If XenForo's finished, what's next?

[Suzanne O]

Then you have the other side of the coin.... the heavily modded sites that dread major upgrades. The upgrade to 2.3 took a toll on me with so many addons not compatible even months after 2.3 came out.

I ignored 2.3 until I was forced to upgrade on cloud and I can tell you I much prefer no news and a solid backbone to constant changes. I much prefer to concentrate on my community instead of always worrying about what is changing and what will stop working.

So for me, I like the stability of slower steady changes and I am quite happy with the slower pace.

Same here!
Makes it easy for us to continue our chats on our sites.

 

[Wing]

Then you have the other side of the coin.... the heavily modded sites that dread major upgrades. The upgrade to 2.3 took a toll on me with so many addons not compatible even months after 2.3 came out.

I ignored 2.3 until I was forced to upgrade on cloud and I can tell you I much prefer no news and a solid backbone to constant changes. I much prefer to concentrate on my community instead of always worrying about what is changing and what will stop working.

So for me, I like the stability of slower steady changes and I am quite happy with the slower pace.

Then why are you not self hosted?

 

[Moshe1010]

I would argue that XF’s entire business model is lacking.

Instead of increasing the license price and hiring more developers, for some reason @Kier keeps the team small; and it’s not particularly efficient, either.

 

[smallwheels]

I would argue that XF’s entire business model is lacking.

Instead of increasing the license price and hiring more developers, for some reason @Kier keeps the team small; and it’s not particularly efficient, either.

Strong statement. Given the threads where people complain (in my eyes wrongly) in a row about the "insane price" for XF self hosted licenses I am not so sure if a drastic rise in price would be a good idea. And how do you know that the goal of XF would be having a huge team? Regarding efficiency: One women gives birth to a child in nine month, nine women are not able to do in in one month. Not saying it would not be a valid (or even godd) decision to grow the team somewhat but on the other hand: Do you know what exactrly is XF's business model? Do you know if it is not part of their business idea to run with a small team? Do you know if it is not a deliberate choice to limit the featureset as well as the speed/amount of updates? As @MapleOne says: For many that have a heavily customized and well working forum each update is a bit of a horror, the more, the more add ons are involved. So having not too frequent updates is a good thing for many customers.

The business model now includes XF cloud which, according to Chris, already brings in half of the turnover/revenue - cloud did not exist a couple of years ago. Clearly, cloud generates way more revenue per customer than single licenses with an occasional update license every couple of years. Plus it is probably way less troublesome regarding customer support due to a homogenous installation base and way less troublesome to roll out updates, especially high frequent ones. So if it was for an efficient and most profitable business model they would ditch standalone licenses sooner or later, streamline the number of possible add ons for cloud and have more money with less effort. It would in fact make a lot of things easier for them which would no doubt also speed up the development. Thankfully XF said they like it as it is and have no plans and no reason to stop selling self hosted licenses.So be careful what you wish for.

 

[Tamer]

You’ll never find statues built for critics.

 

[Rene_V]

Instead of increasing the license price and hiring more developers, for some reason @Kier keeps the team small; and it’s not particularly efficient, either.

I disagree with this. Bigger the better is a wrong notion when it comes to teamwork imo. As someone who has been part of a big team at my work I've seen it first hand how a lot of time and energy gets lost in miscommunications, duplicated efforts to name a few things. And while a big team might look good on paper, it can actually slow you down.

 

[FTL]

The business model now includes XF cloud which, according to Chris, already brings in half of the turnover/revenue - cloud did not exist a couple of years ago. Clearly, cloud generates way more revenue per customer than single licenses with an occasional update license every couple of years. Plus it is probably way less troublesome regarding customer support due to a homogenous installation base and way less troublesome to roll out updates, especially high frequent ones. So if it was for an efficient and most profitable business model they would ditch standalone licenses sooner or later, streamline the number of possible add ons for cloud and have more money with less effort. It would in fact make a lot of things easier for them which would no doubt also speed up the development. Thankfully XF said they like it as it is and have no plans and no reason to stop selling self hosted licenses.So be careful what you wish for.

Indeed, quite.

 

[duderuud]

All is good and well but I'll just wait for actions (releasing 2.4). For now I have stopped waiting for it. We will see...

 

[Moshe1010]

drastic rise in price would be a good idea.

I didn't write drastically. In addition:

And how do you know that the goal of XF would be having a huge team?

I didn't write a huge team either.

One women gives birth to a child in nine month, nine women are not able to do in in one month.

Using the "nine women" analogy for a mature software platform is a classic logical fallacy. That analogy refers to sequential tasks that cannot be partitioned, implying that software development is a single, indivisible linear process like pregnancy. It is not.

Software development consists of hundreds of distinct features, bug fixes, and infrastructure improvements that can be parallelized. While 9 women can't produce a baby in a month, 9 developers can certainly build 9 different features in the time it takes 1 developer to build them.

We aren't trying to birth a single baby here; we're trying to run a nursery, a school, and a hospital simultaneously. Trying to do that with a skeleton crew isn't "efficiency" — it's negligence. XF isn't suffering from "too many cooks," it is suffering from a complete lack of capacity to work on parallel streams.

Do you know what exactrly is XF's business model?

No, and I don't care. If they present features from a new version but only release it a year (or more) later, it means something is lacking in the process. They might call it 'upstream development delay'; I call it a lack of progress.

Do you know if it is not a deliberate choice to limit the featureset as well as the speed/amount of updates?

Yes, but if you want to slow down updates, you don't publish "Have You Seen" features a year in advance and say 2.4 will be released ASAP (six months ago). You are misreading the map again. Their business model is to make money. Not updating your software in a timely manner, or worse, saying you will update it but failing to do so, is not good business practice. It does two main things:

1. It basically destroys customer trust in the product and the brand overall.
2. It greatly delays license renewals, which I guess is a very big chunk of XF's business model.
   

For many that have a heavily customized and well working forum each update is a bit of a horror, the more, the more add ons are involved. So having not too frequent updates is a good thing for many customers.

Actually, it's the other way around. The more features included in the core, the fewer headaches large forum owners have in general.

The business model now includes XF cloud which, according to Chris, already brings in half of the turnover/revenue

Good. If cloud services are the main focus, they should just shut down the self-hosted licensing entirely. Currently, in my opinion, it does more harm than good.

 

[MySiteGuy]

I didn't write drastically. In addition:

I didn't write a huge team either.


Using the "nine women" analogy for a mature software platform is a classic logical fallacy. That analogy refers to sequential tasks that cannot be partitioned, implying that software development is a single, indivisible linear process like pregnancy. It is not.

Software development consists of hundreds of distinct features, bug fixes, and infrastructure improvements that can be parallelized. While 9 women can't produce a baby in a month, 9 developers can certainly build 9 different features in the time it takes 1 developer to build them.

We aren't trying to birth a single baby here; we're trying to run a nursery, a school, and a hospital simultaneously. Trying to do that with a skeleton crew isn't "efficiency" — it's negligence. XF isn't suffering from "too many cooks," it is suffering from a complete lack of capacity to work on parallel streams.


No, and I don't care. If they present features from a new version but only release it a year (or more) later, it means something is lacking in the process. They might call it 'upstream development delay'; I call it a lack of progress.


Yes, but if you want to slow down updates, you don't publish "Have You Seen" features a year in advance and say 2.4 will be released ASAP (six months ago). You are misreading the map again. Their business model is to make money. Not updating your software in a timely manner, or worse, saying you will update it but failing to do so, is not good business practice. It does two main things:

1. It basically destroys customer trust in the product and the brand overall.
2. It greatly delays license renewals, which I guess is a very big chunk of XF's business model.

Actually, it's the other way around. The more features included in the core, the fewer headaches large forum owners have in general.


Good. If cloud services are the main focus, they should just shut down the self-hosted licensing entirely. Currently, in my opinion, it does more harm than good.

You talk about a logical fallacy, yet this is pure conjecture:

"I would argue that XF’s entire business model is lacking.​

​

Instead of increasing the license price and hiring more developers, for some reason @Kier keeps the team small; and it’s not particularly efficient, either."​

​

... much like your post above has conjecture.

 

[smallwheels]

I would argue that XF’s entire business model is lacking.

Do you know what exactrly is XF's business model?

No, and I don't care.

That speaks for itself. You jugdge drastically about something where you admit not having the sligthest clue about. This seems to be also true for wider parts of the rest of your posting.

If cloud services are the main focus, they should just shut down the self-hosted licensing entirely.

Cloud services are not the main focus. It is a welcome source of additional revenue. You completely ignore what vision and mission the company has and also what history. I'd bet, currently only a small fraction of the customers use XF cloud. Given the history of XF of 14 years the vast majority will be self hosted. Killing self hosted would bring a number of additional customers for cloud but also lead to a huge number of forums to switch software or to shut down entirely. For many forum owners XF cloud is not affordable and for others it is simply not the right solution. XF know that, tell that and act accordingly - you ignore the fact as well as the statements of XF themselves.

 

[rdn]

The lowest‑cost option for the cloud hosting plan is $648 per year, and customers are required to pay annually.

In contrast, a self‑hosted XenForo setup with all included plugins only costs about $100 for each renewal year—many users likely did not renew their license this year.

These figures underscore that the company’s primary focus is mostly on cloud hosting.

 

[briansol]

cloud hosting wouldn't exist without the software. I hope they remember that. I think they do.

XF will continue to grow, i have faith in the platform.

xf2.3 is good. there's stuff i'd like, but no one's making it and i'm not turning enough profit these days to fund it or put the effort in to build it myself.

my sole focus is on improving SERP ranks to get more traffic and convert new users to regulars. 90% of that is content. 10% is the platform we're on and i have no complaints about rankings.