@bea ,
First, thank you for acknowledging that Fabrik is a great tool and that people like
@cheesegrits ,
@troester , Rob, and many others have done a fantastic job over the years of building and supporting it. And, I sincerely appreciate you being polite and civil in your post, though I do understand you have frustrations. Let me first give a little background, then address the current situation.
My company started using Fabrik 6 or 7 years ago to deliver robust and rapidly-built applications for our clients. We were Professional subscribers to Fabrik, but realized that all of our questions were custom, or 95% were, so we knew that our $60 EURO a month didn’t begin to cover the time it would take to help us. So, we simply hired the guys to do the work hourly on top of our subscription payment. I loved Fabrik so much that I spoke about it at conferences spreading the word about this great tool, becoming known in the Joomla and PHP community as “The Fabrik Girl.”
And while we were doing well with Fabrik projects, “The Fabrik Guys” were struggling to make ends meet, because the subscription model wasn’t profitable at all. Unlike supporting a calendar extension that has a single focus, Fabrik is quite the opposite. It is a multi-tool that you can use to do a multitude of very different projects, but with that wide capability it means that the support questions are all over the map and much more time-consuming and complex. So, it was not surprising when we heard that Rob was looking for employment elsewhere, and Fabrik was in jeopardy of being abandoned, as Hugh wasn’t going to try and do it on his own. It was at this point they approached us and wanted to know if we would like to buy the copyright to Fabrik and take over the continuing development. Of course we agreed, but only if Hugh would be working with us because his dedication to and knowledge of Fabrik is irreplaceable.
So, that is when we stepped in and started really looking at the numbers on the subscriptions. Let me just say, I don’t know how Rob and Hugh did it as long as they did for the community, because the subscriptions didn’t bring in enough money to pay ¼ of one person’s salary. In spite of that, we kept the subscriptions going for over a year after we took over, even though it was a money losing situation, and had planned to close them down when we launched the new site in the new year. However, our old site was hacked and taken down, forcing us into the new site a couple of months sooner than anticipated, hence having to end the subscriptions earlier than start of the new year with little warning. We left the forums open until all monthly subscriptions had expired. And then we literally only had 3 people that were annual subscribers, and they were given hours of support to make up for the remainder of their subscription.
During this same time and since, we have been doing many large-scale client Fabrik projects that have funded many new enhancements and plugins for Fabrik that have gone into the open source code base for all to use. Also because of this work, we were able to bring on a part-time developer in November who is solely focused on Joomla 4 / Fabrik 4, and I’m happy to report that we have Fabrik 4 ready to the latest Alpha of Joomla 4. So, when J4 hits, we will be ready with Fabrik 4 for everyone.
We have started testing both monthly subscriptions and buckets of hours with a couple of professional clients, such as agencies using Fabrik for their clients, to see if that would be a good move forward for a professional level support. These subscriptions have a minimum of 5 hours per month, and the buckets have a minimum of 5 hours. Depending on the needs of the clients, one or the other of these two options seem to cover it all. We have had pretty good feedback so far, so that is something that we will be announcing in more detail and making them available on the site in the next few months.
Also, we want to acknowledge and thank our forum experts that have continued to help community members, especially when we were swamped with work and unable to contribute in timely manners on the forums. They not only give their time and knowledge away to the community, but they alert us to issues and help us test when new releases are launching. These core experts are also part of our advanced Slack user group and contribute there as well with insights and advice.
As far as smaller support options, we are honestly still trying to figure out the best way to offer this and be able to maintain it effectively. Again, the problem with forum support for Fabrik is that it’s not a single use kind of extension; and therefore, 90% of questions are not about Fabrik functionality, but more about Fabrik in a particular usage. So, most inquiries require digging into the client site to see what is going on in that environment or understanding the functionality that the person is trying to achieve with Fabrik, which just takes time. One option that we are thinking about offering is a 2-hour paid assessment of a site issue for $200 USD. If the issue can be fixed in that window of time then we would assess and fix with approval, otherwise we would provide an estimate of how many hours over the initial 2 hours it will take to resolve the issue. So, I ask you, and others in the community, would this 2-hour assessment be something you would use for support?
We are open to any other ideas on how we can offer support that would be a win/win situation, so if you have any, please PM us.
We apologize if your Ask an Expert went unanswered, we had a glitch in the notifications, and by the time we realized it, many were old. We also have been short-handed, but I will personally go and find yours and make sure it’s answered.
And, lastly, as I just mentioned, we are short-handed, so if you or someone you know have development skills, we are looking for a Joomla/PHP/Fabrik developer to bring on the team if they are the right fit.
I hope this post has answered your questions, but please feel free to ping me if not.
Sincerely,
Robbie & Your Fabrik Team