04.30.07
Why SkaDate?
Categories: Industry Take
After many years of writing and using software I seem to have determined my opinion about internet business based on software.
Free/Opensource products
Open source is a great ideology, it came to create good software written by communities of great hackers. Open source software clearly benefits when there’s a considerable amount of motivated contributors who communicate well and contribute on a constant basis. In a somewhat mature stage open source software doesn’t really belong to anyone because there are several successful branches adopted by users. Open source will choose the most viable branch of software among the concurrent ones because people will use it most of all and contributors will be motivated to develop the best one further. Open source works when contributors and users audiences overlap greatly. Contributors need to be users to be motivated to develop the software further.
That is how open source was supposed to work and how it works. Best examples are Linux/Unix branches, of course.
Unfortunately that is not the case in online dating, social networking and community software market. I see neither enthusiastic individuals, nor companies being able to provide real benefits of open source software but making users face the downsides of running business this way.
Companies need to earn money. There’s also an opinion that any successful free product run by a company is going to become commercial to stay relevant.
Some individuals or small groups offer free software but rarely can offer good support for it because it’s a much bigger fun to write software than to offer ticket or phone support. At best, you are thrown to a public forum where individuals like you search for help. This is the point of the biggest inconsistency of interests between you and the developers. Further, how do you see developers’ project dedication change in one year? Do you really imagine your business depend on factors like the developers’ interests moving to something else.
The problem is that opensource product development is under no control of the most consumers. Face it: there are different stages of a software product lifetime, and some are more fun than others. One likes developing new features more than debugging. There are endless examples of opensource software projects fading away after initial stage enthusiasm end.
When you run business you HAVE to have someone in charge of everything. With opensource software you can only rely on yourself in maintaining your production site. Or you end up paying to 3rd parties who are not the original authors of the software. Most 3rd party contractors will write the code their own way, so you are at risk of sacrificing the original architecture and flexibility - this often costs a fortune in the long run.
Commercial products
Basically, I nail down this section to the old but often disregarded truth: you get what you pay for. Paying a lot of money in itself is not a guarantee of anything, though, because there are a lot of examples of bad overpriced products and services. There’s a lot to check in commercial software before contracting with the vendor. You might want to check if administration is convenient and powerful enough; if customer support response time is reasonable; if EULA conditions fit your needs. Finally, you can find out if the live demo speaks to you at all.
Never do I say that with all other things being equal software developed for money is better than software written for the love of it - everything depends on developers doing it. It just requires financial remuneration to keep bright people occupied full-time to produce stable result. Since you want to run a business, you NEED stable, predictable result.
Why SkaDate?
SkaDate is the leading vendor of hosted solutions for dating sites due to a unique approach to maintaining a large number of managed sites. We have grown from a leased dedicated server to our own datacenter. Since the SkaDate SuccessPoint distribution start (Aug’06) we set up almost 500 sites and no, we do not experience significant growth problems, because of the software quality and trained support staff. We use our own technique of semi-automatic maintaining, upgrading and fixing sites which makes possible to offer a full-featured dating community site for just $55/month which can be set up within 30 minutes. These numbers speak for themselves.
Since we adopted software as a service business model, our customers must have strong reasons to pay further every month. That is not the old school sale-done-game-over software distribution principle, and the most important, this fact unites our and customers’ interests.
Who should use SkaDate?
1) Online community business entrepreneurs willing to concentrate on site promotion and to delegate all technical background issues to professionals. Our managed solution is a simple and working business offer for those who want to do business but don’t want to do mechanics (SkaDate managed solution).
2) Technically skilled webmasters willing to find a stable software package with flexible configuration and strong architecture for further development (SkaDate software solution).
One note should be made - we found out that there’s also a considerable amount of skilled webmasters among our managed clients. Paradox? Probably not. I think it has more to do with understanding of division of labor and one-stop-shop solution benefits.
Who should not use SkaDate?
I will probably not use SkaDate (as well as virtually no other pre-developed software) if:
1) Nothing on the market fits well my unique project needs;
2) I can build significant amount of my project code by myself;
3) I can devote a lot of time and force for that.
In this case, I actually want a completely custom built software, so I go buy or get free the simplest and least-featured package out there just to save time for writing primary inevitable stuff provided that the software has sensible architecture, can be scaled well into the future, and can be changed to a point beyond recognition, since this is what my
plan looks like. Or just write everything from scratch. Though this is always the temptation all startups face, it makes much less sense than most people think. You decide.
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In the end of the day, it doesn’t matter which kind of a license software comes with. It’s all about management, projection, development, and – important - after-sale support. The further you run your business, the more individual support and development you need. Thus, the question of paid support and maintenance is becoming more critical. It’s just natural that for a piece of software that needs to be systematically developed and constantly taken care of, supported commercial product with serious customer service seems to be the only option for businesses.
Thank you,
Emil Sarnogoev,
Founder & CEO
Ben said,
August 28, 2007 at 10:45 am
Hi Emil,
I switched from webDate to Skadate Unity earlier this month. It has been worth it and I would not change back, but it has also been a painful process and continuous to cause frustration.
As well as paying for the software, the hosting, and the site migration, I have also had to raise many tickets to get bugs fixed, and to pay for extra work just to get basic functions working.
Take for example the search function. On the home page and on the search page the Sky template shows fields for searching for members within a number of miles for a zip code. This implies that this function is already working. It is not, and for the UK I have had to pay extra for this to work.
Several webDate features are not included in Unity - basic things like profile stats e.g. Who has viewed my profile? Whose profiles have I viewed?
I amazed to discover that basic text instant messaging will not be installed until next week (September 1st is now the ‘firm’ date). Poor IM in webDate was one of the main reasons for upgrading to Skadate, but Unity doesn’t have it yet!
It seems most deadlines that your staff give for finishing a job passes without completion, and is delayed by one week or more. They are always polite but there are some basic requirements that a business owner needs:
1. A software package that is a true improvement on its competitors. Skadate Unity improves in some areas, but is weaker in others.
2. Deadlines that are met, not delayed.
3. Pricing that is guaranteed not to rise with ‘extras’ that should be there by default.
It will take some time to regain the money spent on the migration to Skadate. Only then can I be sure that the upgrade has been a success.
Regards,
Ben
Emil Sarnogoev said,
September 3, 2007 at 3:14 am
Ben,
Thanks for your comments. I appreciate you noting good and bad points because there are always both of those in real-life big company work.
We do not have a good UK postcodes database in the package, because there are several different ones available from 3rd parties and they all have issues. If you give us reasonable database of postcodes, we integrate it for you, while the feature itself works on the example of US zipcodes. You can not have paid to make the feature work.
Let me comment on the points you make:
1. Our software package constantly improves, and since we make update releases constantly, you are protected from minor bugs and features imperfections. You just come and advise what you
2. That is the tough one, although we do our best to meet any deadlines we set. We have a lot of customers and sometimes there’s just more than we physically can do. Yet we do it.
3. The price stays the same since version 5, SkaDate SuccessPoint. Anything that is added to the package goes for the same price and is added to make a more complete software package.
I also want to add that we never stop working on individual customer needs and the general package. SkaDate becomes better everyday for the same money you once paid. If you feel there’s something wrong you can always contact me directly - info AT skadate DOT com.
Thanks for understanding.
Emil.