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Donation Store Cloud Released

Announcement

Mark Barrett Feb. 4, 2021, 9:50 a.m.

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When Donation Store first launched, it was intended to be a self hosted product only, whereby you download the software and run it on your own server. This has been overwhelmingly successful and I want to take this opportunity to thank those who have supported the project thus far and are currently Donation Store customers.

For quite a while people have asked us to provide a monthly subscription version of Donation Store. We investigated this idea and even went as far as to add subscriptions to our site to allow customers to subscribe but still host the platform on their own server. Unfortunately, this was abandoned.

I'm not going to re-iterate what I mentioned in the Cloud announcement post here, but the TL;DR version was that we heard peoples opinions about lowering the price of self hosted, we heard peoples opinions about providing a subscription version of self hosted, however dropping the price down far enough to be inline with other competitors subscriptions wouldn't be viable for us, because offering a self hosted product vs a competitors cloud based product is a support nightmare. We offer basically 24x7 live chat support to all of our customers. We need to maintain a price for self hosted that reflects the work we put in so that we can continue to make Donation Store profitable. Again, read more about it in the original Cloud Post.

Cloud is here

We found a compromise where we could offer a cheaper monthly price (and even a free plan, more on that later) by providing it on the Cloud. Now, we can maintain the same version across all of our Cloud customers and also be able to debug and fix any bugs found as it's managed and monitored by us.

So it's with great pleasure, we have officially launched Cloud and it is available right now. You can sign up at https://cloud.donationstore.io, or check our Pricing on https://donationstore.net/buy

Pricing

We needed to strike a balance between cost effectiveness for us, but also a good deal for you as the customer. That is why we chose prices that we feel are incredibly competitive.

As a Donation Store Cloud customer, you get every single feature we offer, regardless of your plan. We don't reserve Enterprise features for those who pay the most. All of our features are included with your plan.

Our prices are tiered based on how much monthly revenue you turn over in Euro per month. Below is a list of those prices:

€11 per month - Up to €2,500 per month in revenue
€15 per month - Up to €5,000 per month in revenue
€19 per month - Up to €7,500 per month in revenue
€23 per month - Up to €10,000 per month in revenue

You may notice we also have a Free plan. This Free plan, like the others includes all features we offer, however the monthly limit is capped at €250 per month. As you may also notice, the Free plan is marked as "Coming February 2021". We are holding off on releasing the Free plan for a month or so, just so we can gauge demand and make adjustments where necessary. We will release the Free plan, sometime in February.

We have priced these plans in this way as we are a firm believer in only charging you more when you make more money!

Enterprise

We have also added an "Enterprise" option, for those networks and customers who need more. While there are no application features specific to Enterprise, the things the distinguish it from the other plans are:

Unlimited Transactions/No Revenue Limit
No percentage of revenue taken
Run in Dedicated & Isolated Environment (not on shared app)
Failover Infrastructure for High Availability
Region Deployment Choice
Ongoing Application Monitoring & Management (we will get notified about issues before you even notice them)
Dedicated Account Manager
Live Support
Priority Feature Development

All of that comes at a fixed price. Plus, unlike other comparable Enterprise plans, we don't take a cut of your revenue. Our fee is fixed. With this, we don't use a "one price fits all" for all Networks. Our prices are customised for each network, so don't be worried about being quoted something super expensive.

As Enterprise is custom, please contact us regarding it! You can read more about it at: https://donationstore.net/store/enterprise

The Site & Docs

As you may have also noticed, our site has received a face lift, along with a brand new Customers section. This is intended to be the go to area for all things about our customers. Your stores look awesome and we want to show them off to the world! If your interested in being showcased here, please do let us know!

You'll also notice we've added a search facility to the docs and have given them a slight face lift. If you feel there are docs you would like to see there let us know and we can add them!

Legal Stuff

As we released Cloud, we've had to update our Privacy Policy, but also add a new Terms of Service and an Acceptable Usage Policy. Please do check them when you can! They can be fonud at: https://donationstore.net/legal

Next Steps/The Future

Our plans for the future are exciting. With Cloud, we can now test and trial features really easily. We have a huge list of features in our backlog that have been requested by customers. Some super imaginative and unique ones! So in the coming months, expect to see us add them.

With that, we have a lot of other ideas for the platform (which we aren't sharing quite yet, we will when we have enough to show), which will be coming in the coming months also!

See you soon!

Mark

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