We just published some details on Graffiti licensing and pricing.
Graffiti will be available both under a free non-commercial "Express" license as well as a "Commercial" license. For a limited time, we're offering the Commercial version at $99.
on the commercial version do you have to choose the unique url at the time of purchase?
Rob Howard has announced on his blog that Graffiti CMS will be released on January 15. It will be offered
Will non commercial license free?
@timheuer, no you do not have to choose the URL at the time of purchase.
@Al, yes, the non-commercial edition will be free
Hope that helps!
Are you saying that the free version will not have SQL server support?
@Chris, that is correct.
Thanks for the reply.
That doesn't really make sense to me. Why would you care what database provider I use to store my content in? I would really appreciate it if you could explain the rational behind this descision.
Thanks in advance!
@Chris, SQL Server will be our primary database that we will recommend for customers. It's by far the easiest for us to support if there are problems and the easiest to optimize.
SQL Server is also a commercial product and we know customers will buy the commercial version of Graffiti to be able to run Graffiti within SQL Server.
We in fact want our commercial customers to use SQL Server and Graffiti together. Note, if we offer Oracle support it would also only be in the commercial edition of Graffiti.
I agree 100% with you on your reasons to recommend SQL over the rest for your customers. SQL Server is simply better than most database solutions, especially for these types of applications. Hence the reason for me wanting to use it.
I still don't quite understand why I can't use SQL Server with the free version. There are tens of thousands of people (and potential Graffiti users) out in the wild that have SQL available as part of their shared hosting packages. I am one of them. Ther are loads of people that will have SQL Express available to them for free. I also don't want my content residing in an Access database living on some shared hosted environment. So, where does that leave me?
Now, up front let me tell you that I am not going to pay for Graffiti. Not for my blog anyway. Maybe at $20 I will think about it.
You guys have done a great job with this product. It is so flexible and easy to use. There is even a MySQL database provider with an Orcale one on the way. It really would be a shame to start restricting us in this way when it comes to SQL.
Finally, what stops me or anyone else writing our own SQL server provider?
Graffiti is some serious competition for WorPress and some other blogging engines \ CMS tools but you are going to need a strong, active and big community of users to make it a real success.
I realise you are in this game to make money so Telligent can continue existing and y'all can feed your families. Just my 2 cents.
Please don't take these questions \ feedback the wrong way. :)
So is the MySQL provider you blogged about the other day also only available for commercial users? Will Access be the one and only option for the free version?
As a fellow software developer, I respect that Graffiti is an amazing product and you deserve to get what it's worth. However I don't see the business case for limiting which database you can use. Chris has some very good points...this is a great competitor for WordPress, especially for us .Net junkies. Something similar to Community Server, where the free version only has the community to support it, sounds ideal. Or at least make Sql Server support as some kind of add-on for ~$20-$30...something that an average blogger can, and would be willing to, pay for the feature.
In any case, you guys did a great job with Graffiti!
@John / @Chris -- we've been re-thinking this some today and will likely just make all databases available for Graffiti. More details to come...
Thanks for the feedback Rob. :)