One reason why I may consider switching to competing software…

[Digi]

I do not know why you say that the cost involved have little to do with the usage. You will want to say that people are out to find the lowest price possible, so according to that logic to cost is a factor.

I think you mis understand my reasoning. I noted specifically that it wouldn't matter if the cost dropped 50%, people are not willing to pay reasonable prices for custom work. So the EXTRA cost involved when IPS had to up-sell contractors (as a middle man) for their custom services was unlikely to be the cause of the service not being used. That was the point I made about cost. Not that cost in itself didn't matter.

[Rikki]

I fully understand what this comment means and it was one of the reasons that I did not use the custom services off IPS' website directly since I knew that it was not being done in house and the cost would be lower without the middleman. IPS can delete this comment but it is simply meant for IPS to know why the service could have been used less. It could have been offered for less when it, similar to the hosting had middlemen. I understand why it was done as you guys were just starting out, but this ended up resulting in higher prices for the end-user and less control for you as a business.

Not all work was outsourced. We still did many projects ourselves.

[VelvetElvis]

I just realized that this topic was started by someone calling himself "getstuff4less."

Maybe he should try a different name when negotiating prices?

[getstuff4less]

• First of all, my name is based on the fact that individuals get stuff 4 less on my website. My main complaint was not the price, if you read my you will see my main complaint would be hiring individuals at any price. In the past, I have not negotiated prices as I felt they were fair. Hopefully, individuals who have worked with me in the past can back up the fact that I am a fair person.

[Logan]

Just thought I'd offer my thoughts on working at bargainshare and with this guy.

He is indeed a very fair person to work with, it's more than a pleasure to work with him. I've never had a problem when it came to pricing, nor was it a problem when I required him to explain what he requires... very easy to work with. Infact, I still work with him at his site, but my modding skills aren't exactly up to par enough to complete most of the mods he wants hence the creation of this topic.

[bfarber]

Availability is not completely about price, though it's a large factor.

Availability is simply due to not enough people being able to accomplish what you are after. There are dozens of PHP developers out there, but I suspect you are looking for someone with IPB experience to do the work to your board, which makes perfect sense. The problem is that there are not a lot of developers who can handle larger projects in the IPB community itself. You could try some of those sites where they bid on the project for you, but you never know what you will get.

A large part of the reason that there are not more modders in our community, is because they don't feel they can benefit from it enough (mostly financially) to do custom services. It's all tied in together.

[Myr]

This topic is fairly well timed for me. I just recently started to get quotes on a relatively small project (making an open source software work with IP.Converge). I nearly swallowed my eyeteeth on the quote, as it was only a little less than IPS quoted me last year for the whole program written to my specs.

I'll admit that my programming experience is more in the physical world (robotics, machine controllers, industrial automation), but I was figuring it would take me about 15-20 hours. I figured anybody familiar with PHP development and IPB/IP.Converge, would be about half that. My issue is that I work 50 hours a week and stringing together that much time on top of everything else I have to do is a little daunting.

To be fair to the person quoting, I'm sure they are far better at estimating things than I am. It has been eyeopening to say the least.

At this point, I'm fairly well locked into IPS. I'm planning on buying IPD when it becomes availible, which will tie me ever closer.

Myr

[Digi]

This topic is fairly well timed for me. I just recently started to get quotes on a relatively small project (making an open source software work with IP.Converge). I nearly swallowed my eyeteeth on the quote, as it was only a little less than IPS quoted me last year for the whole program written to my specs.

To note on this. Sometimes this is just how it is. Depending on the software needing integration, and what you requested from the "full program", it may actually be harder to do than to work from scratch. I've come upon this sort of things many times in my experience due to the improper documentation, the horrible organization, and the bad naming structures of classes, variables, and functions of other programs. These make my job more difficult, because I have to basically learn the other program to understand it, which could take weeks or more depending on the software, and, when in comparison to building it myself, I perhaps have core logic laid from previous work and could start there with little overhead.

[3dsoft]

I am actually thinking about switching from vb to invision, but we haven't decided yet. ;)

[GTB]

First of all, your software is very good feature wise, code wise and in general customer service is much better. Now that that is out of the way let me share my concern as a business

[bfarber]

If I understand you right, you seem to be annoyed because support is not interested because you have some custom work done on your site, and it's not a clean un-modded installed of IPB anymore. I could be wrong, but that's how it sounds after reading your post.

If thats what your getting at, other major forum software developers like vBulletin are no different in that stance. If you ask for help with a problem on your board. They will ask you to remove all mods first so the board back to standard, before they will entertain you. To be honest I can understand why, it could be a mod or a PHP file edit causing the problem. And it can be impossible for them to know, what has - and whats not been altered. Unfortunately, when a person decides to start hacking there board they have to realise and accept thats going to happen as far as support goes for your forum board.

You didn't understand him right. ;)

I believe he's fine with the above - he understands our position on custom modifications.

His concern is he can't find anyone to actually DO the custom modifications to begin with. PHP developers who are able and willing to take on projects are often hard to come by.

Although this too is outside the scope of our capabilities as a company, it is a different beast from what you inferred from his post.

[getstuff4less]

Brandon, you are correct. One of the problems is that some companies do not seem to have customer service down. This is why if Invision offered custom modification it may be more attractive. To give you an example, it has been over a week and I still have not gotten a quote on my modification from metalaxe. This is after I spoke to them clarify the modification and had to contact them via another e-mail since my initial e-mail was blocked for whatever reason. In that time, I already got someone to make me that modification and now we are working on working out the kinks. I have given him four and more projects in the past week.

[Digi]

Sorry you feel that way. I sent you an email Monday regarding your request and was going to call you tomorrow morning. I am glad you found someone to get it fixed up for you though! :)

[getstuff4less]

I did not get that e-mail. It's odd that I would not get e-mail only from you. Anyways, I did not say you were a bad company. It's just to say that certain customer service issues could be improved. Doing so will allow you to command a higher price. Being a great modification company is not just about the quality of the work...