Hi! I've got an OSS e-commerce framework (vendure.io) and I've been giving thought to the various options for monetization. Right now I've settled for open-core rather than a hosted version, mainly because currently it's just me, and I don't want to be on the hook for the uptime of other people's shops.
Any thoughts on the minimum requirements to responsibly offer a hosted version of your product? I.e. what staff, what expertise etc?
Hosting definitely does take at least one systems engineer to do really well— But honestly, it's helpful to do hosting in order to serve your customers ideally. You're going to encounter problems when you try to host that will help customers in all capacities.
I'll also say that business model discovery takes a long time and a lot of false starts. It took a lot of discovery for us to understand how obvious the hosted option was for our customers— so I don't want to make the process of discovery seem overly simple, even if the ultimate model is more simple.
But think about it this way: Your market is probably a lot bigger if your service isn't just open core. Because the subset of customers that have any appreciation for what that concept even means is so much smaller than the set of folks who understand more typical models for software distribution. I wouldn't say avoid open core at all costs, but consider whether this is even what you want to push if your product is going to become more mainstream.
Thanks Ben, that's useful insight. In my ideal open-core situation, I've built up sufficient adoption that I have a large pool of users to potentially sell to. The particular appeal of open core is the ability to create software and then scale at minimal marginal cost by selling licenses.
Of course, time will tell whether there is sufficient market for this, and also how much time & effort will be required to make sales. I've spoken to other projects in the same space and they found that selling the "plus" version took a significant enterprise sales cycle, which is a scenario I really want to avoid.
Well, as you say - there will surely be many lessons learned along the way to sustainability, but I'm looking forward to the challenge!
Yup. Every path is its own. We like to describe our model as a "success-based business model" where our customers' success is highly aligned with ours, and that is a principle to build off of regardless of the specifics. But companies like Shopify and AirBnB could both easily be described on these terms and I think it's a great idea for any open source organization— and then there are the details to back it all up.
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Hi! I've got an OSS e-commerce framework (vendure.io) and I've been giving thought to the various options for monetization. Right now I've settled for open-core rather than a hosted version, mainly because currently it's just me, and I don't want to be on the hook for the uptime of other people's shops.
Any thoughts on the minimum requirements to responsibly offer a hosted version of your product? I.e. what staff, what expertise etc?
Hosting definitely does take at least one systems engineer to do really well— But honestly, it's helpful to do hosting in order to serve your customers ideally. You're going to encounter problems when you try to host that will help customers in all capacities.
I'll also say that business model discovery takes a long time and a lot of false starts. It took a lot of discovery for us to understand how obvious the hosted option was for our customers— so I don't want to make the process of discovery seem overly simple, even if the ultimate model is more simple.
But think about it this way: Your market is probably a lot bigger if your service isn't just open core. Because the subset of customers that have any appreciation for what that concept even means is so much smaller than the set of folks who understand more typical models for software distribution. I wouldn't say avoid open core at all costs, but consider whether this is even what you want to push if your product is going to become more mainstream.
Thanks Ben, that's useful insight. In my ideal open-core situation, I've built up sufficient adoption that I have a large pool of users to potentially sell to. The particular appeal of open core is the ability to create software and then scale at minimal marginal cost by selling licenses.
Of course, time will tell whether there is sufficient market for this, and also how much time & effort will be required to make sales. I've spoken to other projects in the same space and they found that selling the "plus" version took a significant enterprise sales cycle, which is a scenario I really want to avoid.
Well, as you say - there will surely be many lessons learned along the way to sustainability, but I'm looking forward to the challenge!
Yup. Every path is its own. We like to describe our model as a "success-based business model" where our customers' success is highly aligned with ours, and that is a principle to build off of regardless of the specifics. But companies like Shopify and AirBnB could both easily be described on these terms and I think it's a great idea for any open source organization— and then there are the details to back it all up.