Subscription renewed ... waiting for activation

[chris.paschen]

Per your note in the other item in the Professional form I've updated my subscription.
Sorry for not doing that before.

HOWEVER, for some reason I didn't carefully look at the subscription rates before. I though that Professional was 60euro/YEAR not Month. At the rates you list it would cost me over $700 USD per year for Fabrik Dev support. That would be at least double the most expensive other Joomla extension that we regularly use.

Although the support that I've gotten from Fabrik has been VERY timely and has usually solved the issue within a day or two, $700/yr is a VERY pricey support contract. I'll probably have to do some serious re-think about how we move ahead with our development in the future because our rates don't generally allow us to pay this much for just one of the extensions we use.

Also, I don't remember getting any reminder notice that my subscription was expiring and I couldn't find any way to look up my subscription history on the site. I definitely need to have those resources available to justify $700/yr.

For now we'll just go month-by-month (and manually try to remember to renew) while we finish out the current project using Fabrik and then determine what is the most cost-effective solution for future development and see if Fabrik fits within our budget.

I just wanted to share that so that you can consider that as you plan for the future of Fabrik. I'm guessing I'm not alone with that.

In the mean time, could you please manually re-activate my professional support subscription?

 

[troester]

I can see you with "Professional" level.
Did you try to log out, clear browser cache and log in again?

 

[cheesegrits]

You should be able to access the Pro forum again.

You invoice history should be at:

http://fabrikar.com/you/my-subscription

The reason you didn't get a reminder was a bug I discovered a couple of weeks ago in our subs expiration code, which was causing about 1/3rd of our subs to get "wedged", and never expire, and never get reminded. You were one of those. So you paid back in April, then got 6 months of free Pro support.

As for the cost, a Pro sub pays for about an hour of my time, as we discussed in this thread:

http://fabrikar.com/forums/index.ph...x-where-not-working-on-repeated-groups.46363/

So I'm not entirely sure what to say. If you thought an hour a month of my time was $70 a year, or $5.83 a month ... providing on-site support for a very complex application, assistance with custom coding, fast tracking bug fixes often with next-day turnaround, plus maintaining and developing Fabrik ... well, I'm kind of speechless, to be honest.

-- hugh

 

[nrsmoll]

I didn't receive a reminder email.
I also need my subscription to activate. However, I am receiving pro service (just not allowed to post in the pro forum) just posting in the community forums, so it doesn't bother me.

 

[cheesegrits]

@nrsmoll - you should be able to post now.

I've got the expiration and reminder code pulled apart at the moment, running manually, with the email disabled until I'm sure I've got a handle on the issue. I figure people will work out that their sub is expired when they can't post.

-- hugh

 

[chris.paschen]

(Sorry for not responding sooner ... I've been out due to a death in the family)

Just an FYI .. I am NOT AT ALL questioning the value of your assistance. You have provided GREAT support; however, in comparison to other extensions that are similarly complexe (ie. Community Builder), the 'real' subscription cost of CB (after the almost always discounts that they offer) is significantly less.
I guess the best solution (to make it feasible for us users and worth your time) would be to split the levels out and have a PRO level subscription that provides fast turn-around on questions specific to the Fabrik extension (i.e. how does this field work, how do you configure this specific element to do this, etc.) at a someone lower price. Then have an DEVELOPER level that provides direct help with specific user issues.

The concern is that more than 1/2 of the issues I've run into are specific limitations (or 'quirks') with Fabrik (or things that aren't documented), and it seems a bit much to ask to pay for that. But I will for now because I need to have that type of support at this time.

BTW ... I want to give kudos to you for keeping the support 'system' of Fabrik in a forum. This allows me to 'solve' probably 50% or more of my issues just by looking at other users problems that you have solved. Too many extension developers are going to 'closed' support ticket systems. This just makes more work for them, and ends up taking longer for me to get solutions.

Please take this as just 'suggestions'. I know the Joomla extension dev. world can be a very un-rewarding experience at times. Fabrik is still up there with the best support for a very good extension that can't be duplicated anywhere else. [I really need to post a glowing review on the JED when I can find my login info! ]

 

[cheesegrits]

however, in comparison to other extensions that are similarly complexe (ie. Community Builder), the 'real' subscription cost of CB (after the almost always discounts that they offer) is significantly less.

Absolutely no disrespect to CB, but it is nowhere close to being as complex as Fabrik, by an order of magnitude. Last time I was seriously using CB, it took me about a week to get the entire codebase straight in my head. from a standing start, and be able to track and fix bugs instantly.

Think of it this way - you could build a CB lookalike in Fabrik (and I have, several times), and then extend it to do anything else you want. Just the core install of Fabrik has more plugins than CB - and last time I checked, CB charges for all but 2. Fabrik has about 30 in the core, with an additional 100 optional, to CB's 25 or so total, and all of Fabrik's are open source. And some of Fabrik's plugins are as complex as a lot of fully fledged extensions. Take a look at the Calendar or Google Maps viz code some time, that have their own MVC structure.

The concern is that more than 1/2 of the issues I've run into are specific limitations (or 'quirks') with Fabrik (or things that aren't documented), and it seems a bit much to ask to pay for that.

I hear that a lot - "it's a bug in Fabrik so why don't you just fix it for me for free, now?". To which the answer is ... sure, I'll put it in the issues queue, and depending on the severity and impact it'll get dealt with some time between tomorrow and never, with low impact (don't affect a lot of people), low severity issues tending towards "never" ... unless someone who is paying for support needs the same issue fixed.

Fabrik is open source. Bugs and all. It's a toolkit you can use, to save time building your applications in J!. For a typical application, it saves time at somewhere between 30 and 40 to 1. So what would take 40 hours to code from scratch will take an hour in Fabrik. If that means paying for about an hour of time a month to get solutions fast tracked, it's still a huge win.

So another way to look at it - let's say you are building a car from scratch, and you borrow a massive, comprehensive toolkit from me to use, with everything from TIG welders and engine hoists to sockets sets and feeler guages. Some of the tools may be broken in some way. Would you expect me to invest time and money to fix or improve the tools for your project, for free? Would you see it as a "concern" if there was a 12mm socket missing, and I didn't immediately give you one?

And to extend that metaphor to CB ... with CB you are getting a ready-built vehicle, that does a handful of very specific things very well. With Fabrik, you are getting a toolkit to build a vehicle to your exact specifications. With support, you are getting the expertise to help you use the toolkit, and fast track any fixes to the toolkit itself.

-- hugh

 

[chris.paschen]

Just an update ... CB has been adding a TON of new (and some very complex) features - even some that do similar things to Fabric (although not quite as 'thoroughly' as fabrik). And if you pay their developer annual support you get all of those included. And they tend to do one big 'package' with lots of different functionality (i.e. their 'auto actions' plugin that allows you to do almost anything, triggered at the core level).

And I'm not at all questioning your 'tools' and the value of them. I'm just pointing out that a lot of times all I need is some more advanced (or updated) documentation to resolve the 'issue' that I have in fabrik. I can't begin to count the number of times I've raised an issue here and the only 'problem' was me not understanding how things worked.

PLEASE know that I'm not being critical of you or any part of Fabrik. I think you are one of the last 'good' Joomla extension (keeping the original 'culture' and open source 'mentality') around. Too many others have adopted a 'we don't care about you ... we just want your money' approach (and many of them are now gone).

My intention here is just to suggest possible ways to make Fabrik even better.

Probably the 2 things that jump to my mind ... possibly offering a 1-year or 6-month subscription with a modest discount; and some way to 'encourage' people (like me) to actually update the docs as we have issues resolved (because I do know that your time is best spent actually solving problems, not just writing documentation). I'm not sure what might actually 'encourage' me to do that. I've been around the Joomla Docs team enough to know that is a problem there also (getting people to update the official docs). Maybe for every doc created you get $1 off you next month's subscription (although that probably would be nightmare to manage - unless it could be automated somehow). Maybe someone else here has better ideas.

Again, just wanting to help improve if possible.

BTW ... I think I might be doing a Fabrik Demo Session at our JUG sometime in the near future.