Price changes is killing my business

Good day to all of you 

www.sitefinity.com/purchase

Standard Edition going up from 1'999.- to 2'999 USD just took me out of the market with SF as an CMS. But in the end all things are to ones best. Every change is a chance as well.

Markus

Same here, I guess I should expect every few years a thousand dollar price increase for the same features. 5 subdomains? those should be free anyway, Mobile option should be kept an add-on, simple media queries can achieve the basically the same thing. Seems like the Standard Edition may go the way of the Small Business edition. Time to research a new CMS for my clients, which is a shame because I really liked Sitefinity.

What do we get extra for that extra $1000? I assume there are features moving from Professional to Standard now?

Dear Arno

- Basicly you get the mobile stuff forced on - if your clients need it or not
- And you get a limitation to 5 subdomins

One time cost up is not even the worst thing but having to pay now 1000 USD a year to get new stuff my clients don't need and no old stuff fixed or expanded - that what really hurts.

Markus

Hey, remember when they said they wouldn't limit subdomains...we were just needing to register them for data gathering :)

Quote from Ivan Osmak:
<quote>
Guys, it's not about licensing. We need to get the handle on usage for various reasons. No pricing increases planned nor we want to use this data to explore that possibility. We'll try to figure out how to make registrations simpler; perhaps self service from my account.
</quote>

Reference: plus.google.com/.../KNd63oTu7LL

Hi Markus,

Hmm, in my case I don't need either of those. So if that's all we get for the extra money it's pretty bad. I would at least expect to get speedy bug fix guarantees for example. That would make the product so much better that it might be worth this kind of money. But if all else stays the same I don't get it. Let's wait for Telerik's explanation. I expect them to "deliver more than expected".

"Marketing" is killing sitefinity...just one thing after another

@Arno
Did you also notice they're REMOVING A/B testing on campaigns just for the hell of it?

Yes I did Steve. I'm not using that either, but all in all it currently seems as if there's no net benefit. Just an aggressive price increase. I'm curious what Telerik's going to tell/offer us. It's been less than 3 years since Standard went up from $899 to $1999 so for me it's impossible to just get more money from us again and offer nothing in return. I actually want "more than expected" this time.

But let's wait for the total picture. The renewal prices haven't even been updated yet so this is all very fresh.

@Arno well lets be realistic here...it's likely just marketing hasn't finished creating\editing the page yet.

So... do existing SE licenses get free access to Mobile after Dec-6, or do they need to still pony up with another US$1K ?

Sort of reminds me a bit of my days when I worked as a dev for a software company (in the way-back days - think VAX-VMS etc) and we had a couple of big customers, with deep-ish pockets, who basically shaped the product we then tried to sell to everyone else. We coded into the "product" features that only those big customers could actually find a use for, but then tried to re-coup the cost from other customers because we'd done the development work too cheap... and of course, that never was going to work because nobody wants to pay for features they'll never use... "Look, it comes with software for managing drug inventories" ..."but I run a flower shop!"

Yes, that's a familiar situation. Companies try it over and over again and it always results in scaring more customers away than they actually win. Sales people have to explain something that's just not fair.

I think the solution for Sitefinity is to create a much more granular price model. Just pay per module/feature. Currently they only allow that for some features like Ecommerce and Professional support. If we outgrow the 10000 newsletter subscribers included with the Standard edition it costs $7k to get more. That's not an option for us so we would create a solution ourselves or move to a different CMS. A granular price model with reasonable prices would prevent that and allows customers of all sizes to use Sitefinity.

It's a mistake to publish a new price list just before the weekend and not include the explanation which I suppose exists somehow. Right now I am stuck with two thoughts:
- We're forced to pay a lot more and we're not getting anything in return;
- What about the plans to fix all confirmed bugs within a reasonable timeframe, as a standard procedure? Perhaps put that in place first and then consider a moderate price increase? Is that a really crazy thought?

@Telerik,

While it's great to see you're going to take a dependency on 'Mobile' which explains the $1000 price increase on standard edition, could you explain why the 'professional' gets double the price hike?

Glancing over the feature list, the difference between 'standard' and 'professional' seem to be
- 5 additional concurrent cms users
- 15.000 additional email subscribers
- custom workflows.

And purchasable add-on:
- Ecommerce (+$1999)
- Load balancing ($999)
- 24h. support ($999)

That's $4000 of extra features with a difference of $7000.
Custom Workflows and the +5 users/+15.000 subscribers aren't purchasable, yet there seems no obvious reason for the $2000 price increase in 'Professional' where as the $1000 in 'standard' is explainable.


At first glance standard will most likely become the new 'most popular' edition.
Surely the $1000/$2000 price-increase isn't aimed at bringing in $6000 less revenue on average sell?  

After all, if E-commerce wasn't needed, the standard-license at $2999 with professional support ($999) and load-balancing ($999) add-on would cost half that of the professional edition.

That leaves a $5000 gap for the additional 5 concurrent users with workflows - a $1000 per user difference.

---
I understand that 'professional' allows for certain add-ons that 'standard' doesn't like the connectors for Marketo & Salesforce or content-personalization, but that's all optional - not out-of-the-box.

The professional edition at first glance only seems a favorable option if you'd like to purchase two standard editions or if you're scaling beyond 4 production servers.

After all you could buy two standard editions and get 2 domains, 4 production servers, 10 users and 20.000 email subscribers for the same licence price. Only then the +5.000 extra subscribers, and the possibility for optional add-ons become a valid factor in the decision process.

@MB dollars to donuts everyone will get mobile, but then have their renewal fees increase to reflect that.

@Telerik: We'll, you are giving me a hard time with this announcement.
I'm sure it is all for a good reason. From your perspective.

It is pretty hard as an MVP, Certified Developer, free-time evangelist and product enthusiast, to go with you in this decision. It is my job (at least as I try), to convince people to use your excellent product. I like to do it, but it's not easy, especially in Europe, where it is more difficult to have clients pay for a non-open source system.

I truly don't see how I can sell this in future. Again, if you take us (your volunteering evangelists and MVP's) serious, please let's open the discussion and be open to reasonable questions and have courage to adjust to them?

Thanks,
Daniel

@Arno : "I think the solution for Sitefinity is to create a much more granular price model. "

Yes, I've said that ever since 4.0 - but Telerik obviously don't agree - as is their right, of course.

I've built a number of sites with SF, and typically only use Pages, Page Templates, Content-Blocks, Libraries, Module-Builder and whatever I then develop for that lot. The Modules admin page normally only has a few items enabled, everything else is either disabled or not installed. I've never had a customer want a Forum or Blogs or Events and only a couple who wanted to do News, RSS feeds and Email campaigns - most just want the basics of Pages.

All of my customers buy their own license (I don't like selling turn-key solutions, as I hate doing site admin) and all have been very reluctant to do so, because they see how little of the product they actually require, and I always get pushed to use an alternative... which I've had to do on an increasing number of occasions.

I realize that there are some things that need to be in a base package, and that my own minimalist needs might be unusual, but I still feel that a more modular approach to the product, and adding features and capacity via feature/capacity keys, would make Sitefinity a more flexible product that could appeal to a much wider market than the current approach where each version is prohibitively expensive to a majority of potential customers.

Yes, I imagine they will up the Small Business edition, (or just drop it), as well.
I have some 25 Sitefinity sites I run and develop now. But I think this will be the end for me now.

Hi guys,

Let me address some of the points raised on this thread.

Limitation of 5 subdomains - Ivan was absolutely honest when we he said that we have no intention of limiting subdomains when he said that. We really didn't have this intention but since then we found out that a group of clients and partners are spinning off many dozens of subdomains with a single license and most are separate sites, often deployed as separate installations. There are two issies with that: 1) separate instances means each has a 5 user limitation which is an abuse of the concurrent user limitation of our licensing and 2) these are dozens of websites being launched with a single license so the support we have for them is very disproportional to the license cost. With the 5 subdomains limitation we're introducing a fair usage clause to address those cases. Please keep in mind that internal(development, staging, etc.) environments are not limited and this applies to live production subdomains only.

Standard Edition price raised to $2,999 - as someone noted on the thread this is because the mobile web add-on is now included in the Standard Edition. Close to half of all Standard Edition licenses are purchased with a mobile web add-on which supported our decision to bundle this add-on with the license. Most if not all of the pople on this thread are partners with a 20%-30% discount so the cost for you guys is certainly not the list price. As for subscription renewals - they are optional so if you or your client don't need the new versions than you don't need to pay for maintenance. 

Support - we're working on a patching framework which will enable us to patch bugs in older versions of Sitefinity so partners and clients don't need to upgrade because of bug fixes. Access to this system will be granted to a very small group of partners in December and more will be added gradually untill every every client and partner has access to it. 

Small Business Edition - it has been made exclusive to partners and we plan to keep it that way. The only change there is the 5 production subdomain limitation which applies to all license editions for the reasons mentioned above. 

Thanks,
Martin Kirov

Dear Martin

Thanks first for your time and feedback.

Limitation of 5 subdomains
a) if there are partners that do wrong
     - kick them out
     - if you have know-ledge of wrong doing - dont renew the licenses for them untill they corrected
     - don't punish all others 
      - I never had the need for a lot of subdomains so I am not bothered by this

b) Mobile Edition
     - Well if so many buy the add on, why punish us who do not need it

c) Price 20-30 % for partners
    Old 2000 USD  
    New 3000 30% (best case) = 2'100
   So if we pass on all the partner benefits we would still have to charge the client 100 USD more in addition to not getting anything for it.
 Do you know how much some of us give back to you in screencasting, reporting proving bugs
d)  Support
      Who needs bugs to be fixed in an 4.2 version.
     What we need is 4.2 bugs fixed in 6.3 
      
    
e) SBE good to hear - I take it as a given that this will remain until further notice like this. 

As usuall

- I love Sitefinity
- I think Sitefinity has the best usability in any CMS
- I think Telerik has the best support ever AAA best on and of the web
- Sitfinity bug tracking and fixinig is way below anything I would expect
- I would not want to work with any other CMS (untill I am force to do so)
- I don't want KB articles telling me how to work around and then have to do it in every new project. 
   Implement the suff

Markus
    

I agree with Markus.
On top of that: most partners are Gold Partners, so they have 20% discount.

To be honest with you Martin: I don't think you guys get the point of what people are telling here?
It's just a way of kicking the small clients and partners out and continue with the big one, because they give better revenue.

Like Markus said: first make it a product that it is worth the costs of $ 1999,-.
Did you ever tried selling Sitefinity to a mid-size company? Beyond the discussion of prices, you need to have very compelling statements regarding the existing bugs that still are there.

A new customer just has to do a sneak-peak on the forums to know what is really going on, and that makes them wonder. True story. I've had like 4 or 5 customers that actually thought that the CMS might have some serious issues, based on the online community and in the end the price did them decide not to go with Sitefinity.

-Daniel

Hmmm...

"Close to half of all Standard Edition licenses are purchased with a mobile web add-on which supported our decision to bundle this add-on with the license"

A corollary of which might be:

"More than half of all Standard Edition licenses are purchased WITHOUT a mobile web add-on so we've decided to force them to buy it"

Thanks for the feedback guys.

We are selling as many Standard Editions licenses directly as our entire channel of over 300 partners combined so i think we have a good idea about what these clients need and how Sitefinity compares to other products on the market. If you guys don't think Sitefinity is worth $1999 with 1 year of maintenance while this is what most partners charge for services of 1 developer for 2-3 days than we have a difference of opinion on the value of each. No software product is bug-free and with other solutions you'll just encounter different issues. If there was a perfect product there would be no other CMS products on the market and there are over 1000. We know some clients get turned-off after reading some of the forum posts but remember guys that you are very active in those posts so you can't use that argument here  and say that's why your clients chose other options. 

We hear you about the need of poplish in certain areas and this is where we'll spend the majority of our time moving forward. 

Why don't we have a GotoMeeting with the people that are having issues with this?
We did this some time ago regarding the Ecommerce module.

Maybe you can convince us why this price change is justified and you can hear us about what bothers us. Seems fair, since despite the comments we have in a couple of threads like this, the majority of the people in this thread do anything to help Sitefinity and their clients to be successful.

So, let's see who want an open talk about this? What do you think?

-Daniel

No thanks, I'm good.

Mobile across the board is a great move, love it. 
Looking around, pricing is competitive against competition.

And bottom line: my focus is on Sitefinity - not on x budget websites.
Some clients may think the price is to steep, but that's their loss compared to what's out there.

Well... after all Sitefinity became great because of their focus on smaller websites...

Daniel.

You have a good point Jochem - the price and value of the product also speaks about the ecosystem around it. If anyone needs help pitching Sitefinity as a product we'll be happy to help you guys as we've helped other partners win projects with Sitefinity. 

Daniel, we'll be in touch in the next few days to organize a conversation. We did speak with a number of partners before introducing this license change but unfortunately our channel is too big to allow for a personal conversation with everyone.

Martin 

I suspect that I must have misunderstood that post, because it seemed to be suggesting that perhaps if people didn't post so many complaints, then we wouldn't lose customers ... I sure hope I read that wrong,

Bugs are one thing, and every dev expects those. Large chunks of missing basic functionality, that go ignored for years, is a totally other thing, and one which seriously strains the loyalty of the long suffering supporters of Sitefinity.

I suspect that your SME partners would be a whole lot less agro about this price hike if Telerik were taking care of the basics and not ignoring them while adding in functions like Marketo and Salesforce.

Things like a UI for creating/editing metafields on pages... I mean to say... how basic is that? - It has a heap of votes, and yet it's been languishing in PITS for years.

I posted the following on another thread:

tv.telerik.com/.../deep-dive-exploration-sitefinitys-new-module-builder

Fast-Forward to 38:00, where the intended future capabilities of the Dynamic Module builder were outlined... that was V4.4 - nearly 2 years ago - and it's still essentially the same. I'm really curious what Tim's upcoming webinar will provide... presenting all new features, or just clever ways to work around those missing features.

@Martin
- I am with you 100% that Telerik is free to charge for the product what ever they think is right and the market is willing to pay
- I am with Jochem that everyone going  to use another CMS than Sitefinity did not get the best solution
- I am with Daniel that if you pay 900 USD every year for new versions you should get some value for it
   Most new stuff is with higher editions so what do SB clients get for 900 USD a year - I would expect the same support and quality as the rest of Telerik products get. Bugs that make a feature nearly impossible to use must be fixed within one major release. If you can create new major features in 3 month there should be room for fixing small bugs with big impact as well.

- I must compliment you to allow such upon forums

The bottom line is the following

- Most of us simply love Sitefinity and seem to slowly realize that maybe in the near future we are not able to sell it to our customers anymore because they are not in the right target group.

- We spent so much time with Sitefinity that our hearts really are in this. You don't know how much Sitefintiy is a part of our business. Its not just a CMS. Its the best CMS. And we want our clients to have the best out there. And if you realize you might not be able to provide your clients withthe best anymore it makes you sad.

Markus

Thanks for the feedback guys. We absolutely hear you about the need for polish in existing features and as i noted this is our top priority for 6.3 and 2014(btw custom fields in pages is already in the works and is coming out early next year). Just so you know, the Salesforce and Marketo Connectors took less than 10% of our development capacity between June and October. While it's among the release highlights, this is not where we invested the majority of our time. Oftent times the marketing highlights take a small portion of our development time and that leads to the false perception that we spent the majority of our time on new features. If you look at the release notes of every release there are hundreds of bug fixes but that never gets the spotlight.

Thanks,
Martin

Thanks to everyone here sharing their thoughts. Very interesting. It think it's true that many of us care about the product and don't want to approach the point where it's getting impossible to stick with it.

1. I feel that Mobile being included is all fine, but getting the full price tag along with it while not needing it isn't great at all. After all, a decent approach to designing a site includes creating W3C valid HTML templates INCLUDING responsive design. ONLY THEN I'd pick a CMS and expect it to be able to reproduce those templates. No need to support any mobile features. It's great for non-technical users but not necessary for sites who's design does not rely on the CMS.

2. What is wrong with paying by the module/feature? It would be a much easier decision for me to upgrade that way. The step to Professional is way too much for me currently. You could even allow paying by the module from Standard forward, to prevent selling tiny licenses that you're probably less interested in.

3. Like Markus said, indeed we spend a lot of time reproducing/proving bugs. At least I am. Are there any plans to guarantee fixes of confirmed bugs in a certain time frame? That would make a price increase much easier to digest for me as it would mean a big step forward in product reliability. This is not uncommon for commercial CMS systems! Your support guys and girls are the very best in class but I would like to spend less time talking to them ;-)

I'm an avid fan of SF. I only do SF sites now otherwise I help clients find other developers.
I understood the price upgrades last time but this time....
I still don't understand the need to force the mobile purchase.
(Perhaps its because we can build responsive sites without the need for the mobile addition????)

Also, I would have liked to have been told in advance of the changes rather than finding out via the public forum. (Being a Partner, even if a small one)

Still, I have yet to see the changes in the SB edition. Are there any? That's what I am hanging out to find out.

Darrin

You might have missed this

QUOTE 
Small Business Edition - it has been made exclusive to partners and we plan to keep it that way. The only change there is the 5 production subdomain limitation which applies to all license editions for the reasons mentioned above. 
UNQUOTE

Markus

Thanks Markus, I did miss that.

Just to reiterate this again - the licensing changes take effect on December 6th and until then the current pricing and licensing applies. All licenses purchased until then will remain under the current terms. If some partners happen to need to extend that period please discuss that individually with your partner manager and we may be able to extend the period to the end of this year.

Thanks,
Martin

I'm okay with this now after reading the thread...if you guys will honor existing pending "quotes" we have out at the old price...which it sounds like you will as long as they start before the end of the year or maybe 6.3 release for a special case?

It just sucks when you say "Mobile has the value of $1000" so you give it to us, but take away "A/B" which apparently has no value since the price didn't change at all to reflect that.

I have updated issues to now include Mobile

Yes, we will honor all price quotes and comittments we and you have made until the end of this year and all existing licenses that were sold will not be affect by these changes - just the new ones purchased after the new licensing takes effect.

There's also one thing that is probably not well communicated. So far renewals for additional domains($999 for Standard Edition) were based on the list price of $1999 which means a renewal for an additional domain that cost $999 would be $599(30% of $1,999). We've changed that now so it's 30% of the $999 price which means that subscription renewals on additional domains have been reduced in half from  $599 to $299(from $999 to $459 with the new pricing). We've also made the SharePoint Connector available as an add-on for the Standard Edition when it was previously only for Professional or higher.

Cheers,
Martin

@Martin

Isn't the second domain  50% off the first which would mean that the price as of December would be 1'500 $ for an additional domain.

Then the 30 % would calculate to 450 $ and the price cut would be not that extreme as you mentioned (150 USD) 

Also the price cut would be compensated the second year by the higher initial price. You pay 500 USD more but 150$ less in annual subscription. So this would mean that due to the increased price the higher initial price would take away your mentioned advantage for the next 3 years.

But you are right

Old: 999 USD + 3 * 599 USD = 2'796 USD for 3 years additional domain
New: 1'500 USD + 3 * 450 USD = 2850 USD for 3 years additional domain
New if 999 USD + 3 * 299 USD = 1896 USD for 3 years additional doman

So indead the extra domains did not get any price hike which is nice if you need them.

This is of course only true if the future price of second domains are not 999 usd as you mentioned but will be 50% of 2'999.

If the new price for second domains as you mentioned is really 999 USD the we are getting a better deal wich I think is great.

Markus

You guys are going to get a better deal because as part of this licensing change we're also making the partner discounts applicable to additional domains which are discounted at 50% by default. This means that after January 1st the deal for a partner with 20% discount would look like this:

$1,199($1,499-20%)  +3x359($449-20%) = $2,276 for an additional Standard Edition With Mobile Web domain with 1+3 years of maintenance.

Martin

@Martin

Thanks for streightening this out.

Markus

I'm getting conflicting information about Small Business Edition.

[quote]
Small Business Edition - it has been made exclusive to partners and we plan to keep it that way. The only change there is the 5 production subdomain limitation which applies to all license editions for the reasons mentioned above. 
[/quote]

However, when asking my Partner Account Manager about pricing and availability of SBE, he states

[quote]
Unfortunately, with the new licensing policy it was decided to drop the Small Business Edition altogether. Now the lowest licensing tier is the Standard Edition, which now features the Mobile Web Add-on out of the box and is available at $2,999.
[/quote]

Dear Ed

Martin Kirov is the Executive VP of Sitefinity. I wouild expect that he knows what he is talking about and would take his word for it. Maybe your PAM missunderstood you because the SBE is indeed not for sale to the 'public' anymore but can only be aquired through partners.

Markus

Just got the clearification in another thread

When you buy an SE before dec 6th not only the price stays the same but also what you get. 

Its not like a bargin that you buy now you get the mobile included in next updates for older SE version.

So any version you buy for 1'999.- will not have the mobile part added as a benifit automitcally but it can still be bought as an add on later on. So if you have some cash at hand even though you wont get mobile for free it might make sense to stack up on some SE edtions

So we will actually have two different SE version pre and after Dec 6th.

Markus

I totally agree. I have gone from being a Sitefinity advocate to a "let's match a solution with your budget" advocate, which means (as much as I hate them) that open source solutions are back on the table now. In addition, I will be researching other CMS options. If I find a good one, I will post the link... Happy hunting!

Dear Darell

Don't post links to other CMS here. This is Sitefinity only. 

Markus

Just received a phone call from a partner who we do a lot of sitefinity work for querying the price of the licence and i said i would have to get back to them.  On review i am not sure what i am actually getting for the extra $1000 apart from features that are not required.

I understand mobile is a big thing at the moment (and the suite is impressive), but on the mobile side of things we don't use them, we have never used, its easy to build responsive websites without them, the term has been hijacked by your marketing guys to mean something that it isn't(serving different content pages to different devices is not responsive design) so in this instance you are basically telling your customers that some people buy this module, now you all have to buy it, required or not.

I have no problems with prices going up, that is part of the course, but to sling in components that you had as an optional item and forcing your customers and partners to lump that in is not correct, you guys actually had it right before when it was modular, and if you wanted to charge me and extra $100/$200 for the privilege i wouldn't really have minded, but this is the wrong way to go.  We are in a little bit of a pickle now, as we are very invested in Sitefinity, but we work on small margins as it is, to force components on us that we are capable of delivering ourselves as part of our general workflow because we know what we are doing is a massive kick in the teeth.

As you have said many times, you consult the customer base on this, but i would like to know who you actually contact and speak to, as a partner (small i grant you) we have never been spoken too, becauseas a small guy and i assume many of your direct customers who stuck with you from v3 to the v4 release are going to be small i am sure they would have raised this as a concern for you.

Dear Robert

a) I am a small business partner with lots of small business clients and I have not been contacted
b) keep in mind that Telerik has the right to charge whatever they want for their product. 
     It might have been that the SE was to cheap before and instead of simply rising the price 1'000 USD         they trow in the mobile stuff
c) I also have invested heavy in SF and love it and would be very very unhappy to be looking for other solutions which I am not yet forced to since they kept the SBE alive. If they cut it - than its another story and I would have to move on.

Markus

Hi Markus,

I have no issues with the price being increased (for what you get the $1999 was not a bad price), the only issue i have is with modules that were modular and people had to the option suddenly being forced into the licence, a case in point to Telerik employee (sorry can't remember the name) who said almost half buy that module, so in that case the majority (as if my maths is correct almost half is not as much as half) do not, so what was the difference in leaving it as an add-on and just upping the standard price a bit? less contention and they get a bit more per licence.

To me this smells enterprisey, which is a shame as i love Sitefinity.  I will continue to try and sell it, but the next "bright idea" to deliver something i have no interest in using and then forcing me to buy it may be the last straw.





 

@Roberto,

I'm sure its not 100% an 'enterprisy' decision as you described it but also a development decision to take a dependency on the 'mobile add-on'.

The same thing happened when jQuery started to rise and when it reached a tipping point, Telerik RadControls started to include it.

Sure, this isn't a 'free' include, but it's one that adds useful functionality to editors and if on the long term it means you can build your desktop, your responsive and/or separate mobile site in 3/4 of the time, then it'll be worth twice that price.

Anyway, since you've been developing responsive by hand, you've probably charged your clients for the extra development work as well. So now they'll most likely not see an increase in their overall budgeted price, unless you continue to do it the old way, while the system can do it for you.

Jochem.

@Jochem

The issues is with stopping it being a choice, because it is no longer that, it is now an extra module, required but at an extra cost because someone somewhere thought it was an easy way to make some money, lets not beat around the bush here.  I have no direct issues with Sitefinity guys earning money, and i never mentioned that the Mobile add on should be free, they should charge for it, but people should want to have it, that is my point.

I would like to add, that i have no real problems with a price increase, and i have mentioned previously sitefinity offers me a ton of great features, that's why i use it.

I take the decision to run my own responsive mark-up (and anyone i employ) because what Sitefinity pumps out as general code is not to my level, that is not a slight on Sitefinity, and i am sure others on here will say the same that same, and can be said for any CMS.  So if something is not as good as you can create then you should look to take control of that, especially when you are charging people for your expertise, and that is one of the points of using Sitefinity for me, i have that option.

I am going to be honest, describing the correct way to do something as "old" is a little disingenuous. Responsive by hand is a workflow item, i.e. it is part of my general flow, as you know what takes the time is the testing, The sitefinity Mobile framework doesn't help me with that (the online preview is very nice but it only goes so far) so there may be some charges but i still have to charge an extra $1000 now for something they don't need.

Additionally, i will make this point again, serving different page level content depending on screen size or browser sniffing is not responsive design, package it up anyway you want it isn't, and i would never recommend that to a client so in that instance a big chunk of the Mobile frameworks usefulness is redundant.

@Roberto,

I hear you, I'm just saying there's more to it than just bucks.

By taking a dependency on the 'Mobile add-on' they can now for instance start thinking about implementing responsive images and further content editing enhancement, that would otherwise
have to be implemented with a quirky fall-back approach, or not be possible at all.

You can do responsive design, just like you want to with the add-on, although the predefined 'selectors' and the content reflowing is a bit sketchy for sure, but you can set the responsive
rules manually in the css or point to a mobile version. So while not perfect atm, they give us a choice. All they're doing is boxing us in in terms of having the add-on present which will
only benefit further development. 

Progress in general isn't made by the few innovators, but by forcing the late-majority to have no alternative. 

As for the old way, I meant it in terms of how you do it now (coding) vs using the Sitefinity Mobile add-on, not old as in no longer valid or best approach.

I use the manual approachas well, because its both familiar, leaves me in control but more importantly allows me to tailor it to my needs however if they're envisioning further
enhancements (which I know they are) which go beyond the column reflow, then I'm sure going to start tailoring all my workflows so I can benefit from it.

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If Sitefinity had decided to increase the price in November by $1000 and a month later, in December, announced to add the mobile add-on by default for free, most of the comments in this thread wouldn't be valid.
What they did instead was increase the price with $1000 and give the standard edition licenses a value-added add-on, seems like a sweet deal if you're a standard edition user.


In my opinion, you don't sell/purchase Sitefinity for the purchase price to create a website, you sell/buy Sitefinity for its unsurpassed CMS abilities.

Say on average a site lasts 2yrs before doing a major overhaul.
So on 1st of January 2014 you buy a DNN license, which is valid for only a year. On January 2016 you're CMS uses technology that's already a 2 years old.
Buy Sitefinity in January 2014, get a year worth of free updates and on January 2015 your CMS is still 100% up-to-date, and on January 2016 its 1 year old.

Skip purchasing a CMS and go opensource say with Wordpress, saving you $2000 on initial licensing costs. 
But I'll bet you that even if you edit only a page per month over these two years, the learning curve, user-unfriendlyness and loss of time every month because of that, is going to cost you or your client more than $84 per time.

Selling something is always difficult, and it'll remain difficult if you keep focusing on the price increase. 
If you forget the past however and simply look at what's available now, it still is one of the best choices currently on the market.

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As for responsive design, hiding/showing content is part of any major framework that supports 'responsive' whether you look at Sitefinity or things like Bootstrap and Foundation.

And it also makes sense to do that, not all content is tailored towards all devices experiences. 
Responsive design was invented to stop people developing two sites, desktop + mobile. Which in reality never even existed as a single width entity.

Just because responsive design gives us the functionality to cater to all needs, doesn't mean your websites need to look identical on all browsers/devices and widths and I sure hope they don't.


Sitefinity opts for 3 routes:
1. Have experienced admin's manually manage responsive design. 
2. Offer in-experienced (or less demanding) editors a visual interface to make their site responsive. 
3. Allow the option, in case you need it for a separate mobile site.

And only for this third option, and thus only if you select it, they're sniffing the browser just like many of the 3rd party players are doing to redirect a user to a dedicated mobile-version.

I'd say they've done a pretty neat job of serving everyone's need... and not for nothing they're calling it the Mobile add-on with responsive functionality.

Jochem.

@Jochem

I meant specifically with serving different page content for different devices and not the hiding of content which i maybe didn't communicate very well.  Maybe they will create new features, the issue is Responsive or mobile is not a Sitefinity only paradigm so the best practices you will find in the wild will not make it quickly back into sitefinity, so what do you do, stick with something that has cost you money because it has cost you money or end up running your own solution anyway, negating partially at the least the point of having the original feature in the first place.

I have said the original sitefinity price was not really an issue, and if they decided to raise it by a few hundred dollars, still not an issue, because the basis for the system is very sound feature wise (even the SBE), but raising it by $1000, tapping in what was an optional module as on of the reasons behind it there is a danger that they will start to price certain partners and customers out of the picture.

$1000 or £500 or whatever it is, is still not a trivial amount to some companies, and even though we don't have the hardest time selling sitefinity because it is now becoming a great product, we do sometimes get roadblocks when it comes to licencing costs because in the UK there is a lot of open source flying around, but to sell something into a company as a "feature" that they may not benefit from stinks a little to me, so i am either forced to use it, or it is a dust gathering feature, but one that the customer has paid for.

You don't buy a car and the salesman goes to you, you can have nice shiny alloy wheels, you don't need them, but it will cost you $1000 and there is no other option, so why should buying software be any different.  They had it right the first time with a flat fee and optional modules, because with this a precedence has been set, what next e-commerce? $5000 for the standard edition? because 30% of customers buy the e-commerce add on?

I am going to finish this on a positive by saying Sitefinity is now finally becoming the product that it should have been back when 4 is released, support finally seem to be getting back to sitefinity 3 levels, it has an unrivalled interface, the module builder is an immense feature, and it is, in the main great to work with, i just hope they don't mess around with it too much.

Long story short

Telerik decided that the renewal price will not be 30% of  the price of  what you once bought but the regular 30% of a new 7.0 license. 

Now I have to tell my client that  the price of 269$ of the past yeas simply is now 899$ but of course with new features.

First price changes were taking away new business opportunities now it seems I am going to lose old customers as well. Sad moment after betting so much on Sitefinity.

I guess there are not so many moons left until have to say goodbye.

Markus