‘Download and Install’

October 13th, 2006

We’ve already mentioned that the app we’re building is going to be a ‘download and install’ rather than a hosted solution, I wanted to take this post to really go over how we came to that decision and outline a few cases where going down this route in the past has proved successful.

The first reason we chose to release the product for download was differentiation. There are already a few hosted solutions that do a pretty good job, but none which you can set up on your own server. By allowing users to set up the application on their own server we’re allowing them to take full control of their content, they can add as much or as little as they like to the system. We’re also hoping that a community of developers will build up around the application and come up with add-ons/plug-ins and other creative adoptions of the system.

Another aspect is cost. If users are installing the application on their own servers they’re not using our resources, which means when you buy a license you’re paying for the product and don’t incur the added cost of hosting etc. Most people already have their own web hosting set up and I’m sure would rather not have to pay twice for his. We can also make the pricing strategy a one-off payment, saving time and hassle that would be brought about by issuing monthly invoices.

Then of course, there’s the issue of salability. Our main target market will undoubtedly be web designers and developers (the traditional early adoptors) and, naturally, they’ll want to be able to get right to the root of the application, creating add-ons and fully integrating it to suit their individual needs. This sort of customisation can’t be easily achieved with a hosted app.

Finally, there’s the benefit of Jamie running a hosting company, meaning we already have a captive market to sell licenses to. There’s also no restraints on who we can partner up with, we could for instance offer other hosting providers custom-branded versions of our software at a discounted rate for bulk orders.

One very successful self-hosted application on the market at the moment that we like a lot is Mint. It’s a beautiful application for keeping tracks of stat, the configuration process is the pinnacle of ease-of-use. We had Mint for this blog up and running in less than 2 minutes. There’s been a lot of speculation during it’s lifespan about whether or not Mint is worth the $30 price-tag. The main argument behind this is that the Peppers are what bring the most value to Mint, over rival hosted software, yet the Peppers themselves are free. I’m not going to speak on the price of Mint, but what I find most interesting is just how much value Peppers add to Mint. On the serious SEO orientated projects I handle, I tend to use about 7 peppers (Add-ons build using the Mint API) which far outweighs the amount of functionality built-in. There are a further 50 or so Peppers freely available, one of the strongest selling points of Mint.

This sort of developer-following wouldn’t be achievable with a hosted platform and so our aim with making the application available for download is to develop a strong community who will build add-ons, hacks and themes that will add much more value to the product than the retail price we put on it.

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