Marketplace and Subscription System for digital products

[Felipo Antonoff]

Hello, I would like a Marketplace and Subscription System for digital products as a suggestion for a new feature for Xenforo.

One idea would be that we could have a subscription screen similar to the one on the Price page of Xenforo and we could have the option of one more type of subscription per customer, for example: Subscription to release resources, subscription to earn credits or individual subscription for certain products.

It would also be interesting to purchase digital products with Split for the creator to receive their share and the Forum/community their commission.

Shopping Cart Support to maintain a single order per Purchase, support the listing of Orders, view active subscriptions, be able to change payment methods for a subscription, be able to cancel a subscription or upgrade or downgrade.

In short, a rich resource focused on Marketplace, Subscription and direct selling of digital products.

I saw that there is Resources and being able to upgrade users, but I don't know if you already have a rich control of subscriptions and if the same user can subscribe to more than one subscription to release different benefits or products and what happens when he loses the subscription, It would still be nice to have access to the products purchased visually for when you want to renew the subscription, just not being able to download or ask for support until you sign up, in short, you need to have a clear history of invoices, subscriptions, their status and products/benefits related to it.

This idea is to encourage plugins and digital products market, mainly leverage platform communities, support developers, subscription to SaaS services among many other uses.

It could even be a new official add-on or within the resources that is a very good component and could improve even more.

 

[Mr Lucky]

It would need to have a system that applies VAT at the correct rate for EU countries as it is a requirement to charge for digital downloads sold to EU.

 

[Felipo Antonoff]

Yes, it would be interesting to be able to add VAT and other possible fees depending on the country of origin of the consumer.

 

[sub_ubi]

A fairly popular addon, but core would be a dream.

[XFA] RM Marketplace/Shop - XF2

Description RM Marketplace allows you and/or your users to sell resources from the resource manager, like in a marketplace ! NOW supporting xF Payment profiles since V5.0.0. Supports three types of products : Digital products (license based)...

xenforo.com

 

[digitalpoint]

I do think this is a missed opportunity for XenForo. XenForo needed to build and maintain a selling/license management system already for in-house use (to sell XenForo). It always struck me as odd that this was done on a stack based on XenForo, but kept separate from the main site (like why do customers need completely different customer account vs. their normal account)?

Since you need to build and maintain it anyway, why not built it as an addon, then users don't need multiple XenForo accounts to use it/buy things. You don't need to associate your forum account with your customer account when it's a unified account that simply made the purchase to begin with.

As a bonus, since it's an addon, it could be a new first-party offering, and with very little change, it could also be something you not only use to sell XenForo here, you could let addon/style developers sell their stuff here and automatically take a cut of those sales.

Just got me thinking about it because I've been working on exactly this for an in-house addon and the more I get into it, the more I've been thinking, "This would be a fantastic system for XenForo to sell their own stuff."

In case XenForo ever makes such a thing, some things that would be nice:

Ability to buy multiple licenses on a single transaction


With the ability to pay for future update/support blocks at an optional discount (incentivize users to buy upgrades early). With a subscription option that starts a subscription for updates/support in the future (in the case of this order, they would pay $399 up front because they are paying for 2 years of support/upgrades up front, then 2 years from now, the automatic subscription kicks in for $162 per year).

Manage existing licenses

Users can cancel subscriptions without digging around PayPal trying to find where those are (and PayPal likes to move them around in their UI). For licenses not on a subscription, they can extend the license early at any time for any amount of time.


Attach a subscription to a license at anytime, even if the license is currently active


This license expires May 16, 2027... if choose to create a subscription for it, the subscription doesn't start until 3 years from now (when it expires). If you they want to extend the license without creating a subscription, they can do that too and it would be $54 paid now (and that will move the license end date to May 16, 2028.

Not all payment processors support subscriptions, so processors that only support one-time payments are only available if you uncheck the box about creating a subscription.



Have optional automatic seller fees

In this case, there's a default fee of 10% for marketplace sales if you allow third-party sellers. That can be overridden on a per merchant basis or a per marketplace basis.



Like maybe you take 10% on addon sales, and 25% on domain/site sales:



Allow sellers to manage sold licenses:



...that's some of the things I might consider doing if I were to make such a thing.

Having XenForo license renewals be an optional subscription seems like more money for XenForo. Then selling the system they built for their own use is additional income as well.

Either way, basically if XenForo, Ltd. made their sales/licensing system a first-party addon, at the very least it could be a new first-party addon to offer users. Just seems logical to me because they have to build and maintain it anyway....

Having a user account and a customer account on xenforo.com is kind of silly when XenForo is such a good framework... User accounts are already being flagged as customers (via user groups I assume), so why not just get rid of the kludge of having two accounts that need to be linked?

 

[JoyFreak]

I do think this is a missed opportunity for XenForo. XenForo needed to build and maintain a selling/license management system already for in-house use (to sell XenForo). It always struck me as odd that this was done on a stack based on XenForo, but kept separate from the main site (like why do customers need completely different customer account vs. their normal account)?

Since you need to build and maintain it anyway, why not built it as an addon, then users don't need multiple XenForo accounts to use it/buy things. You don't need to associate your forum account with your customer account when it's a unified account that simply made the purchase to begin with.

As a bonus, since it's an addon, it could be a new first-party offering, and with very little change, it could also be something you not only use to sell XenForo here, you could let addon/style developers sell their stuff here and automatically take a cut of those sales.

Just got me thinking about it because I've been working on exactly this for an in-house addon and the more I get into it, the more I've been thinking, "This would be a fantastic system for XenForo to sell their own stuff."

In case XenForo ever makes such a thing, some things that would be nice:

Ability to buy multiple licenses on a single transaction

View attachment 286151
With the ability to pay for future update/support blocks at an optional discount (incentivize users to buy upgrades early). With a subscription option that starts a subscription for updates/support in the future (in the case of this order, they would pay $399 up front because they are paying for 2 years of support/upgrades up front, then 2 years from now, the automatic subscription kicks in for $162 per year).

Manage existing licenses
View attachment 286152
Users can cancel subscriptions without digging around PayPal trying to find where those are (and PayPal likes to move them around in their UI). For licenses not on a subscription, they can extend the license early at any time for any amount of time.


Attach a subscription to a license at anytime, even if the license is currently active

View attachment 286153
This license expires May 16, 2027... if choose to create a subscription for it, the subscription doesn't start until 3 years from now (when it expires). If you they want to extend the license without creating a subscription, they can do that too and it would be $54 paid now (and that will move the license end date to May 16, 2028.

Not all payment processors support subscriptions, so processors that only support one-time payments are only available if you uncheck the box about creating a subscription.

View attachment 286161

Have optional automatic seller fees
View attachment 286154
In this case, there's a default fee of 10% for marketplace sales if you allow third-party sellers. That can be overridden on a per merchant basis or a per marketplace basis.

View attachment 286157

Like maybe you take 10% on addon sales, and 25% on domain/site sales:

View attachment 286158

Allow sellers to manage sold licenses:

View attachment 286160

...that's some of the things I might consider doing if I were to make such a thing.

Having XenForo license renewals be an optional subscription seems like more money for XenForo. Then selling the system they built for their own use is additional income as well.

Either way, basically if XenForo, Ltd. made their sales/licensing system a first-party addon, at the very least it could be a new first-party addon to offer users. Just seems logical to me because they have to build and maintain it anyway....

Having a user account and a customer account on xenforo.com is kind of silly when XenForo is such a good framework... User accounts are already being flagged as customers (via user groups I assume), so why not just get rid of the kludge of having two accounts that need to be linked?

Yes, yes, yes!

A core marketplace add-on would be the dream.

 

[Mendalla]

It would need to have a system that applies VAT at the correct rate for EU countries as it is a requirement to charge for digital downloads sold to EU.

It would need a configurable sales tax system really. Canadian PST/GST/HST (it varies depending on province, though I think most are on HST now) needs to be supported as well.

 

[digitalpoint]

It would need a configurable sales tax system really. Canadian PST/GST/HST (it varies depending on province, though I think most are on HST now) needs to be supported as well.

Lol let’s not get ahead of ourselves here… add that to the suggestion section if such a thing ever became a product without the feature.