Preastashop Addons should be improved

[wakabayashi]

Hello

 

I dont know if other people think the same, but I am quite disappointed with your Addons system.

 

1. Why don't you allow people to rate the moduls? Giving comments would help other people a lot!

2. Why is updating always so expensive? I think for every module 1 year update should be included. Yesterday I bought a module for 29,99. (Yes I know this is not expensive). But module is really not working well. Many free modules in this forum are coded more professional. Update for 1 year is 20.00! What the hell is that?

3. Customer Service: Writting to Luiz was completly senseless. After complaining he just said: thank you for choosing pretsashop, have a nice day.

4. I bought modules on codecanyon. Actually to buy from official store should give some advantages but you pay maybe a bit more. After buying 3 moduls on both plattform I can say: Codecanyon all moduls were working perfectly. Price was low and support is good. 3 buys on Prestshop: 1 does its job well, the other 2 has bugs -> support bad!

 

In short: When I read your prestashop blog (which I like), I can see that you do 10% of what you recommend yourself. Thats kind of ridiculous.

 

What is your experience with Prestashop Addon store?

[samyha]

Hello wakabayashi,

 

Thank you for your feedback. We always appreciate our users' insight, as it helps us to get better every day. 

 

1) So far you can rate the module you buy, but not leave a comment, which, you're right, should be useful for everyone. Actually, Our Addons team is currently working on this feature and we hope it will be ready soon. 

 

2) All the modules sold on Addons are not developed by the PrestaShop team, but also by our contributors, who are passionate developers. Coding a module is a lot of work, and updating a module as well. I don't think our developers would like to work for free

 

3) As I told you above, a lot of modules are developed by contributors of the community. If you're having troubles with one of them and their support, our team is here to help you out. You can contact them by email here: 

I'm also at your disposal if you need any help about a specific issue

Have a good day.

[wakabayashi]

Thanks for your fast answer! 

 

I know that people need to earn money by developping. But Let's take the example above:

I bought the module for 29,99. 1 Year update is 20,00. Why dont you force the developper to guarantee 1 year update. Then maybe he prices with 39,99. We all know that almost only revenue is important when we talk about selling modules. Because marginal cost are almost zero. 

 

I am sure: If you guarantee 1 year automatic update you will sell more, people will be more happy and the official store has a real advantage! The manual updates are just to complicated for many (not for me) and use too much time. 

[samyha]

Hello,

 

Thank you very much for your suggestions. We want our developers to feel free and to love sharing their work on our market place, so I don't think that forcing them to do anything is the right solution .

 

However, feel free to submit your remarks to our team here: http://bit.ly/Zv7GyO

 

Thank you again for your involvement

[Kamel Boukhateb]

love your avatar , just sayin'

[Dh42]

I think the updates are a point of contention. It is a main reason that I do not buy modules from the addons store and why I do not recommend it to my clients. Here is a run down of the reasons.

 

1. Most developers that sell modules on the addons store and on their site offer free updates on their sites. 
2. I have had several clients that have bought both the Common Services Amazon module and the Business Tech Google Merchant Center module, only to discover bugs that need to be fixed. The developers fixed the bugs and uploaded a new version to the addons store, but then my client cannot download them because they did not pay for updates. I have had more than 3 clients have to contact PrestaShop over this issue and one of them actually got the module maker to just give them the new version. 
3. There is no set pricing structure, it is just not a competitive market place. 

 

All of these things can be fixed though pretty easy, it just takes a bit of understanding what the issues are. This is how I would fix things, if I had a say in it. 

 

Sell modules for PrestaShop versions. Then charge a version upgrade price. If I buy a 1.6 module that is updated 20 times, I get 20 free updates. If 1.7 comes out and new 1.7 version is released, I would need to pay an upgrade price. The reason I would think for more than 80% of the "upgrades" are bug fixes. It is not reasonable to charge people for bug fixes.

 

At the same time I would come up with a tiered system for module pricing. Some of the pricing is just silly. Like take these modules, http://addons.prestashop.com/en/search?search_query=eu+cookie  $40 is the cheapest one. Or I could get one from here, http://codecanyon.net/item/prestashop-ue-cookie-/9524289?WT.oss_phrase=&WT.oss_rank=17&WT.z_author=shacker&WT.ac=search_list  for $14. And look it is from the same author as this one, using the same screenshots and all. http://addons.prestashop.com/en/front-office-features-prestashop-modules/18229-ue-cookie-.html  

 

Envato sets the module prices, PrestaShop needs to do the same thing.