I don't remember any of those problems.burt wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2026 8:24 am 1. Download and Disappear - People paid, downloaded, stayed for a few weeks, then cancelled. The code they downloaded doesn't vanish when the payment stops - doesn't matter if it's monthly or yearly, that's a one-off download problem, not a billing issue.
2. Support Drain - More addons bundled in meant a significant increase in support requests. Support takes time. I know I don't have the spare time for a bigger version of the same ask.
3. Double Standard Phoenix - A number of you told us it felt like we'd built two separate software packages and that you were on the "inferior" version and how unfair it was and blah. You were right; I just don't tend to bring it up.
1. We charged up front. So if someone downloaded, cancelled, and disappeared, they still paid.
2. I don't remember more support requests. Except in that we had a forum where people paid to participate and I answered questions. I don't recall that forum as overly onerous. It's possible that heatherbell was getting support requests that I never saw.
3. People didn't say that to me. And I would point out that that's a problem whenever there are paid and unpaid modules. People who have paid modules have the right to expect better support than people who don't pay for their modules. There was no difference in how core was supported for the two groups (the same core was used for both). Except in that the people who were paying for support got more support when asking questions. The service for which they were paying.
The first two feel like you are describing the way things worked when we were on the other forums. When we had the VIP forum here, we didn't have those problems. Of course, at that time, we had a store owner helping manage the business issues, like billing support. We don't have that now.
Pro wasn't "superior" to core. Pro was simply additional modules not directly available for core. Pro had the same core. Just more features.
Part of the problem here is that the only volunteers are developers. However, for a thriving community, we need people to do things other than development tasks. Like coordinating volunteers. Or raising financing. Or making business plans. Or deleting spam from the forums. Or responding when people say that they're having trouble using the add-ons area. Or answering the easy questions in the forums.
One of the things mentioned is having an area where add-ons could be one-click purchased and installed. To do that, I need root on a cPanel server. Or root on a server with a cPanel alternative and access to the same kind of resources as available for cPanel (e.g. API documentation). I could then build that into the panel. And that's the essential problem. I can produce a technical solution to that problem. But raising financing is a business problem and no one's volunteering to do that. We even had someone volunteer to finance it, but he wanted to finance a business plan not just a technical solution. Since the business volunteer didn't want to write that business plan, it never got off the ground.
We have development donations. Those are easy to find. What we really need are financial or business donations. Or exchanges even, although the project simply isn't big enough for exchanges to finance the project. Every time anyone proposes an exchange, someone else says that it would cost too much in support. So exchanges are entirely individual. Someone pays a developer. Not someone paying the project.
) and they will explore the possibilities of Phoenix in conjunction with AI ... and we all know exactly because Core code of Phoenix is so profoundly good - anything is possible without touching Core (off topic - I found a way to even not use / add hooks).
Heather.