There have been a few questions on how IONCart will be priced and licensed. IONCart will be dually licensed.
The first version of IONCart released will be called the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). It will be a fully featured and functioning shopping cart, but will lack all but basic styling (in essence, will just be a wireframe), and will have a minimum number of features. Enough to sell products, fulfill orders, manage customers, etc. It will be released as both an Open Source License and as a Commercial License, neither of which I have chosen yet. The Commercial License of the MVP will sell for $79.00, while the Open Source License is obviously free.
When IONCart reaches a point that the MVP is no longer useful, a normal software development lifecycle will kick in. The MVP will stay as the Open Source License, and a new product, the Commercial Version (CV) of IONCart will be released. The CV will include styled themes, more features, and professional support. The CV of IONCart will cost substantially more than $79, but less than $1000 (per domain).
Why would anyone pay for the Commercial License over the Open Source License for the MVP? Good question. Paying for the MVP will allow development to continue. For this, you will get free updates to the Commercial Version for free, for life.
So, to reward early adopters, they’ll have access to future version of the software. Of course, I’d love to hear feature requests and bug reports from the early adopters as well.
I’m committed to making some pretty great eCommerce software, and IONCart will be a fresh look at eCommerce this year.
