First of all, I want to thank you for a much needed plugin package, CBSubs, and also thank you for providing Community Builder for free. I think many web developers owe their gratitude.

We as a company never even flinched at the thought of paying for CBSubs, especially being on a website that is generating revenue. Well worth the money not having to develop something ourselves that would cost us time and money ( and probably not work as well).

We purchased a CBSubs license with a maximum of 500 users. Great. That means we can have up to 500 businesses as paying customer. They can upload their CB profile just like before, but now we can manage their subscription status, plans, payments,etc. It's a win win for all.

However (here it comes)... I do have an issue paying CBSubs for using other software packages that are otherwise free, or which I have already paid for.

Here's a scenario... and please correct me if I am mistaken.

We have a site with up to 500 subscribing members, all businesses that pay us a monthly fee to host their profiles and special deals and services on our site. We market this website on radio, TV, billboards.. whatever and people visit the site to see what offers are on the table.
These visitors are anonymous and come and go as they please.

What happens when we, the site owners want to offer this anonymous visitor the ability to register with us? With their registration, we will offer to show them the "VERY HOTEST DEALS", allow them to save their location information, save their favorite places, to private message other visitors and business owners; and also to post in the forum. Of course, we would also save their demographics for our usage.

Sounds great, so far. We purchased a really cool forum a while back. Community builder has some great features also; all free - private messaging, cool profiles, etc. Joomla, another free package has its benefits too.

The problem is that when a free member registers, this membership counts against our licensed maximum user, 500. Why is that. Why do I have to pay for a larger CBSubs license just to use the software that I have already purchased. If someone registers for a free membership to my site, it really is not a subscription plan... nothing for CBSubs to manage. No revenue for anyone. It should not be counted.

This is not right.
Can someone explain this to me?
Is it me? I hope so.

I am starting to develop a dark place in my mind for CBSubs. Please explain.

Beat,

I do understand your position and in no way am I trying to discredit anyone.

But consider this, prior to installing CBSubs, my site could be extremely functional allowing anyone to come see my pages, register, use the forum, look through all of our business members services to make a decision on which restaurant to eat at, or which plumber to call.

The only missing element was a way for us to manage payments from our business members.

Enter CBSUbs. The solution.
Which now limites our functionality, without paying you for it.

Understand this: You wrote:

Hope that clarifies, and keep in mind that CBSubs features helping you converting free to paid

These registered visitors will never, I say, never be paid subscribers. They are just visitors, looking at our paid subscribers' deals.

Also you wrote:

overall features compare extremely well too to commercial solutions sold for 4, 5 or 6 digits figures

Yes I agree. This is why I purchased from you. But I expected to be able to manage up to 500 paying subscribers. In no time I could have 499 free visitors that sign up and never return again with only one paying member.

My only solution is to create a new app that serves the purpose of managing free registrations in its own tables, separate from Joomla or CB and work on integrating it into my site.

CBSubs was supposed to save me time, not create more work.

Listen, it is what it is. I have too much time invested in this already to switch or write something myself. I guess I will have to upgrade this time.
Unfortunately though, I will not be using CBSubs on other sites, which from a revenue stand point, doesn't help you either.

Don't get me wrong... it is a great product, it just doesn't serve my purposes.

I just looked into the pricing and saw it is only another $67 to upgrade to 5000 users. I guess I didn't realize the price was actually that cheap.

Glad you took a second look. Not bad, huh?