Piwik Commercialization

General questions
1

“Money is the root of all evil.”

Piwik Developers… thank you for your hard work in creating the open source piwik. Your goal to provide an “own data” analytics alternative to GA was valid and needed.

You built it, and we came.

I have (mostly been trying) to use piwik for about 4-5 years now. Dealt with lots of issues over the versions. But, I dealt with it because it was open source and like many others I provided feedback, suggestions, etc… Then more and more plugins started coming in… and that made piwik even better… the best GA alternative. I appreciated the direction, the community, and you developers.

Now…

Like many other ideas: developed as open source > community grows > commercialization > restriction … = typical future: portions of the community have been soured and a seed has been planted for a piwik alternative.

I get it… you invested a lot of time and work, and now that you have a large community base, MONEY is desired.

The problem… is your direction decisions are ruining the core values. Let me explain:

Offering a “PRO” commercial/enterprise/supported option is good. It is good option for companies that want/need the solution handled for them - those who don’t mind paying for typical reasons. There’s nothing wrong with charging to install, manage, and support the solution as experts of piwik. That’s a wise choice.

However, you’ve gone beyond that. You’ve crippled the community by limiting functionality with “premium features” - the dreaded pay to play.

So now, the larger of your community, who I bet are single developers or small development teams (who likely can install and manage piwik on their own) are being forced to pay to use “premium plugins” as they’re only available with “PRO” piwik (which charges for what those developers can do on their own). And on top of that, there’s not even transparent pricing.

You’re following in the footsteps of common commercial products and the tactics that come with them, and history shows how that negatively impacts their open source communities. It’s one thing to go from commercial to open source, but completely different going from open source to commercial.

Suggestion:

The ONLY differences between COMMUNITY and PRO (cloud or hosted) should be what you provide as services (tech support, training, integration, hosting, etc…). If you want to add value with the “premium features” include the plugins without additional cost! Community version should have access to all of the same features. If you must, charge for premium plugins. Let us purchase plugins we want. Don’t force us to go to “PRO” just to have access to plugins. I see others having the same opinion and experiencing the same frustrations. Don’t turn your back on the community that helped make piwik what it is.

2

I pretty much disagree with this. I don’t see how the community product is “crippled”. Everything that most community members want are in the open source product. If you want extra features, you can pay for that.

I’m fairly certain you are talking about the Tag Manager plug-in and, from what I understand, this was a third party plug-in that was pulled from open source and made into a pay item. I don’t believe the developers of Piwik had any say in the matter. I could be wrong about this though.

There are many non-premium plug-ins available (see Plug-ins page).

Please elucidate on what you believe is “crippling” Piwik without a premium plug-in.

1 Like
4

Hello,

You built it, and we came.

Definitely. We built it Free as in freedom http://piwik.org/free-software/ and Piwik core will still be here and it will become much better over time. Piwik core & open source free plugins will always be GPL/Free and will continue to get better and better.

But, I dealt with it because it was open source and like many others I provided feedback, suggestions, etc…

maybe you dealt with it because it was free, and you didn’t want to pay to use one of the hundreds of paid non-free competitors? :angel:

However, you’ve gone beyond that. You’ve crippled the community by limiting functionality with “premium features” - the dreaded pay to play.

Maybe you are referring to something else, maybe to what we used to do with Piwik PRO, please read this FAQ: https://piwik.org/faq/new-to-piwik/faq_21984/ - We have linked it recently from Changelog/Twitter/Facebook and hope many users have read it, as it explains that we are (no longer) working at Piwik PRO.

And on top of that, there’s not even transparent pricing.

Currently this is the case, but we are going to fix this very soon: this is what our announcement is about. Premium plugins without clear pricing were removed from the marketplace after our announcement. You will be able to buy only the plugins you need, with an affordable and clear pricing.

are being forced to pay to use “premium plugins” as they’re only available

Nobody is forcing anyone to pay for anything. You will use the premium plugins only if you need them. we will never remove features from Piwik core or change our existing free plugins to make them paid. That’s not how we do things here at Piwik…

If you must, charge for premium plugins. Let us purchase plugins we
want. Don’t force us to go to “PRO” just to have access to plugins. I
see others having the same opinion and experiencing the same
frustrations. Don’t turn your back on the community that helped make
piwik what it is.

That’s exactly what we are planning so stay tuned! You should not be disappointed…

And we would welcome your involvement in the project if you can contribute your time to it, as we need a lot of help. https://piwik.org/get-involved/

Thanks for your feedback,
Best,
Matthieu

Piwik founder

5

Matthieu,

I mean no disrespect. I was voicing disappointment in decisions made, and expressing frustration in their effects on us - the community piwik users. I’ve read several pages of comments here and on github. I’ve seen where members of the community chipped in with input, ideas, etc… and then a plugin started and was then decided to make it for piwik pro only, and read the frustration there after in the same thread.

Crippled was a strong word… but the decisions to make the most important features/plugins only available for piwik pro users definitely hinders the larger community in terms of ability that should be available to us too. Let me re-iterate that offering pro and what comes with it is not an issue, it’s FORCING the community users to buy into piwik pro just to have access to those much needed features/plugins which is wrong in my and many others’ opinion.

I, like many others are willing to pay for these premium features/plugins. We’ve expressed that. But currently, we cannot… unless we pay to be “enterprise” customers of piwik pro… with its currently non-transparent pricing.

And just to respond to your assumption that I’m using the free piwik because I don’t want to pay for the for one of the hundreds of paid competitors… that is not true. I researched into options at the time I found piwik. I looked at several. What was most important to me was ownership, control, and flexibility. Piwik did that… and did it well. I chose piwik then, and integrated in several backends with the API. Perhaps there’s more options now, but I have not looked yet, because piwik was the choice and has been integrated - which only makes it more frustrating that in order to get access to these features which now exist for piwik, features which are today’s most needed insights, are not accessible without paying an unknown enterprise price.

So, again, I thank you for all you’ve done for us open source piwik users. I look forward to the ability to purchase these premium features as individual plugins - without piwik pro enterprise - and hopefully soon.

Thank you

6

You’re barking at the wrong three, piwik pro has nothing to do with Piwik