Y'all missed asking Ozzy, somehow. We would have jumped right on it. Later Edit: And in a quick poll of the top devs here, I failed to find even a single one who WAS asked.
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Audent.io
- Thread starter Dad.
- Start date
I mean yes, it's hard to maintain customer (trust) if you have no money to operate your business, so I'd claim the first purpose of any business is to make at least enough money to sustain itself. If you think any action we've taken on the public add-on market ever was to make a money grab, then I have to break to you that that would've been a serious waste of our time, it didn't even sustain itself at any point.
As you generously overread, the opportunity has been given. We've reached out to devs perviously to check if they wanted to take them over, and released them as open source (meaning everyone can contribute and build upon!) when they declined.
Uh, don't have a huge amount of time to reply but few points I saw.
1. We are reducing offering 30 addons and themes to offering 1 package, so we're still here but in a MUCH smaller capacity for a much smaller group who rely on us. We just cannot sell licenses to the public anymore. Pretty much that simple just due to the market not looking for it anymore.
2. I wouldn't expect anything less from the same old people making bold claims that we don't care because you don't have every feature you ever requested built into your $20 addon. These types of arguments are weak and yes they drive developers away when there is constant toxicity. Reducing our load lets us shift away from the people who do not value the service to those that do, we did this for them and for us. Not for money, but because we learned that our clients who care deserve more of our time.
3. We've only ever bought a handful of add-ons from others, our thinking was as Ive stated numerous times "better someone manage them then go in the garbage" but it just wasn't a good look. And by the time we had considered this the market had already turned. Ill just post this screenshot from today:
4. We can all continue to argue, but really I'm just going to point to point 1 above. We slimmed down our list to offer a better service to our clients. By the way we have another 20 addons that are private, we dont even post about them here, and that decision has been one of the best I ever made. People who reach out and want to work with us to grow their forum is just easier for us than fighting the mobs day in day out. This forum is what I'm leaving behind, all resources except for free ones are being left. If XF decides to delete them fine by me, we left them to help you all out.
5. Just about all the clients we work with cringe at this forum, they do not care to hear the bickering, bloated opinions, etc. We supported this place for ten years. Did the best we could, ultimately this is probably what most of you here at the forum wanted. I couldn't be happier myself and I think the team is as well.
XenForo software is NOT the same as XenForo the forums. We're just not going to post here anymore, those who need anything can reach out. We know this software QUITE well after ten years using it. I love the software, I just want a smaller role to play.
1. We are reducing offering 30 addons and themes to offering 1 package, so we're still here but in a MUCH smaller capacity for a much smaller group who rely on us. We just cannot sell licenses to the public anymore. Pretty much that simple just due to the market not looking for it anymore.
2. I wouldn't expect anything less from the same old people making bold claims that we don't care because you don't have every feature you ever requested built into your $20 addon. These types of arguments are weak and yes they drive developers away when there is constant toxicity. Reducing our load lets us shift away from the people who do not value the service to those that do, we did this for them and for us. Not for money, but because we learned that our clients who care deserve more of our time.
3. We've only ever bought a handful of add-ons from others, our thinking was as Ive stated numerous times "better someone manage them then go in the garbage" but it just wasn't a good look. And by the time we had considered this the market had already turned. Ill just post this screenshot from today:
4. We can all continue to argue, but really I'm just going to point to point 1 above. We slimmed down our list to offer a better service to our clients. By the way we have another 20 addons that are private, we dont even post about them here, and that decision has been one of the best I ever made. People who reach out and want to work with us to grow their forum is just easier for us than fighting the mobs day in day out. This forum is what I'm leaving behind, all resources except for free ones are being left. If XF decides to delete them fine by me, we left them to help you all out.
5. Just about all the clients we work with cringe at this forum, they do not care to hear the bickering, bloated opinions, etc. We supported this place for ten years. Did the best we could, ultimately this is probably what most of you here at the forum wanted. I couldn't be happier myself and I think the team is as well.
XenForo software is NOT the same as XenForo the forums. We're just not going to post here anymore, those who need anything can reach out. We know this software QUITE well after ten years using it. I love the software, I just want a smaller role to play.
Well, not everyone here is being that toxic. I've seen several well-wishes, and even some of the members who started out the most vociferous in the thread you've managed to to talk down to a more reasonable discourse - which of course is part of the purpose of a forum - so I don't see any need to go overboard and vow to never return. If you know to expect some of the negativity, you should also know by now that most of it will blow over in time and that what remains probably won't be that bad. Just give people time to get over their initial shock.
And good luck with your future endeavors!
Bad news. 
Will there still be updates for the styles?
Will there still be updates for the styles?
Yes we are keeping support for those. If you check @ThemeHouse you can see the add-ons we are supporting here. (Price is wrong on xf1 themes haven't had time to fix)Bad news.
Will there still be updates for the styles?
Fair point, I think I'm just a bit frustrated with this place too. Everyone always seems mad, standoffish, unfriendly at bare minimum. I know we are all colleagues in some capacity or another as people who run communities, just can wear on the soul lolWell, not everyone here is being that toxic. I've seen several well-wishes, and even some of the members who started out the most vociferous in the thread you've managed to to talk down to a more reasonable discourse - which of course is part of the purpose of a forum - so I don't see any need to go overboard and vow to never return. If you know to expect some of the negativity, you should also know by now that most of it will blow over in time and that what remains probably won't be that bad. Just give people time to get over their initial shock.
And good luck with your future endeavors!
This is sad, because i always looked for updates and news about Audentio / Themehouse projects and addons and discussions from you, i don't feel like subscribing to a newsletter feels the same as interact on a forum.
Audentio brought a lot of things on the table, we used them to learn and improve, from our point of view (me and my Staff which develops a lot of our addons) the option of release everything open source is a nice touch. And let UI.X 2 / Nodes supported for free, since some of us relied on it for YEARS is really good and thats one of the reason we won't look for a refund.
Every theme we had on Xenforo is built upon UI.X2, a lot of ideas we built or we are building right now have taken inspiration by something made or talked by the Audentio staff.
I don't understand the general sentiment around, is sad, but as a community manager you should be prepared if things go sideways. Everything can change in this smaller and smaller pond day by day (Themehouse / Audentio isn't Google, Microsoft, Apple or another billion dollar company).
Xenforo staff should address the developers concerns if the community encounter problems in how things are going. Why people stop developing addons? why the Resources are stagnating? Why we can't have a Xenforo future roadmap? Why most of the time 3rd party developers doesn't use Xenforo standards? Personally i don't like the lack of communication by Kier / Chris etc. but that's another story.
People often search answers from the wrong people, and i think this is the case.
Looking forward to see if the 1000$ dollars subscription price drop a bit and eventually things get more clear about it. Like what's included etc. i feel like "AC Resources" needs to be fleshed out.
@Mike Creuzer I wish you and your crew all the best in your future endeavors. You and your crew were always more than helpful when I was doing add-ons and had problems with add-on conflicts. While we may not have always agreed on how to fix a problem, we always arrived at a solution.
Again, all the best in the future.
Again, all the best in the future.
Hmm ...
The developer says - too few of my add-ons bought my addons, the customers here only complained.
The customer here says - the add-ons were only reluctantly supported and sometimes too expensive compared to the forum software itself.
What I think when I read this, then a chicken and egg problem is building up.
If the add-ons are too expensive and possibly too poorly supported, they will be bought less and the customer base of the add-on developers will decrease. If there are too few add-ons, interest in the core software Xenforo as a forum decreases.
Now Audentio wants to publish some of the add-ons as OpenSource, which the bottom line requires quite a lot of enthusiasts if that is to become something.
Why not lower the prices noticeably instead of open source or too high prices instead in order to increase sales figures and market penetration and make illegal copies significantly less attractive, at the same time support only via the support form where you can control whether the inquirer is in possession of a license is.
If that doesn't work, either the market isn't really big enough for an add-on, or something is wrong with my add-ons and / or my support.
Xenforo currently costs $ 160 as a new license - but if I then see what some developers would like to have for a single addon, and then only look roughly once at the scope of the code ... then I can understand some here who are such Addons can no longer afford or want to. Not everyone earns big money with their forum, quite a few run their forums as enthusiasts and pay for them.
I myself have financed a forum year after year for almost 10 years and am glad that it is self-sufficient today that it is enough for the server and most of the licenses, but not for more.
With certain developers, I have no problem paying 50 euros for a larger add-on, because after all these years with Xenforo and the developer, I'm pretty sure that he wouldn't let me down.
But I have also bought quite a few annual licenses since 2004, which the developer threw away only months later or simply went underground. In this context, at some point the wallet will no longer sit so loosely.
I wish you every success, but I will definitely not count among the future clientele, as I cannot and yes, I do not want to double the forum costs for just a single developer license.
$ 1,000 a year is a lot of money for small forums, and I just don't see how I can make this money again with software from you.
The developer says - too few of my add-ons bought my addons, the customers here only complained.
The customer here says - the add-ons were only reluctantly supported and sometimes too expensive compared to the forum software itself.
What I think when I read this, then a chicken and egg problem is building up.
If the add-ons are too expensive and possibly too poorly supported, they will be bought less and the customer base of the add-on developers will decrease. If there are too few add-ons, interest in the core software Xenforo as a forum decreases.
Now Audentio wants to publish some of the add-ons as OpenSource, which the bottom line requires quite a lot of enthusiasts if that is to become something.
Why not lower the prices noticeably instead of open source or too high prices instead in order to increase sales figures and market penetration and make illegal copies significantly less attractive, at the same time support only via the support form where you can control whether the inquirer is in possession of a license is.
If that doesn't work, either the market isn't really big enough for an add-on, or something is wrong with my add-ons and / or my support.
Xenforo currently costs $ 160 as a new license - but if I then see what some developers would like to have for a single addon, and then only look roughly once at the scope of the code ... then I can understand some here who are such Addons can no longer afford or want to. Not everyone earns big money with their forum, quite a few run their forums as enthusiasts and pay for them.
I myself have financed a forum year after year for almost 10 years and am glad that it is self-sufficient today that it is enough for the server and most of the licenses, but not for more.
With certain developers, I have no problem paying 50 euros for a larger add-on, because after all these years with Xenforo and the developer, I'm pretty sure that he wouldn't let me down.
But I have also bought quite a few annual licenses since 2004, which the developer threw away only months later or simply went underground. In this context, at some point the wallet will no longer sit so loosely.
I wish you every success, but I will definitely not count among the future clientele, as I cannot and yes, I do not want to double the forum costs for just a single developer license.
$ 1,000 a year is a lot of money for small forums, and I just don't see how I can make this money again with software from you.
And conversely, I'd suggest that all developers make their addons more expensive, not less if it means they can properly support them.
At best, a single license purchase at present pays for around an hour of a devs time. If you raise a bug that needs longer than an hour to investigate, by using their addon you've put them at a net loss. That ignores the hundreds/thousands of hours that have gone into the initial devlopment.
The bottom line is that $20 addons are just too cheap.
Picking a little on @Slavik as he raised that example for imports vs addons, for a simple "vanilla" import of under 1 million posts he charges $150 (which is absolutely cheap/fair) and I assume that takes around an hour. That's much closer to a realistic value of his time/effort.
I imagine as XF moves towards the hosted solutions, we'll see some evolution of how add-ons work (maybe with some one-click app store like system eventually).
At best, a single license purchase at present pays for around an hour of a devs time. If you raise a bug that needs longer than an hour to investigate, by using their addon you've put them at a net loss. That ignores the hundreds/thousands of hours that have gone into the initial devlopment.
The bottom line is that $20 addons are just too cheap.
Picking a little on @Slavik as he raised that example for imports vs addons, for a simple "vanilla" import of under 1 million posts he charges $150 (which is absolutely cheap/fair) and I assume that takes around an hour. That's much closer to a realistic value of his time/effort.
I imagine as XF moves towards the hosted solutions, we'll see some evolution of how add-ons work (maybe with some one-click app store like system eventually).
like from the admin panel in xenforo cloud ?
No - more like Wordpress.
@RobParker
If it really takes hundreds, no waiting - thousands of hours for a $ 20 add-on that actually only sells once ... then the flaw certainly lies in many counts, but the price is probably the last.
If your strange calculation were correct, then Xenforo was probably created in 1h because otherwise it couldn't have calculated itself ... Lord God - the trick is to sell more pieces and that's exactly what I can't do if I overstimate the price have. Then I only have "premium" customers, but then that's because of my business model and that's exactly where not everything at ThemeHouse seems to have gone optimally, according to some users here.
Of course, I know that IT people like to make $ 150 and more an hour. Seriously though, tell someone who works and works hard physically at the same time but goes home for maybe $ 20 an hour or significantly less.
Not everything has to be big business to make a smart living from it.
If it really takes hundreds, no waiting - thousands of hours for a $ 20 add-on that actually only sells once ... then the flaw certainly lies in many counts, but the price is probably the last.
If your strange calculation were correct, then Xenforo was probably created in 1h because otherwise it couldn't have calculated itself ... Lord God - the trick is to sell more pieces and that's exactly what I can't do if I overstimate the price have. Then I only have "premium" customers, but then that's because of my business model and that's exactly where not everything at ThemeHouse seems to have gone optimally, according to some users here.
Of course, I know that IT people like to make $ 150 and more an hour. Seriously though, tell someone who works and works hard physically at the same time but goes home for maybe $ 20 an hour or significantly less.
Not everything has to be big business to make a smart living from it.
The problem with all this stuff is that you cannot apply XenForo price calculation. XenForo is selling to a market of forum owners. Add-on developers are selling to a market of XenForo owners, which naturally is significantly smaller, and many have the unfortunate mindset that if they pay 160 for the base product, they want "fair prices" for the add-ons. So you have to sell to less people for less turnaround if you want to appeal the mass or even less people for higher turnaround, which just leads to even less overall profit. This doesn't include the constant demand for increasing product scope that is insatiable even for the smallest product. You can send out weekly feature updates (and I have for my private products in the past, and they were free) and people still get upset when they don't get their features free of charge.
It's the same with the custom request section. Before I joined ThemeHouse, I used to freelance a little bit there. The common expectation used to be that $20/hour is a ridiculous overcharge, and that doesn't even include the lifetime service that is usually expected on top of that. And of course the price can also be dropped even further because you can just sell the super nieche product, right?
I do see that there is a few people here that understand that this kind of mindset does not work and needs to be changed and that understand why add-on prices and service prices have to be higher than the base product. But it is unfortunately the minority, so developers will naturally seek out stable long term relationships with bigger clients and stick with that, dropping the small custom add-on market, which is ultimately the stage at which we have arrived as well.
It's the same with the custom request section. Before I joined ThemeHouse, I used to freelance a little bit there. The common expectation used to be that $20/hour is a ridiculous overcharge, and that doesn't even include the lifetime service that is usually expected on top of that. And of course the price can also be dropped even further because you can just sell the super nieche product, right?
I do see that there is a few people here that understand that this kind of mindset does not work and needs to be changed and that understand why add-on prices and service prices have to be higher than the base product. But it is unfortunately the minority, so developers will naturally seek out stable long term relationships with bigger clients and stick with that, dropping the small custom add-on market, which is ultimately the stage at which we have arrived as well.
That's a big factor.
Probably somewhat depends on the Add-on - there are dozens of really simple Add-ons (+- just template modifications), but you are right - anything that is somewhat more complex than this does take time.
I think many customers vastly underestimate the resources required to develop and maintain Add-ons and at the same time vastly overestimate market opportunities.
IMHO 20 $ average is way too cheap to propely fund development and maintenance but also too expensive for many forums that do not generate much income.
Just a little bit of math using one of my Add-ons as an example:
FAM is a hobby/fun project I've been working on for well over 2 years by now.
I didn't track time precisely, but I expect that it already took well over 60 hours to get it to the current state.
If I did this for a living, this time would have to be paid for.
The average gross income in Germany in 2020 was about 3.975 €/month, adding about 30% non-wage labor costs that amounts for a total of about 5.170 €/month.
Now let's say I'm working about 200 hours/month (which seems realistic for a freelancer/self-employed) => about 25 €/hour.
At this rate, the Add-on would be worth ~ 1500 €.
To cover those costs (and that does not even include costs for billig, licensed customer support, etc.) at least 75 licenses would be needed.
That might not sound too much, but from my experience it is though - I'd expect most paid Add-ons to have < 100 buyers.
I think neither (much) higher nor lower priced Add-ons would be a solution - there just isn't a viable market.
Just my 0.02 €
The problem with IT people here, especially freelancing is, that this 150/h must make up for all the unpaid work, aka. searching out new work opportunites, discussion product scopes, contracts, support work when delivered. Even a 10h work contact will probably easily double the work done, maybe tripple it depending on how much demand the market offers and how easy the client is to satisfy.
I can tell you that my hourly salary is far from 150/h, yet we used to charge past the 200/h mark to make up for all this boilerplate work and still barely drove profit from small projects.
