Hey Guys.

A question and an update -

Account Expiration Control (AEC) - how has this been for you? We're trying to decide on the best platform to use for Weever (turns any Joomla! site into an 'app') - www.weever.ca

Quick note - We ran into a 500 error from the quickstart on the Canvas Template - not a big deal at all - but thought I'd mention it.

- Hope all's well.

Andrew J. Holden
CartaNova.ca / Weever.ca

Hey Andrew,

Personally I like AEC but its very complex. What I like about it is that it can handshake with pretty much anything on your site. So it has micro integrations that hook into most major and alot of minor J extensions.

I use it in conjuction with JUGA for acl, docman for downloads. If I were starting anew I would probably look at what Dioscouri are offering but would consider AEC very highly on the list.

One thing for sure is that its virtually impossible to change systems once you start to have a few susbcribers.

Let us know what you go with. What others are on your list?

Anthony

Thanks Anthony,

Ambra Subscriptions (discouri) looks like a nice product - I'll have to check that out in more detail.

Our project parameters are actually pretty slim:
- Recurring payments (annually)
- Subscriptions
- Individual License Keys (to prevent spoofing.)

So what I've been looking for is mostly oriented towards providing a good interface, and some kind of user-friendly management of products, licenses for customers.

My main criteria is in utilizing an eCommerce system that can generate new orders/invoices within the application - instead of just relying on PayPal - which I would hate to do.

I've looked into Chargify, CheddarGetter, etc, but don't really want to spend the time to write a Joomla! Extension with API's for a single service. So, right now I'm basically comparing Ambra and Magento. I'm a big fan of Magento for eCommerce generally, but I'd really like this site to be on Joomla!...

I'll update this thread when I have more info.

- Thanks,
AJH

Let us know what you find. Im not sure but I think Ambra may be being merged into Tienda - but dont quote me on that.

I think redshop does the license key functionality. Might be worth a look too perhaps?

Anthony

I think you're right, re: Ambra <----> Tienda - make sense to me.

re: RedShop

Thanks - I hadn't really considered that (or VM). I've found a few solutions that would sort of work - the trouble is generating (views) for recurring orders for subscription plans in the framework (recurring billing) - after the first order.

That said (outside of Tienda) - I'm not a big fan of Joomla! eCommerce in general. I *love* Joomla! - but I'm hesitant to purpose it for eCommerce for more complex sales (it is a CMS most basically, after all.)

re: Subs

The other question being secure account management for users, I've been looking at Chargify and SaaSy in particular. SaaSy has a pretty great feature list (and apparently, good support) - but a higher transactional fee.

I also work with Magento. Recurring is a default option in 1.5, but I haven't explored capabilities there much. There is a subs extension for Magento from Aheadworks - but it won't be available for 1.5 for some time and I have some concerns about scaling at high-resource times.

- I'll update this thread once I have more info.

That would be great. Thank you Andrew.

Updates!

After a *lot* of research and technical discovery, we decided on Tienda for use in processing subscriptions for Weever.

Key points:
- Billing/Cycles update from recurring billing / subs.
- Integrates with PayPal Pro, including recurring/sub orders from Credit Card.
- Allows for mixed orders of subs and stand-alone products
- Nice path towards 1.6 and Nooku

...we're currently writing a plugin for Joomla! that will generate license keys (for preventing spoofing, not for DRM) for Weever and integrate with AEC, Tienda, etc, for other SaaS/Subs stuff.

AEC looked quite good as well, really. But ultimately we were eager to keep the code really clean and lightweight - and since we don't need to protect downloads just license them - I'm looking forward to modifying Tienda with license-key functionality and then working with it through 1.6 --> Nooku Server Framework.

In the course of researching all of this (and negotiating merchant options) I looked at virtually every subscription-capable Joomla! plugin, as well as 'top-layer' subscription management services like:

- Chargify
- Saasy
- Recurly
- Spreedly
- CheddarGetter
- PayPal Pro + Recurring
- SubscriptionBridge
- Other new stuff, incl. new Joomla! extensions.

..and quite a bit more. We were able to find the best value in terms of merchant account and transactional fees (2.2% or less + $60/mo) by going with Tienda + PayPal (and integrating to Joomla! directly in that method as well.)

I'm going to write all of this up into a 'small business' and 'subscriptions' eCommerce guide sometime in the next few weeks; I'll probably publish those PDF's on CartaNova mid-May (shortly after we release Weever).

- Hope that's helpful!

AJH

This is all great stuff Andrew, very valuable indeed.

Thank you for sharing. I have not tried PayPal Pro yet with Tienda, did you need to create your own payment plugin for that?

Thanks Seth.

I haven't implemented it fully, but apparently it's natively integrated now, including support for PayPal's recurring API.

We're basically just connecting our new key-generator and subscription-status-checker to Tienda directly via plugin compatibility methods.

Technically, to implement a subscription method with paywall-protected downloads in Tienda you'd need to still use Ambra Subscriptions with Tienda.

Ambra has a (soon to be resolved) feature/bug that doesn't update an Ambra subscription as a recurring billing cycle is processed in paypal, though, right now.

However, for Weever anyone can download - but you still need a license key to prevent spoofing - so we're able to skip that step and just have users/customer interface directly with Tienda's order history.

Tienda does include a change of group/ACL in Joomla! natively, so there's probably some other content-protected and download-protected workarounds that could be implemented until the Ambra bug is resolved.

We might create an extra payment module or two at some point for Tienda, to allow for better connections to Canadian merchant services; however, subscription and recurring billing is *so bad* out there right now, that PayPal (hardly a most-loved company here) made sense for now...

Thanks for the update, that one must have slipped past me. I think for most people the on-site transaction processing is the most attractive PP Pro feature.

I agree, and espescially so for start-ups as monthly costs are low, PayPal makes the most sense currently.

Cool, glad to help

I think we'll do a Weever integration for Tienda as a second-stage thing; that's one of the reasons that I have it on my calendar to have a quick chat with Anthony at some point - possibly some good potentials for Joomla! Bamboo there as well.

Did photos for a city paper article on Weever and the future of the mobile-web today; I'll post links here when it's online.

- Andrew H.

Thanks Andrew.