Vcize

Customer
Are the footer links back to DBTech only for the free versions of the mods? Do the pro versions remove the footer links?

I'm interested in buying the pro versions of several mods for several forums but there's no way I'm wasting 8 outbound links off of every page of my sites on a mod I'm already paying for.
 
The back links to DBTech exist in the Pro version as well, unless Branding Free is paid for in addition.

The Hivelocity links do vanish with Pro, though :)
 
So for branding free we need to add $75 to each and every mod for each and every forum?

Ugh, looks like I'll be finding alternatives...
 
When you're paying for Pro, you're paying for the extra features and extra development time those features took to create :)

If we had no back links in our Pro versions, we would not be able to support them as we do (both here on the forums and via updates), as the lack of word-of-mouth would mean we couldn't make DBTech our full time jobs.


You are of course free to seek out alternatives :)
 
So the answer then is yes, it would be $75 for each mod for each site?

I understand the need to make money and spread the word, and I completely respect that, but this seems like double, triple, quadruple, even octuple dipping.

If a user wants to run 5 of your mods on 5 of their sites expecting them to either put 10 links back to you guys on each of their 5 sites (50 links total!) or pay 75 x 5 x 5 ($1,875) just to remove the links is a bit absurd. You should allow the user to condense the footer down to one line/link and/or allow them to pay $75 per SITE (not per mod) to remove the branding.

Just my $.02.
 
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So the answer then is yes, it would be $75 for each mod for each site?

I understand the need to make money and spread the word, and I completely respect that, but this seems like double, triple, quadruple, even octuple dipping.

If a user wants to run 5 of your mods on 5 of their sites expecting them to either put 10 links back to you guys on each of their 5 sites (50 links total!) or pay 75 x 5 x 5 ($1,875) just to remove the links is a bit absurd. You should allow the user to condense the footer down to one line/link and/or allow them to pay $75 per SITE (not per mod) to remove the branding.

Just my $.02.

Hi there,

Thanks for the feedback - I'm happy to explain the reasons behind the current branding free pricing.

Contrary to what you have said branding free being automatic with paid software is NOT industry standard with message board systems and professional addons. vBulletin, IPB, PHPBB etc all still have branding after purchase and require a separate branding free license to remove it. Equally *professional* software companies developing for these platforms have the same requirement (see vBSEO for instance). There are some hobbyists who sell their work and include branding free as part of the sale - however if you can find me, say, 3 of these companies who have been in business uninterrupted for over 2 years I will be very surprised. Take a look at the amount of activity on forumcoding.com, vbcredits.com or vbplaza.com for instance to see the difference between these hobbyists and actual businesses.

Your calculations are also out quite a bit as people purchasing that many licenses of any kind would receive an automatic discount - at those figures it would be the automatic maximum of 35%, and we also happily offer further discounts to our biggest customers.

The problem with recommendations from people not actually in the software development/publishing industry is they very much do not understand all of the facets involved. Here at DBTech for instance the vast majority of the income goes to the coders of the individual modification - including the branding free. If we were to scrap this and create a flat fee for websites those coders would be unable to make a living as they would be receiving less money. Coders not making enough money is exactly why our former "competitors" are out of business.

Essentially while it would be great if we could afford to reduce our prices so everyone could afford our work the company would quickly cease to exist if we did. By all means if there is an example of a vBulletin coding company which sells its work at the prices you are quoting and supports as many people as DBTech does *please* show me so i can look at ways to amend the DBTech business plan. Unfortunately I have never seen anything even approaching that, and i have looked :(

Cosmic
 
Also if i'm right in saying the branding only appears once on your forums and not for every mod you've installed so your only going to see one link to DB-Tech (unless otherwise stated) per page so its not that bad, plus the guys here do a fantastic job in supporting their customers so a little link on your site for their full support is well worth it in my opinion.
 
That is incorrect, each mod has its own branding and link. However, they mostly stick to their own pages (so vbshop.php for vBShop, etc) with a few exceptions; for example InfoPanels on forumhome, vBO and vBCredits globally.
 
vBulletin, IPB, PHPBB etc all still have branding after purchase and require a separate branding free license to remove it. Equally *professional* software companies developing for these platforms have the same requirement (see vBSEO for instance)

They all do exactly what I'm suggesting you guys do, one link to encapsulate everything on one or two lines.

Vbulletin doesn't put five separate links in our footer that say stuff like:

Private messaging brought to you by vBulletin
Social Groups courtesy of vBulletin
Photo albums are a vBulletin product
Friends lists made by vBulletin
User Profiles created on the vBulletin platform

Even PHPBB, which is FREE, only asks for 1 link. Asking for 10 links or 5 separate branding fees ON THE SAME SITE is absurd. I have never, ever, ever seen anything like that before in any aspect of business.

The problem with recommendations from people not actually in the software development/publishing industry is they very much do not understand all of the facets involved. Here at DBTech for instance the vast majority of the income goes to the coders of the individual modification - including the branding free. If we were to scrap this and create a flat fee for websites those coders would be unable to make a living as they would be receiving less money.

You're misunderstanding my point. I'm not saying the coders should make less money, I'm saying they probably DO make less money because of this insane idea of separating out separate links and branding fees for each product on the same site.

How many people actually pay branding fee x5 if they have 5 mods installed on the same site? You have access to the data and I don't, but I can't imagine that it's very many. Anyone with enough business sense to run a successful forum likely has enough business sense to know that being asked to pay for the same thing 5 times or put a gajillion links in their footer is not something that you want to support.

I'll put it this way. There are two mods that you guys make that really drove me here. When looking through the site, I found 4 others that looked cool. If you were reasonable rather than abusive with your use of the footer I probably would have bought all or most of them. Instead, I'll buy the two, or maybe even just one of them, and pay the $75 branding fee on it.

So, with a reasonable use of the footer (either one link back to dragontech or one branding fee per site) I would have likely ended up paying:

$90 + $85 + $60 + 95 + $100 + $75 (single branding fee) = $505

Instead I'll pay $90 + $75 = $165

Even if I end up buying both of the original mods that's $90 + $85 + $75 +$75 = $325

So to make that extra $75 in double dipping on branding fees your coders lost out on over $250 in sales of additional products. And that's not even counting all the other sites that I would have considered running those things on that are now lost as potential future sales.

I can't imagine I'm the only one that feels this way and has decided against ordering multiple products from you guys to avoid the nightmare footer that you create.

I know this post probably comes off as belligerent but that isn't the intent. You guys run a good ship, other than this one bizarre thing. I really believe that it's something that ultimately affects you guys as much as it does me. I really feel like I'm in bizarro world right now. It just boggles my mind that this is set up this way. It never even crossed my mind that this is how things would be run until I happened across someone's thread that was complaining about the bevy of links in their footer. I just assumed that it would only be one link or one branding fee.

Also if i'm right in saying the branding only appears once on your forums and not for every mod you've installed so your only going to see one link to DB-Tech (unless otherwise stated) per page so its not that bad, plus the guys here do a fantastic job in supporting their customers so a little link on your site for their full support is well worth it in my opinion.

You would think that's how it works, since that's basically how every other company on the face of the planet operates. But that is in fact incorrect. If you use multiple mods you end up with the mess that this guy has.
 
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When users, purchase multiple things, @Cosmic , already has a discount system set up when you purchase in bulk, or customer loyalty.

If I follow the Discount available for what you stated:

$90 + $85 + $60 + 95 + $100 + $75 (single branding fee) = $505

Instead I'll pay $90 + $75 = $165

$90 + $85 + $60 + 95 + $100 = $430

$75 x 5 = $375

$430 + $375 = $805.00

$805 at a 35% discount I believe comes to $281.75 off

$805 - 281.75 = 523.25 which is only $18.25 more than you were willing to pay your way

DragonByte Technologies offers 3 different discounts to customers under two types, to help you understand them we've outlined each type below.

Coupon Discounts (Manual)
Coupon Discounts are considered "primary", they can grant x% discount on specific products and will be applied first before any other discounts. You'll require a valid coupon code to apply any coupon discounts.

Bulk Purchase Discounts (Automatic)
Bulk Purchase Discounts are automatically applied to orders, they require 2 conditions to activate:

  • You have atleast 2 items in your cart (or 1 item with a quantity of atleast 2)
  • Your total cart price reaches a target threshold

You'll find the list of target thresholds at the bottom of the page to see how much discount you can get through Bulk Purchase.

Customer Loyalty Discounts (Automatic)
Customer Loyalty Discounts are automatically applied to orders, they require 2 conditions to activate:

  • You have purchased 1 or more items previously
  • The total amount you've spent previously reaches a target threshold

You'll find the list of target thresholds at the bottom of the page to see how much discount you can get through Customer Loyalty.


How Discounts Apply

We have 2 types of discounts: Manual and Automatic. These two types do not stack together but do individually, consider the following scenario:

  • Coupon for all products with 10% discount (assuming the coupon is stackable)
  • Coupon for all products with 5% discount (assuming the coupon is stackable)
  • Bulk Purchase target reached for 10% discount
  • Customer Loyalty target reached for 10% discount

With those conditions, your order would be discounted twice based on the type:

  • Each specific product that has a coupon discount has the total stacked coupon discount applied, in this case 15%.
  • Total order price is then discounted by 20% (Bulk Purchase + Loyalty)

As shown, Manual and Automatic discounts do not stack otherwise the overall discount would be 35%, instead the price is reduced by 15% then that price is reduced by 20%.
Additionally, Automatic Discounts cannot grow above a 50% discount.




Bulk Purchase Discounts Available

Threshold (US $)
Discount

$100.00 5%


$200.00 10%


$250.00 15%


$300.00 20%


$500.00 35%



Customer Loyalty Discounts Available

Threshold (US $)
Discount

$100.00 2.5%


$150.00 5%


$200.00 7.5%


$250.00 10%


$300.00 12.5%


$350.00 15%


$400.00 17.5%


$450.00 20%


$500.00 22.5%


$550.00 25%


$600.00 27.5%


$650.00 30%


$700.00 35%
 
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They all do exactly what I'm suggesting you guys do, one link to encapsulate everything on one or two lines.

Vbulletin doesn't put five separate links in our footer that say stuff like:

Private messaging brought to you by vBulletin
Social Groups courtesy of vBulletin
Photo albums are a vBulletin product
Friends lists made by vBulletin
User Profiles created on the vBulletin platform

Even PHPBB, which is FREE, only asks for 1 link. Asking for 10 links or 5 separate branding fees ON THE SAME SITE is absurd. I have never, ever, ever seen anything like that before in any aspect of business.



You're misunderstanding my point. I'm not saying the coders should make less money, I'm saying they probably DO make less money because of this insane idea of separating out separate links and branding fees for each product on the same site.

How many people actually pay branding fee x5 if they have 5 mods installed on the same site? You have access to the data and I don't, but I can't imagine that it's very many. Anyone with enough business sense to run a successful forum likely has enough business sense to know that being asked to pay for the same thing 5 times or put a gajillion links in their footer is not something that you want to support.

I'll put it this way. There are two mods that you guys make that really drove me here. When looking through the site, I found 4 others that looked cool. If you were reasonable rather than abusive with your use of the footer I probably would have bought all or most of them. Instead, I'll buy the two, or maybe even just one of them, and pay the $75 branding fee on it.

So, with a reasonable use of the footer (either one link back to dragontech or one branding fee per site) I would have likely ended up paying:

$90 + $85 + $60 + 95 + $100 + $75 (single branding fee) = $505

Instead I'll pay $90 + $75 = $165

Even if I end up buying both of the original mods that's $90 + $85 + $75 +$75 = $325

So to make that extra $75 in double dipping on branding fees your coders lost out on over $250 in sales of additional products. And that's not even counting all the other sites that I would have considered running those things on that are now lost as potential future sales.

I can't imagine I'm the only one that feels this way and has decided against ordering multiple products from you guys to avoid the nightmare footer that you create.

I know this post probably comes off as belligerent but that isn't the intent. You guys run a good ship, other than this one bizarre thing. I really believe that it's something that ultimately affects you guys as much as it does me. I really feel like I'm in bizarro world right now. It just boggles my mind that this is set up this way. It never even crossed my mind that this is how things would be run until I happened across someone's thread that was complaining about the bevy of links in their footer. I just assumed that it would only be one link or one branding fee.



You would think that's how it works, since that's basically how every other company on the face of the planet operates. But that is in fact incorrect. If you use multiple mods you end up with the mess that this guy has.

Ozzy done a great job above showing how your analysis of the cost was incorrect. What you said you would be willing to pay is, in fact, almost exactly what you WOULD pay. You would actually be charged less as generally customers buying multiple branding free licenses will contact me first and receive an additional discount.

As far as the length of the copyright footer etc goes, thats something we are looking into resolving - the multiple links (which i believe was your complaint) would still be there though - you can see from the thread you linked to that even though we haven't released our official update for people running multiple mods that we are, even now, more than happy to work with customers to improve the aesthetics of the footer on their site.

The companies you mentioned (vBSEO, vBulletin etc) only have one link because they only sell one product - we do not have "realtime chatting by Dragonbyte technologies, Shoutbox PMs by dragonbyte technologies, AJAX thread reply updates by dragonbyte technologies" etc, because those are all feature of one product - just like PMs, posts etc are all features of one vbulletin product. Your analogy is extremely flawed for that reason.

As far as i am aware there is no company even close to our size which does not add a branding link for each individual product as standard. Do you have any examples of companies which sell multiple products who do this? I would genuinely like to know as I try to research the business models of every company in a similar situation to us to work out what things we could be doing to be more successful.

For the record there are quite a few customers who have purchased branding free for multiple modifications - as a general rule people running large, commercially viable sites are used to purchasing branding removal for any software they run on those sites. We are also more than happy to work with customers to tailor things like copyright to their specific needs where possible.

Generally our larger customers are complimentary towards the company and our pricing structures, it is almost always the owners of smaller community sites who don't really understand what it takes to run a profitable business who have "advice" for us, rather than sites with high 5 or 6 figure turnovers.

I apologise if this post comes across as combative in any way, I am just trying to explain the reasoning behind the decision, and why your assumptions on the reality of the situation is incorrect (e.g the total price, that successful sites won't purchase multiple branding free licenses etc). I can say that the income from our current branding free license setup is almost certainly higher than if it was a one-site branding free license - the VAST majority of our customers buy more than one product. In addition we would then have to pay a significant amount of money out for advertising to account for the lost links. It's just not a financially viable proposition.

If you were correct in your assumptions then we wouldn't still be in business, essentially - if everyone felt the way you do, no one would buy from us. The fact we are one of, if not the, most successful software development and publishing team for vBulletin suggests that's not the case. It can be hard for owners of smaller sites to understand the pricing structure because they do not consider the attitudes of *large* sites - they assume everyone feels the way they do. Most of our products are designed to add value to a site, or to directly save money (e.g vBOptimise). Commercially viable sites understand this and understand the need to speculate in order to accumulate. For them our pricing structure is a bargain as the value it adds for each user is significantly more than the cost of a license. For small sites that may not be the case though, which is where you get this misunderstanding.

Hopefully that helps explain things a little better.

Cosmic
 
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