Where To Draw The Line With Support Models

[Jeffro]

In the following topic, Add A Widget Map To Your Theme I discussed that themes should have widget maps but I created the post without knowing that I could access the information if I paid for it.

So I wanted to start a new thread which asks, if you're selling support packages for your themes, where does one draw the line in terms of giving away the whole thing or keeping certain things limited?

[PaulCunningham]

My feeling is if you're giving away something for free and want to make some money offering support you should be making it easy enough that say 9/10 people could do it unassisted.

[andrea_r]

What Paul said. If someone has no trouble installing and using themes (for example) then you shouldn't *need* to support them.

The people you should be paid to help are the ones who have trouble installing themes, or wind up with weird errors.

[itsananderson]

My goal when I release stuff (and maybe this is why I don't release things very often) is that pretty much everyone can install and use it "out of the box". My goal is that the only people who actually need support are those requesting customization of one feature or another. Of course you still run into people who can't find the wp-content directory, but they're hard to avoid.

[Jeffro]

Well, while I agree somewhat that you should be given the breadbasket when it comes to this sort of thing, I also can't help but wonder that you're cutting into your profit margin by doing this sort of thing. Is their a fine line that has to be walked between the two? Or does no such line exist?

[itsananderson]

Well, you have to walk a fine line there. On the one side you can provide something that only WordPress gurus can use in the hopes that others will come to you for support, or you can make your product so great that nobody ever needs help.

I'd say in general you're better off getting as many people using your plugin/theme etc. as possible. If a WP newby can't get your plugin to work, they'll probably just find another plugin. But if they can get it to work, but want some part of it customized, they're more likely to hire you to do so.

In the end, a happy user base is good for business!

[Cais]

I feel if you are releasing a product it should be released in as complete a manner as possible, as well as not being hindered, crippled, or any form of reduced functionality. Whether a product is free or paid it should still be of quality, and part of the quality of a product is its inherent completeness.

Given the above point, the costs associated with additional services, support or customizations would be at the discretion of the author. The premise being: the product would inspire additional paid services, not demand them with inadequacies.

[hallsofmontezuma]

Releasing a product that is crippled to increase the number of people coming to you for support is extremely unethical, and likely won't get you significantly more business anyway (re Anderson: they'll probably just find another plugin).

You can charge for the product and/or for the support, but both the product and support should be good quality. That doesn't mean you have to go out of your way to make absolutely certain nobody will ever need support, but you shouldn't cripple the product. If one were to cripple their product so that they could generate more revenue from support, what's stopping them from providing sub-par support that requires the customer to pay for even more support?

You always win out by providing a good product and good support. There will always be people who, as Anderson says, can't even find the wp-content directory, but you shouldn't have experts coming to you with questions about the basic functionality of your theme, plugin, etc.

Look at Windows, OS X, etc... your average to expert computer user can generally get along just fine with little or no support, yet there are still those who need (paid) assistance with even the most basic tasks. However, as a technical user, if I weren't able to use an operating system I paid for, I wouldn't pay for support, I would use a better operating system.

I think JellyBeen says it best, "the product would inspire additional paid services, not demand them with inadequacies".

[PaulCunningham]

Jellybean put it well.

I guess a good example is WP-Ecommerce. Free, functional, but if you're running a big serious ecomm site that needs more powerful features you pay for those modules, or for expert customization, or for expert support from the devs.

[Ryan]

Personally I've found that offering as much services as possible for free results in more paid support. Even offering free support brings in more paid support as people realise that when they receive better free support from me than they do from others for paid support, then my paid support must be pretty good. From that I end up getting paid support requests for other plugins and themes which I've never even seen before, some requests I take some I don't. So even if you don't make much off your core business, the extra support for products for other people can add up to more than the support for your own products :)

Having said all that, I do notice a sharp spike in paid support whenever I go on holiday/am too busy to provide extensive free support. The catch with that though, is that over time I suspect my number of users will dwindle as they'll see that my free support forum is not being answered as quickly or thoroughly as it could be.