Movable Type 3.0 is Worth Paying For

Published 4 years, 5 months ago in Moveable Type

Six Apart just released MovableType 3.0 (about time) and I have to say that I think it’s worth paying for for 90% of the audience that it’s aimed at (hackers and developers and people that want to ‘own’ their blogging service).

I have to applaud Six Apart for charging for MT 3.0, but the pricing structure is pretty complicated. I would have preferred a $100 price tag for a personal edition with no limits and $500 for a commercial edition with limits, but that’s just my preference. It’s tough to set prices properly when rolling out new products. You never want to price things too cheaply on launch, because it’s really tough to increase prices (only publishers that sell advertising space seem to be able to do this well) and you don’t want to price too high, because then you’re afraid you’ll lose sales to the competition.

The reason I’d have preferred only two pricing options is because I’ve already donated back with MT version 2.1 or so, and I’ve loyally upgraded since then, and two options make the decision sooo much easier for the consumer. In addition, the MT pricing page should really offer TypePad as an option for people, because Six Apart really offers three real options to customers and they might miss out by not promoting that service on the MT pricing pages…

Just my thoughts. MovableType is well worth paying for, but now I have to figure out what level I want to pay for, what’s included in each level and what’s not, and what my wallet can afford.

Until I figure all of that out, I’m sticking with 2.661. I know it. It works, and I’m actually pretty happy with it.

update: It looks like Six Apart is rethinking the licensing terms and possibly the pricing for MovableType 3.0.

6 Responses to “Movable Type 3.0 is Worth Paying For”

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1 Chris May 14th, 2004 at 10:32 am

Currently, I can do whatever I want with MT - for free - as long as it is non commercial in nature.

If I upgrade to 3.0, I need to pay $69 for the exact same functionality I have now for free, or go with the crippled version with gives me less funtionality after the upgrade.

That is a real easy decision for me - I’ll go with option # 3 - open source.

For me, this reiterates the importance of open source software. When you use closed source stuff, you are bound by the whims of the developer. Open Source protects you from that.

I’ll looking into my open source options over the next week or two. Wordpress looks good, and I’ve already got a working implementation of Blosxom on my server. I just need to figure out the migration stuff.

(ps - had to rewrite this as your install of MT Blacklist is offended by the the word “n0ne”
2 jason May 14th, 2004 at 11:53 am

John, I agree completely that MT is worth paying for. But the pricing model is crazy. All these arbitrary user-number or blog-number barriers, and the ridiculous number of “packs” of services… it’s crazy.

My sincere hope is that Six Apart doesn’t bullheadedly defy the backlash, but instead re-think their policies. Your suggestions are good ones. I’d be happy to pay a fixed sum for an unlimited uncommercial MT installation on a single computer. And I’d be happy to pay within a reasonable pricing structure for a commercial license for my own business. But the current plan is just insane.

Gotta love the fact that they allowed trackbacks to their announcement, though.
3 Jon Gales May 14th, 2004 at 12:50 pm

The pricing model is insane. Not only does it limit blogs/authors for personal use (linkblogs and the like make the number of blogs increase fast), but even for $600 (with the price discount) you can only have 15. Not their smartest move.
4 Jim May 15th, 2004 at 5:40 pm

Paying 100$ for a blogging software is a little stupid I think, unless of course you really don’t care. MT is not that great, and believe me, WordPress is even better than MT in many issues.
5 Jin Kuwata Jan 10th, 2007 at 7:13 pm

Just wanted to chime in. This was a useful article. As a small start up (full time student, full time business owner) I really think Movable Type is an elegant, accessible piece of software that even someone like me can set up and use to design a commercial site.

It’s hard for me to say what it is worth in terms of pricing (I’m paying $149 for the commercial license - 1 time payment) but for the ease of use and intuitive tags that I can handle in designing my site it is a package I prefer over other CMS systems like Joomla and Typo3 despite the fact that those packages are free. Maybe if I was more computer savvy I would go with one of the other options, but MT is the only CMS package I tried and quickly understood.