Released on-premises and BullMQ Pro
by Manuel AstudilloThe last couple of months I have been quite busy preparing two new products that I expect will result in a revenue boost.
The first product is an on-premises version of the SaaS. This seems a bit counterintuitive but I have been getting requests for on-premises since I made the first release.
As it turns out, many companies, due to certifications and security concerns cannot use SaaS products that are tightly connected to their internal development workflow, so they are prepared to pay more for the possibility to run the software on their own premises. The on premises version was actually available a couple of weeks ago and without any marketing we have already 3 companies running it, so I have big expectations when this is announced properly :)
The other product is a licensed version of the BullMQ library. It is just a hard fact of life that it is extremely difficult to monetise open source even if your software has a great success. The Taskforce.sh dashboard is getting more and more traction, but not at the speed I would like it to go. Furthermore there is not a direct relationship between which new features I implement in BullMQ and amount of users paying for the dashboard service.
I concluded that the only way forward is to offer a commercial version that includes premium features and better support. Most of the new features are actual features requested some time ago by BullMQ users, so I expect these features to be useful to the existing and a growing number of users.
Of course I am still a big believer on the open source movement and will continue to support the open source versions of the software for years to come, but they will not see so many new advanced features as they did in the past.
As with any new product it is always a bit of gambling, so I wonder what do you think? I am taking a completely crazy direction, should I do something different or just persevere on these products? Please let me know in the comments.
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Hi Manuel,
I'm also building a business around an open-source project (vendure.io) and I actually use BullMQ as part of my product, so thank you for your excellent work on it!
Like you, I am also going for an open-core + support model, with more advanced functionality available to paying customers. I'm still developing the paid parts though, and my main focus is on increasing traction of the OSS part so that when I have something to sell, hopefully there are a decent number of prospects who might be interested.
I wish you the best of luck making a success of Taskforce!
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Wow, vendure.io looks really nice, and an area with a huge potential.
The most challenging part in my experience is how to get traction in the OSS part without giving too much functionality so that businesses actually find value in the paid version.
However it looks like in your case you could just provide it as SaaS, couldn't you?
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Thank you! And yes, this is an area with a lot of growth right now. Lots of VC funding being thrown around too.
I am working with some partners to bring a cloud-hosting solution - not quite SaaS, but more like Vercel or Netlify but specificlly for Vendure projects - i.e. you still develop your project yourself, but we handle all the hosting & ops.
But e-commerce is such a huge area with so many specialized requirements, I'm hoping that the paid extensions will form the backbone of the business model. We'll see! I'm aiming to start releasing the first of them later this year / early next.
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