$50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

[dachenbach]

Re: $50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

Even the smallest of companies may need more than one person in the admin at a time in order to provide the best and quickest service possible so they CAN grow. If they're using the admin for everything, including order processing (because they can't afford third-party order processing), that's where it's going to get difficult.

To illustrate Pamela's last paragraph, our business is near the lower end of the "middle class" tier that Rick described, who are currently "billed appropriately", as Rick's put it. From the first day we launched our little site a few years ago we have had one person processing orders, we're running ShipWorks, and we have one person (me) as the sole developer on the site. I would have guessed this was a fairly basic setup. According to the new licensing model as I understand it (I've read this whole thread and the FAQ), that will count as three Administrator seats if we ever want to be logged in concurrently.

Doing the "Are you logged in right now?" dance each time one of us needs to make a small change is very disruptive to each person's workflow. For $100/month, we'll have to do the dance until our business is significantly larger and can justify the expense to re-gain the ability to do what we're doing today.

This having been said, maybe it is possible to convert our order processor's account to a non-admin account. It's not clear to me what the limitations are of a non-admin account, so it may be very helpful to Miva customers for Miva to highlight where we can find such information. After much searching I found a high-level overview in the "Groups" section of the Reference Guide, but since Bruce suggested that if we need to modify orders (which we often do) this will require an admin account, this account "downgrade" possibility may not even be an option for us.

Rick, thanks for being so active on this forum. I've benefited greatly from it over the years and it goes a long way toward helping understand what's going on. This is a great community. I do appreciate your candidness and willing to listen to feedback. I get that larger stores may be under-paying for this great e-commerce solution. I just fear that the plan as proposed will pick up a lot of smaller customers like us that I don't think Miva was targeting based on your comments in this thread. Thanks for listening.

[entrepre7]

Re: $50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

Has there been any final decisions on this regarding cost?
When it will actually start?
And is there a way to not have to buy a seat just to use shipworks?

After I log out of shipworks it show active for quite awhile. So it is not just as simple as logging out of it to open user. If Miva can't figure out a way for shipworks/stonedge type programs to not count as an active user then why not figure it into the plan? Get 1 seat for the lowest level, 2 with the middle level and 3 for the enterprise. Then charge additional per user over that.

[lesliekirk]

Re: $50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

When it will actually start?

As soon as you upgrade to MM9. If this is a very busy season for you, I would wait to run the upgrade until after the 1st of the year. You have 90 days before the non-compliance fees kick in.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: $50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

After I log out of shipworks it show active for quite awhile.

In order for the Shipworks module to log out the second it's done, they have to make a very minor change to their module (adding one parameter in the URL). I'll reach out to Wes about this and make sure he's in the loop. Otherwise you can force close the lingering session when you go to login.

[SteveG]

Re: $50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

Well I've updated to 9 wanting to take advantage of the new features, never received that I can recall any info regarding the seats, we are a small business, always have two logged in during our working day, wife and myself, always logged in under the same user name, so probably why we didn't get the notification, so disappointed to find this new cost thrown at us in this way. Certainly wasted enough time trying to figure out what it was all about. I believe two free seats should be available per store...

I find it quite ridiculous the syncho which we have just purchased and are still working to get full integrated can't run without us logging out.

[Geographicus]

Re: $50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

Why implement a single user minimum? Who gains from this? In the last year every time I turn around it seems there is some new rediculous charge - astronomically expensive hosting (our hosing went form 100/month to thousands), absurd 'compliance' fees, and now this. Using miva merchant is staring to feel like dealing with the IRS or, worse, a shakedown syndicate.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: $50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

Why implement a single user minimum? Who gains from this? In the last year every time I turn around it seems there is some new rediculous charge - astronomically expensive hosting (our hosing went form 100/month to thousands), absurd 'compliance' fees, and now this. Using miva merchant is staring to feel like dealing with the IRS or, worse, a shakedown syndicate.

The detailed answers are encompassed in that other thread, but I would like to add some color.

First, we didn't raise anyone's hosting prices from 100's to Thousands. Not yours, not anyones. The only people who's hosting pricing has changed in years, are legacy Hostasaurus clients who signed up 5+ years ago and all we did was bring their pricing in parity with our current pricing (which was usually less than $7/mo change on average). In fact our base hosting pricing is going down here as soon as we can roll it out, that's part of the new per seat stuff.

Second, there is no Non Compliance fee if you're up to date, so if you're on V9, then NCF's don't impact you.

Finally (and this is what's covered in depth in the other thread), the per seat model is an idea who's time has come in my opinion. Here's what the economic facts are in the ecommerce space.

If you charge "flat" pricing (say between $30 and $200/mo for all you can eat), then you have no economic incentive to keep developing your product. Your economic incentive is to do as little as is possible to keep your customers from canceling. Your only economic incentive in that model is to put all of your money into marketing.

The other models we see are:

1. Percentage of Sales model (Yahoo, Shopify, BigCommerce)
2. The expensive license model (Magento Enterprise, among others)
3. Per seat models (SalesForce, InfusionSoft, SugarCRM, QuickBooks)

When we study the people who either have flat rate pricing or a hybrid of flat rate and Percentage of Sales (primarily Shopify and BigCommerce, but there are more like them) they've combined raised north of $200 million in VC money and are losing money at a clip that's hard to fathom. I wouldn't be surprised to find out those companies lose more than $5 million PER MONTH combined.

I've been around both ecommerce and tech long enough to recall what it's like when "free money" dries up and I promise you, you don't want to have your income stream dependent on being a client of a service in that position.

So we stepped back and asked ourselves, what's the right business model for true long term success. One that correlates our efforts and investments with our customers success and structurally can provide a win-win.

The only two that make sense through that lens, are Percentage of Sales or Per-Seat. We ruled out Percentage of Sales because if felt like the worst of all options, both logistically (what do you do when there's a chargeback, for example?) and from a customer experience perspective.

While on the other hand, while people used to what amounted to unfettered access to our admin might be frustrated, the Per Seat model seemed to be the most equitable.

If we hadn't gone the per seat model route (which allows us to both offer an affordable product to the true Small Businesses and scale our pricing with usage) we would've gone the Magento Enterprise route and just raised our license fee to $15 or $20k per year. We would've likely ended up keeping 1,000 clients and losing 20k+, but it would've solved our business model issue.

We chose the path, we thought was most equitable for everyone to build a sustainable long term platform.

[Geographicus]

Re: $50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

Rick -

Thank you for responding.

First, when you guys bought out my contract for hosting earlier this year, my fees did go up to thousands of dollars. It was so extreme, I almost shut down my business. Ultimately, given the money I have invested in deleloping my miva site, I stuck with my old host, who essentially robbed me by not honoring my prepaid annual contract, but it was still thousands cheaper than the equivilant host service offered by miva. You and I had this discussion previously, but you most likey don't remember.

It's just like dealing with airlines. Now they charge for bags, are making money, and flighs are worse than ever. They claim, as do you, that it is in an attempt to make their service better, but in the end its about profit, not service. Yes, we still fly, we need to, but no one likes putting their heads down while the airline bully pushes them around. The 50 USD a month isn't going to put me out of business any more than the 50 USD for checked bags, but I don't like it, feel resentful, and frankly don't see anything that miva has implemented that I would consider worth the fortune this is likey to pull in.

The great thing about the old miva is that it was small, very flexilbe, and modular. If you had a site that worked, you were not forced to upgrade. There were lots of great developers like Bill Weiland, who made both custom modules that were well designed and cost effective. Miva itself didn't have to grow, becasue the developers did it for them. When storemorph was introduced, Miva, in my opinion, achived the ultimatle goal of creating a powerful, flexible, easy to use, and totally customizable ecommerce system. I had a superb one page checkout designed that worked flawlessly from day one and years to follow - it cost 300 usd. THen all of a sudden, after a miva update, it didn't work. The designer vanished from the face of the Earth. At the same time, Miva started offering its own one page customization, which cost thousands of dollars, not hundreds. You may recall, that flaws in the implementation of that cost me tens of thousands of dollars in business becasue a significant percentage of my international transactions were causing the checkout to freeze. It took more than a year for that to be resoved.

Where is all of this improvment? This growth? What I see is added cost while nice benefits, like unlimited users logged in simltaneously, the right to use an old system that works for you, etc... are being stripped away or turned over to a pay-per-use system. Some of the services you've added, like ease of blanket discounts, etc, were always accessible to people who know how to use the system. Anyway, I just don't see the added value, but I am stuck with paying more and more and more, well beyond what can be argued for in terms of inflation, for the same product.

Don't get me wrong, I still think miva is a good ecommerce option adn won't be changing in the short term, but no one enjoys being pushed around, least of of all when you don't have a choice of alternatives (given development costs already invested) and it hits hard on the bottom line.

Kevin

[Rick Wilson]

Re: $50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

First, when you guys bought out my contract for hosting earlier this year, my fees did go up to thousands of dollars. It was so extreme, I almost shut down my business. Ultimately, given the money I have invested in deleloping my miva site, I stuck with my old host, who essentially robbed me by not honoring my prepaid annual contract, but it was still thousands cheaper than the equivilant host service offered by miva. You and I had this discussion previously, but you most likey don't remember.

I recall there being something bizarre, but not the details. It's worth noting for anyone else reading this, I believe you're literally the only person in these shoes.

As for the rest of it, you don't have to upgrade. You can stay out of date. If you have a retail license, there's nothing we can do about it. If you're on a "leased" license, then the price you pay for staying out of date is $50/month.

Your one page checkout problems were not something broken by us, they came down to a broken module that wasn't properly designed in the first place.

I suspect your core frustration (if you'll allow me to go there) is forced change. I think if you'll step back and look at it, Forced change is the nature of technology. You can't safely run an Ecom store using Windows XP any longer either, and as Credit Card fraud has taken a dark turn in the world, we've radically stepped up our efforts to fortify our platform and be ready for the future.

If you look at people who held out on 4.x, especially uncompiled 4.x they lived just fine until POODLE hit a few weeks back. Then suddenly, everything broke, Auth.net, etc... and there's no way to fix it. But they got to live for a long time without being bothered, the risk they took was waking up one day and the Internet changing around them unexpectedly (which is what happened) and suddenly their store is dead in the water.

I do have empathy that you seem to have a knack for being the edge case, but I think you'll find that's not the normative experience here for our clients.

[Geographicus]

Re: $50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

Rick -

On one level, you're right. I hate forced change. My business keeps me busy enough without having to spend my days figuring stuff out that I didn't sign up for. I like to stay on the edge, but I like to do it on my terms. I think most people would agree.

My one page was a disaster from day one and much of it did have to do with miva coding. The module you are referring to was months after the fact. If you carefully reveiw the many threads generated by that problem you'll see most of the major issues predated the attempted module

1. Site was not designed for international transactions, so unusual phone numbers, and countries where the zipcode, county, state, region system casued validation erros.
2. Error messages were not coming through from the cc server - in fact they still don't always do so (though ususally).
3. There was some bug in the code.
4. etc...

Kevin

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Re: $50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

I think a clearer way of framing the change in Miva's revenue stream is simply this:

Without some form of recurring revenue, Miva will be unable to keep its product up to date. With out an up to date product, those businesses running Miva will not be able to be in business. Your specific business may be able, at least for a time, run on 10 year old software, but most will not. The internet and ecommerce world has changed greatly in the last few years and continue to change at a more rapid pace.

As for third-party developers (the lack thereof) its their inability (sometimes through no fault of their own) to adopt a revenue stream model. We personally have stated this. We had two choices: adopt a revenue stream module, or go out of business like many of our former competitor.

[ezlevel]

Re: $50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

THE NEW "$50 per seat" RULES STINK. I can not believe that after having an account with you all for so many years now you would do this! I am not happy at all. I MUST be able to log on with others in my office or with my developer from time to time.
This is nothing more than GREED.... and there is no reason for it.
I've heard the excuses that were given to us over the phone but there is no good excuse.
If you want to charge $50 per seat then at least give us two seats!!! (so we can have SOME collaboration)

[Rick Wilson]

Re: $50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

ezlevel,

You're welcome to be frustrated (I'm not in control of that), but I do believe you're doing a disservice to yourself if you don't stop and think about the discussion.

If what you state was true, then we'd be doing this, while say reducing staff and expenses and just "stockpiling" the income from it.

That's simply not true, it's easy to tell that we're accelerating our investment into our platform and from our perspective this was the only way to accomplish that.

You can have a second seat, it's $50 a month. That's not going to harm you or any business. I know we spend more than that on coffee beans for our employees here at the office.

[Mark Hood]

Re: $50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

My two cents for whatever they may be worth... I jumped on the "oh my god what are they thinking bandwagon" at first. However I was quickly met with meh are we going out of business because of it? Absolutely not. What we are actually doing/getting is a platform that has just had a major change. That change is amazingly powerful and causes us to be at least three times more efficient in every aspect of adding and maintaining products. A lot of this comes from solving the attribute image swapping and simple speed. The other comes from the amazing power we have when a customer calls making customer service so much faster. No one likes being put on hold or asked even more questions while they search for an order.

MM9 solves a ton of pain points and so much more that paying for even more of them to be solved is worth way more.

[lancermedia]

Re: $50 per additional simultaneous Administrative User

Miva is catching up big time compared to their competitors in the admin. The 5.5 admin looks and acts like it's from 1998. The new v9 looks nice, hoping it's not all style over substance (won't be upgrading until after the 1st of the year).

I agree that overall I think $50/month for a license fee for Miva is too low to be sustainable, especially for those large clients like Scottevest.....to think they only spend that much yet bring in millions per month.

Really wished Miva would have just raised the base license rate to something like $80/month and then give 2 logins for the base license and then $50 per each additional. As a developer with a lot of really small clients that typically don't have more than 1 person logged in, this will hit our clients hard because MOST of the time we only need 1 login, but there are times we need 2 (usually a store owner and us the devs). To have to pay for that all the time, when it's only used occasionally is going to be a tough pill to swallow for some.


-Kevin