Low Moves Add-on Sales to Devot-ee

Low Schutte (maker of the great Low Variables add-on plus many more) made the move to exclusively selling on Devot-ee last week.

I thought it was a nice idea: sell my stuff on my own site in euros, sell on devot:ee in US dollars. Link back and forth so people can choose in what currency they’d like to purchase licenses. However, it became apparent that most of my customers preferred devot:ee over my own site. The convenience of having all their purchases in one place proved to be a big plus.

In addition to convienence, Low also noted tax issues (because of the VAT–value added tax–in EU countries) that made it difficult to continue to sell in two different places. Selling exclusively on Devot-ee made things simpler for him.

There are a lot of reasons to shop at Devot-ee, the main ones for me being keeping all of my licenses in one spot and the ability to transfer licenses to other accounts (to a client’s account, typically).

Many add-on developers already sell exclusively through Devot-ee because it makes the process of setting up shop and selling add-ons turnkey and simple. Some sell both on their own sites and on Devot-ee as a way to make it as convenient as possible for their customers to access their add-ons.

[Earlier this year EE add-on juggernaut Pixel & Tonic started selling exclusively through Devot-ee] as a way to refocus the pixelandtonic.com website and put the add-ons for sale where it made most sense.

From Brandon’s post back in April:

Back when the site launched, devot:ee was in its infancy, and its add-on store was merely a twinkle in Ryan Masuga’s eye. Now that site is a vital resource for the EE community, and with its user reviews, favorites, store, and now lists, it’s a much better place to find out about, share, and purchase our add-ons than this site could ever be. So rather than try to compete with that, we have decided to let devot:ee handle the dedicated add-on overview pages and purchasing exclusively. The EE add-ons section of this site is now an elegant menu of our add-ons, with links to devot:ee.

Devot-ee has proven itself as the place to be to buy, sell, and learn about add-ons for ExpressionEngine. People are buying there, so the developers who sold on their own are moving there. It makes sense for everyone.

It would be incomplete if I didn’t mention the obvious comparison between Devot-ee and the Apple App Store (for Mac apps, specifically). Many apps in the App Store are available on the developer websites but it is absolutely more convenient to have all of those apps in one place, right in my Apple account. I don’t have to worry about license codes, activation, going to multiple places to get app updates, or any of the annoyances of having my software purchases distributed across several different websites.

If a add-on is available on Devot-ee then that’s where I’ll buy it.

I have said it before: Ryan Masuga and his team built a website that I wish I had built. And I’d wager that EllisLab wishes they had built it, too.