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HOWTO: Kick 'em

Movable Type 3.0 pricing is, bluntly, horrendous.

I don’t think software needs to be free; I shelled out for Movable Type 2.5, because I thought it was good software and I wanted to pay for it. I also don’t mind paying more for professional versions of the software. However, the new pricing is linked to the release of Movable Type 3.0, which doesn’t feel much like a major version release to me. The important new features, from a user point of view, are comment moderation. That’s not enough to justify a $75 price hike on the basic version of the software.

What’s worse is the limitations they’re putting on the various price tiers. Since there are no major new features in 3.0, they’ve elected to limit the number of authors one can have on a weblog, and the number of weblogs one can have in a given installation. I.e., a user who’s been merrily humming along with multiple blogs and multiple authors may suddenly have to pay $600 to get the functionality they paid $25 for previously.

These aren’t hypotheticals, either. Shelley would need to pay $600 bucks. So would Michael and Ginger. For no significant new features.

Me? $70, discounted by the amount of my previous donation. But I wouldn’t be able to casually fiddle around with new ideas any more. So, yeah, I’m looking at WordPress and Textpattern.

9 Comments

  1. The $700 license wouldn’t do for us. We have almost twice as many authors (39 compared to a limit of 20 on the $700 license), even though most of them aren’t active. And I bet the prices go up again when there’s a major feature upgrade, too.

    This is worse than the OS X $129 every year thing by a long shot.

  2. So, MT3 is out there. For very light users (1 author and 3 blogs), it’s free. For everyone else, it’s now pay software. Six Apart’s rationale is here. Not surprisingly, the internet first reacters are howling with the predictable outrage at actually ha…

  3. So Movable Type 3 is out, and there are a lot of unhappy campers out there. Main complaints: Too expensive for no real updates. There’s also a lot of “making money off of volunteer labor pool” kinda comments. Witness the…

  4. erk. You’ll have to let me know how those other blog tools measure up, Bryant. There’s no way I can afford to give MT $70 a year for my blog. That’s almost as much as it costs to host my entire site for the year.

  5. Earlier today Six Apart released Movable Type 3.0 along with information on the pricing of it. There’s been a fair amount written about it already that says a lot of what I feel about the subject. Bryant sums it up…

  6. Oh, geeze, Ginger. You’re right. That’s just insane.

  7. If you use Movable Type and were thinking of upgrading, at any rate. Check out the pricing for Ver. 3.0. Here at Boston Online, I’d…

  8. MovableType has announced a new licensing regime to go along with a Developer’s Release 3.0 and, well, I’m going to be migrating off MT. I pay for software I like, and the rates that SixApart will be charging are quite in line with what I’d expect and …

  9. It does feel to me that if 6A want to retain their customer base, they’ll need to tweak those licensing terms significantly – maybe cheap purchasing of additional weblogs or authors on top of a basic personal licence?

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