Hi all,

I've bought some agency licenses (plugins/themes) to use for clients. So I included them in the project to make it an easy one time payment for clients. Most licenses I use are lifetime or yearly. Obviously after a year I don't receive money for these ongoing costs for the yearly licenses for me to renew.
Is there a general rule or pricing model available on how to do all these calculations? Like pricing packages to calculate costs (from A-Z) that covers everything.

Big thanks in advance for any replies.

Edited February 25, 20215 yr by manas

I don't think there's an A-Z way. I'd just be upfront with the client, so design & development costs X, then these say 3 plugins require subscription at Y pa, just like hosting or an SSL. I've never had an issue with people questioning it as it's open and transparent, it's simply running costs of the website.

Thanks! Yeah probably no A-Z way possible. So you'd let the client pay you yearly for the 3 plugin subscriptions?

Yes, it's also quite good for repeat work as often they want a few bits doing.

For example Gravity Forms (Elite). Paid for yearly. What price should be paid for by clients to use this? The same (yearly price) for one site as displayed on the GF website?

Edited February 25, 20215 yr by manas

Another example. A Wordpress builder theme, costs like 180 dollars for lifetime. You'd let the client pay for this as well every year?

I get the client to pay for themes and plugins. I just install and configure. Same if they want stock images

However...

This is a very rare occurrence. I tend to build my own themes and use Wordpress blocks. This means I get all the cash.

Not quite, what I meant was if something is a one off fee then there is no ongoing cost. If however they need something in particular that in order to use requires an annual subscription then they should foot the cost. I don't actually deal with WordPress so cannot comment on how each plugin is paid for etc.

As @fisicx puts it, if they want stock images then they will have to be paid for due to licensing.

8 hours ago, BrowserBugs said:

I don't actually deal with WordPress so cannot comment on how each plugin is paid for etc.

Most premium plugins now have an annual fee. The license belongs to the person who paid for it. They are not transferable.

Can you buy in a company name? Often orgs don't have a 'person' to own anything.

3 hours ago, BrowserBugs said:

Can you buy in a company name? Often orgs don't have a 'person' to own anything.

Yes you can. The problem is where company A buys the license for use on the website for company B and the relationship then ceases. The owner of the plugin or theme will have no record of company B being authorised to use the plugin or theme.

This is why is far easier to get the end user to register and buy the product.

I've always purchases addon licences separately for each project, that way I can renew them as an when, and also should the client leave it's trivial to transfer licences to another developer or the client themselves (easy to do an the EECMS world anyway, not sure about other platforms!).

For addons that have annual usage fees I tend to bill the client annually, this includes a small fee to do updates.

As far as how much to charge clients I normally add on a bit of to cover purchase, installing, and a bit of time for initial support.

2 minutes ago, BlueDreamer said:

(easy to do an the EECMS world anyway, not sure about other platforms!).

Not so in wordpress.

44 minutes ago, fisicx said:

Not so in wordpress.

Is that the same for commercial addon developers who run their own purchase/accounts?

I'm used to be able to add details for each EECMS addon I buy:

- product domain
- staging/dev domain
- general notes
- plus of course access to licence numbers/keys + version downloads

All it takes to transfer a licence is an email, job done.

When you buy a theme from themeforest it's linked to your login email address. Usually the same with plugins.

This is why its not easy to transfer a license.

Hmmm, see with say Google Analytics, Search Console, My Business etc what I do for clients starting from scratch is make an email forwarder for something like ed@theirdomain.com. This means even if we part company they can still access and reset everything and just take me off the cc. The same for getty/shutterstock for where they got the stock images, or a postcode lookup that uses credits etc. Also handy as they can pay the bills and can never leave you out of pocket.

There is no standard rule or pricing model that can be used to figure out how much these costs are. To find the best pricing packages and solutions, each project should be looked at and calculated on its own.