Lets start with a little background to qualify some of the content in this article.
For eight or nine years now i’ve been developing php applications, modules, plugins, websites, etc for various open source and private projects.
I started as a keen young designer strait out of university doing a little freelance design work on the side while working in the graphics department of a local college.
This was mid 2000’s so it was pretty clear from the start if i wanted to get anywhere i needed at least a little web experience.
While not generally accepted as “complimentary skills” i found it very easy to both visualise how a website should look, and then how it’s put together (HTML/CSS/JS(well a little jQuery)).
That then lead me onto basic PHP contact forms, and early WordPress (already a big force and feature full even then). Which gradually progressed to plugin development, core contribution, custom applications.
Back then the “development” part of my work was just an added benefit for clients on my design work. But then something clicked … im enjoying “designing” codebases, functionality and user flow as much as the visual aspect. With the internet so all consuming over the years the design side of my brain became reserved for pet projects and how my PHP is written (i bet you guess how much i love the Laravel framework).
So my current status is Director (and still developer) at No Half Pixels Ltd. A (mainly) PHP development studio, currently specialising in WHMCS (billing/automation) module and theme development.
I started using WHMCS from pretty much day dot as i needed something to manage my invoices and payments (and a little client hosting which its designed for). I knew even then that the way forward was recurring income “services”. Which was duley noted as a switched my attention towards module and theme development (funnily enough adding WordPress type function to WHMCS).
I missed a few boats when it comes to the recurring effort. For example i registered on ThemeForest in the early years with the intention to create a few themes, decided against it thinking it wouldn’t be worth the time. Among a few other events i passed on (which i’m a bit bitter about mentioning).
The one thing thats been staring me in the face (and causing me problems) all this time is my current (and competing) e commerce / payment application.
Don’t get me wrong WHMCS is great at whats its designed to do, and ive benefitted from its functionality by making a living off module development for it. The problem is and always has been its not designed for what i do.
Unfortunatley so far i haven’t found anything thats right for me. Ive dabbled with opencart early on, blesta, WordPress EDD, and more recently Gumroad and Sellfy.
I’m under the assumption its not only me as there must be thousands of people in exactly the same position as me that have yet to find whats right.
There are a few (some seemingly incompatible) features i need in a service i use to accept payments and deliver my software.
- Simplicity (lets get the obvious out the way first)
- Unattached to my current software of choice for delivering my websites/sales pages
- Gives the appearance of being part of my website
- Can deliver it features across any domain/page of my choosing (i don’t want a separate billing platform for every area of my business, but also don’t really WordPress users seeing WHMCS based offers etc)
- Doesn’t require PCI compliance on my end, but also doesn’t limit me to Paypal (which i would love to offer only as a last choice)
- Allows me to offer licenses for products
- Gives the purchaser easy access to downloads, support, etc
- Reasonably priced (i’m happy to pay for a good service)
The list is a lot longer, those are just the ones i can think of right now.
So as you can quite a vast range of requirements. So far i haven’t seen a service offer this all in one.
Traditional services like WHMCS, WooCommerce, Magento, etc all can “do” the above but its shoe horned into there existing model (and needs me to keep it updated, hosted, etc).
There are some new services which try to tackle this, and for some i’m sure services like Gumroad, EDD, Selz etc work great, there always seems to be a few things missing.
I must say the latter services mentioned do go some way to offering what “i” need and that along with the awesomeness of things like Stripe, Laravel, AWS infrastructure has lead me down the route of trying re-imagine “Software E Commerce” in my perfect world.
In Part 2 im going to elaborate on my ideals, plans, and current status for creating this service.
The service will be built with my current needs in mind, but it will be offered as a solution to anybody who wants something a little different. Im eager to hear what current problems people are having with software sale and distribution and any solutions/ideas people think are needed in this sector.
Stay tuned and thanks for reading.
