFM Android.

https://filemaker.livecode.com/android/

I see LCFM as a plugin development environment, so it is really an extension builder to FM in my eyes.

FM is great, out of the box, quick and easy development, UI and database in 1 place. Easy scripting. And as all IDE's, it has limitations and/or considerations.

My understanding is that LCFM Android is a product developed by an FM developer(.Com Solutions), which would explain the interesting pricing structure, as below.

LCFM for Android will be priced as follows:
A service option for us to convert your app will be available starting at $1000, which covers up to 10 layouts, the packaging, building, testing and delivery of the native Android APK.
The price for using the platform will be $2 per user per month. A user is defined as any unique individual who uses the app on Android in a given month period. Billing will be adjusted automatically to cover increases and decreases in usage.
We will offer annual pricing options and vertical licenses, please contact us to discuss your needs.
At some stage in the program it is our intention to refine and package up the conversion tool and make it available together with instructions on how to use it. With this option you will be able to do the conversion yourself with a moderate amount of learning. We will fully support you in this process.

I think 10 layouts is very conservative and my opinion is that it is exploitative, I don't know of another product or plugin that is priced this way in the FM arena(I currently use plugins from BaseElements, RESTfm, ProductComputing, 360works, Seedcode). I produce several vertical products that have over 500 layouts(large systems), I must say that the pricing structure is consistent with the FM developer that is engaged, being .Com Solutions.

I have tried the demo version of the FM > LC migrator, my thoughts are that it is great for standard FM devs.

I am not tooting my horn by any means, but vertical products are very specific by nature and usually carry a lot of complexities that may not carry over during migration.

I am very interested in LCFM Android's ability to have online/offline sync, so much so that I am speaking to LiveCode tomorrow about it.

FileMaker carries no sync framework, I am using RESTfmSync by Goya(goya.com.au), however, it is a manually triggered sync, which works fine but I don't believe is acceptable today.

Thanks,
Aphero

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