Anyone with a blog is writing about Movable Type’s crazy new pricing scheme so I thought I’d chime in.
As part of my consulting work I’ve implemented several corporate blogs, both as intranet and external solutions. In every case, I pitched some of the big advantages to MT:
- Low cost license
- Flexibile, no restrictions
- Easy to create multiple blogs
- Easy to add new users
Well, that’s all shot to hell. Now I’ve got to get the client’s (usually skeptical) IT department involved, figure out exactly what license I need before starting, and pony up $600(!) for what was previously $140.
More… I previously paid a $20 donation to be on the “recently updated” list on the MT homepage. I thought this payment was permanent, I guess not. They now generously offer to apply that to my new license fee. No thanks.
Also…One blogger really hit the nail on the head about Trackback, saying You would have to be insane to enable Trackback on a corporate blog. Go to the original Mena post and scroll down to see how everyone is blasting her.
Sorry this post has been disjointed, there’s just a lot going through my mind when my development platform of choice suddenly becomes prohibitively expensive and cumbersome.
Comments from the Old Blog
In our case, it’s more like $1,400, since we already have more than 15 blogs, so we’d have to buy two copies. $700 (or $600 if I call before midnight tonight), maybe, but $1,400? I don’t think so. So maybe I’ll start playing around more with Drupal, which we’re using for an experimental RSS aggregator anyway. Or maybe we’ll just stick with 2.6x, since it’s working just fine now.
Posted by: agaffin on May 13, 2004 12:15 PM
One of my installations, which supports a Rape Crisis Center, would cost us, a non-profit, close to 2,100 bucks. It would be a bit cheaper if we could just shake a money tree before midnight, but we’d have to do a pledge drive for that much money, and will never, ever, get it before the discount runs out. Not that that would make too much of a difference.
I switched to Drupal when the fist few rumors of such a licensing scheme surfaced, and due to some other oddities with 3.0. Looks like I will be pulling an allnighter and migrate the Crisis Center website tonight, too.
Posted by: Jonas M Luster on May 13, 2004 7:40 PM
Sounds like Ari and you others are crying out for WordPress (www.wordpress.org)!!! Check it out, check it out! (It’s open source, fully-featured, and free!)
Posted by: Anthony on May 14, 2004 10:11 PM