Not sure how to go about this and it has been some grumblings on some other forums.
On the main pricing page on the Umbraco.com site, I know you all are pushing the Cloud stuff and that is great. But when I try to go and sell a site, that I can develop on and pitch that Umbraco is an Open Source free CMS, it is harder to sell it that way because directly in the Pricing navigation section there is NO mention of a free version or explanation that it is Free and that you also offer the Cloud.
Maybe make your pricing chart with the "Free as Download" or "Free to Download/Self-Hosted" option show up next to the Cloud pricing as well. I could see this being a bit of a hurdle for Umbraco devs, who make up a huge part of the Umbraco community and co-developers to sell Umbraco as a Free version to help grow Umbraco even more.
I know this is a dirty word here but WordPress even puts their FREE tier version as an option on their "Pricing and Plans" page which is front and center. Which is what I have to content with here in the states.
I really want to push Umbraco as the quality CMS that it is.
If I go to a potential client and say, "I got this awesome CMS and it has a Free Option that will be GREAT for you" and the potential client goes to the Umbraco Pricing page (because it is top level in the navigation and that is what clients are worried about) on their own and see "Starting at $30/month", that tarnishes a bit of my credibility and Umbraco as an open-source project.
Maybe put in that "Free as Download" or "Free as Download/Self-Hosted" block/tier the same content that is on your /Products/Umbraco-Cms page
"Download Umbraco CMS for free today and get started. You can install, setup and host your project yourself"
And in the list of features for the Free Download option on the pricing page include your:
Open Source since 2005
Self-Hosted
Your digital content, your way
Umbraco Support Plans (optional)
Over 200.000 developers
I know you all have done a tremendous amount of work with Umbraco, but please don't leave out co-developers and your Friendly community.
Most of us would be happy to pitch the Cloud as an option to our clients as well as a hosting option. Just give the Free download as an option on the pricing page vs burying it in the Products page if a General non-dev user/customer is going to look at the Umbraco site on their own time.
Hell we use it as the CMS to run our site, content for our Kiosks, content for our mobile app and content for our signage where I work at one of the largest and premier museums in the western United States.
I really want to push Umbraco on my side projects, believe me, but it is a hard sell when clients look at the Pricing page and they are presented with only the Paid tiers with no mention of the Free Umbraco CMS download option.
As a general user, they don't know to go into the "Products" section of the Umbraco.com site. They won't know the difference between Umbraco Cloud vs Umbraco CMS. It is all the same to general users.
I agree entirely with Carlos. Just recently I was pitching Umbraco to a customer as a free and open-source CMS which was a requirement since they are using free DNN right now. During my pitch one of the developers from the customer side looked Umbraco up on their phone and said it wasn't free and open-source.
The impression the main Umbraco website made was a paid closed source CMS when skimmed. You actually need to read the copy (not just headings) or go deeper inside the site to understand the nuance.
For context, pitch was multiple months ago even before the updated site.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this and for the constructive feedback Carlos.
Let me start out by letting you know that it is in no way the intention to make it harder for any of you to sell the free version of Umbraco or to tarnish your credibility.
The reason "Pricing" has been moved to the top navigation menu is, partially that yes, this is a product we need to sell in order to sustain our business and keep developing Umbraco. But just as important, this is something we see people visiting our site are actively looking for. We want it to be easy for visitors to find the information they are looking for on our site, while sustaining our business.
The launch of the new identity and design is, as I mentioned in the Unicorner live cast yesterday, a step in the direction we would like to go, but we are not there yet. We will not stop improving on the site anytime soon, but you will be seeing improvements happen frequently, and we will also be monitoring and testing everything, to make sure we are not messing anything up in the process.
The pricing page itself has not changed for the last two years, and the same goes for many other existing sections, as we have also been hard at work building, and creating new sections and content for app-sections, partner sections, case-studies and a lot of optimizing and "boring" but necessary work, in order to make sure the site performs well going forward.
The pricing page is due for an update, and I think the model you are suggesting is not far away from where we will land in a not to distant future.
Whether open source is visible enough, I see your point and it is something we are testing right now, as we are attempting to find the right balance between explaining everything that is great about Umbraco at once, and explaining just enough to catch people's attention and entice them to investigate further.
Rest assured though, the open source message will never go away from the site, but it will be tested to see exactly when and where it makes sense to emphasize it. You can also be certain that no-one in Umbraco will forget about the community being a super important part of our DNA and has a huge influence on how we make decisions and do business on a daily basis.
I guess the TLDR version of my post can be summarized to: We are constantly testing and improving umbraco.com while balancing running a sustainable business while also ensuring that you can profit from the free product. So keep watching umbraco.com, we will be updating it frequently.
I think mixing Umbraco Cloud and Umbraco so much is a mistake. As someone who looks into new things all the time whenever I load a landing page the first things that I look for are: is there a pricing page in the navbar? Yes? Let's check the pricing. Is there a free tier? No?
Once on that page the are no mentions of it being free, and the most prominent use of the word "free" is for free trial.
@Martin,
Thank you for the response. I appreciate HQ taking the time to get back to us on Our.
I totally understand Umbraco needs to sell its products in order to sustain the business and Umbraco as a whole. Totally agree. Many of us are in the same boat.
That said, I REALLY like the concept of Umbraco Cloud. I love the environment set up and possibilities. I have a buddy running it for a few clients.
However, as I am writing this, it looks like Cloud went down for at least some sites, and even Umbraco.com. A little disconcerting considering our concerns highlighted in this post. I did notice this earlier today to that the Umbraco.com site blipped too for a few minutes.
Hence the reason I am little shy to go with Cloud. Was or is there back up systems in place or fallback/fail over systems in place for the Cloud?
Right now my buddy's business partner is kind of pissed because their contract is pretty huge with their client and they pay, right now, the middle tier.
This also brings me to pricing of Umbraco Cloud. And I really, really hate bringing this up.
The pricing structure is very wide in terms of the range of prices. And in most cases cost prohibitive to most of my clients to spend for a medium tier pricing, $470 USD / month, I am not sure if this is to cover costs of the Azure set up (which I think this is Cloud running on). And of course I am sure it covers the staff as well at HQ.
I have no idea how the F' Wordpress does it with their pricing structure. But if there 1 or 2 more options, between would be cool too. Not sure. Like you said, the pricing page is due for an update. I look forward to what you all come up with. If you need idea, help or anything, feel free to reach out.
I really don't mean to be a negative nanny on this bit about the Cloud piece. Just has been a bit of a hard bit since I am mostly all in with Umbraco and clients, studios who hire freelancers are all about the WP here in the states and it is a bit of a wall to climb to promote Umbraco.
I really have a passion for Umbraco, because of its awesomeness, ease of set up and dedicated staff and programmers.
Just wanted to voice a few concerns and I appreciate the feedback and the community here on Our and Umbraco HQ.
Also, good luck on getting the Cloud back up by the way. Hopefully everything goes well.
New Umbraco.com site pricing, confusing for selling from an independent selling and dev pitch side
Not sure how to go about this and it has been some grumblings on some other forums.
On the main pricing page on the Umbraco.com site, I know you all are pushing the Cloud stuff and that is great. But when I try to go and sell a site, that I can develop on and pitch that Umbraco is an Open Source free CMS, it is harder to sell it that way because directly in the Pricing navigation section there is NO mention of a free version or explanation that it is Free and that you also offer the Cloud.
Maybe make your pricing chart with the "Free as Download" or "Free to Download/Self-Hosted" option show up next to the Cloud pricing as well. I could see this being a bit of a hurdle for Umbraco devs, who make up a huge part of the Umbraco community and co-developers to sell Umbraco as a Free version to help grow Umbraco even more.
I know this is a dirty word here but WordPress even puts their FREE tier version as an option on their "Pricing and Plans" page which is front and center. Which is what I have to content with here in the states.
https://wordpress.com/pricing/
I really want to push Umbraco as the quality CMS that it is.
If I go to a potential client and say, "I got this awesome CMS and it has a Free Option that will be GREAT for you" and the potential client goes to the Umbraco Pricing page (because it is top level in the navigation and that is what clients are worried about) on their own and see "Starting at $30/month", that tarnishes a bit of my credibility and Umbraco as an open-source project.
Maybe put in that "Free as Download" or "Free as Download/Self-Hosted" block/tier the same content that is on your /Products/Umbraco-Cms page
"Download Umbraco CMS for free today and get started. You can install, setup and host your project yourself"
And in the list of features for the Free Download option on the pricing page include your:
I know you all have done a tremendous amount of work with Umbraco, but please don't leave out co-developers and your Friendly community.
Most of us would be happy to pitch the Cloud as an option to our clients as well as a hosting option. Just give the Free download as an option on the pricing page vs burying it in the Products page if a General non-dev user/customer is going to look at the Umbraco site on their own time.
Hell we use it as the CMS to run our site, content for our Kiosks, content for our mobile app and content for our signage where I work at one of the largest and premier museums in the western United States.
I really want to push Umbraco on my side projects, believe me, but it is a hard sell when clients look at the Pricing page and they are presented with only the Paid tiers with no mention of the Free Umbraco CMS download option.
As a general user, they don't know to go into the "Products" section of the Umbraco.com site. They won't know the difference between Umbraco Cloud vs Umbraco CMS. It is all the same to general users.
I agree on this, Carlos!
Thank you for taking the time to write this up, h5yr :)
I agree entirely with Carlos. Just recently I was pitching Umbraco to a customer as a free and open-source CMS which was a requirement since they are using free DNN right now. During my pitch one of the developers from the customer side looked Umbraco up on their phone and said it wasn't free and open-source.
The impression the main Umbraco website made was a paid closed source CMS when skimmed. You actually need to read the copy (not just headings) or go deeper inside the site to understand the nuance.
For context, pitch was multiple months ago even before the updated site.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this and for the constructive feedback Carlos.
Let me start out by letting you know that it is in no way the intention to make it harder for any of you to sell the free version of Umbraco or to tarnish your credibility.
The reason "Pricing" has been moved to the top navigation menu is, partially that yes, this is a product we need to sell in order to sustain our business and keep developing Umbraco. But just as important, this is something we see people visiting our site are actively looking for. We want it to be easy for visitors to find the information they are looking for on our site, while sustaining our business.
The launch of the new identity and design is, as I mentioned in the Unicorner live cast yesterday, a step in the direction we would like to go, but we are not there yet. We will not stop improving on the site anytime soon, but you will be seeing improvements happen frequently, and we will also be monitoring and testing everything, to make sure we are not messing anything up in the process.
The pricing page itself has not changed for the last two years, and the same goes for many other existing sections, as we have also been hard at work building, and creating new sections and content for app-sections, partner sections, case-studies and a lot of optimizing and "boring" but necessary work, in order to make sure the site performs well going forward.
The pricing page is due for an update, and I think the model you are suggesting is not far away from where we will land in a not to distant future.
Whether open source is visible enough, I see your point and it is something we are testing right now, as we are attempting to find the right balance between explaining everything that is great about Umbraco at once, and explaining just enough to catch people's attention and entice them to investigate further.
Rest assured though, the open source message will never go away from the site, but it will be tested to see exactly when and where it makes sense to emphasize it. You can also be certain that no-one in Umbraco will forget about the community being a super important part of our DNA and has a huge influence on how we make decisions and do business on a daily basis.
I guess the TLDR version of my post can be summarized to: We are constantly testing and improving umbraco.com while balancing running a sustainable business while also ensuring that you can profit from the free product. So keep watching umbraco.com, we will be updating it frequently.
I think mixing Umbraco Cloud and Umbraco so much is a mistake. As someone who looks into new things all the time whenever I load a landing page the first things that I look for are: is there a pricing page in the navbar? Yes? Let's check the pricing. Is there a free tier? No?
Once on that page the are no mentions of it being free, and the most prominent use of the word "free" is for free trial.
@Martin, Thank you for the response. I appreciate HQ taking the time to get back to us on Our.
I totally understand Umbraco needs to sell its products in order to sustain the business and Umbraco as a whole. Totally agree. Many of us are in the same boat.
That said, I REALLY like the concept of Umbraco Cloud. I love the environment set up and possibilities. I have a buddy running it for a few clients.
However, as I am writing this, it looks like Cloud went down for at least some sites, and even Umbraco.com. A little disconcerting considering our concerns highlighted in this post. I did notice this earlier today to that the Umbraco.com site blipped too for a few minutes.
Hence the reason I am little shy to go with Cloud.
Was or is there back up systems in place or fallback/fail over systems in place for the Cloud?
Right now my buddy's business partner is kind of pissed because their contract is pretty huge with their client and they pay, right now, the middle tier.
This also brings me to pricing of Umbraco Cloud. And I really, really hate bringing this up. The pricing structure is very wide in terms of the range of prices. And in most cases cost prohibitive to most of my clients to spend for a medium tier pricing, $470 USD / month, I am not sure if this is to cover costs of the Azure set up (which I think this is Cloud running on). And of course I am sure it covers the staff as well at HQ. I have no idea how the F' Wordpress does it with their pricing structure. But if there 1 or 2 more options, between would be cool too. Not sure. Like you said, the pricing page is due for an update. I look forward to what you all come up with. If you need idea, help or anything, feel free to reach out.
I really don't mean to be a negative nanny on this bit about the Cloud piece. Just has been a bit of a hard bit since I am mostly all in with Umbraco and clients, studios who hire freelancers are all about the WP here in the states and it is a bit of a wall to climb to promote Umbraco.
I really have a passion for Umbraco, because of its awesomeness, ease of set up and dedicated staff and programmers.
Just wanted to voice a few concerns and I appreciate the feedback and the community here on Our and Umbraco HQ.
Also, good luck on getting the Cloud back up by the way. Hopefully everything goes well.
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