Thanks for the info Dave, sounds all good to me! These rates sound good too!
BlueSnap also allows you to absorb the Tax/VAT in the price. What isn’t clear to me is whether MyCommerce sends you the charged Tax/VAT amount (and then you need to deal with it and add it in you accounting), or if they hold it off from what they send to you and deal with it themselves (they send it on to the relevant authorities, so you don’t need to deal with this).
As for the keys, BlueSnap works with HTTPS requests for obtaining and revoking a license key, and I had already found MyCommerce can do that too apparently (I have a JUCE-built console application running on the server for generating serials/decoding activation keys, … same code as in the plugin).
If I may jump in re: the copy protection, we have 17 years of experience and 40-odd releases, so I have a pretty good handle on things in this regard. Two points:
Copy protection is pointless if your goal is to protect your product from copying. Unless you use iLok (eminently debatable in this context, given the cost and bad vibes for the customer) your product will be cracked and distributed. Period. It is not a question of “if” but “when,” and “when” is minutes to days after release. There is literally nothing you can do about this. Caring about it at all is an exercise in futility.
Copy protection problems are your number one source of support issues. This is self-evident, as copy protection is inherently blocking, and any mismanagement on the part of the user, the OS vendor, or yourself is also blocking.
We got rid of all our copy protection in 2013, and the only issue we have to deal with now in that regard is customers writing us to ask why they weren’t required to enter any reg code. (This happens with enough frequency to be funny.) The benefits of not having it are manifold: customer goodwill, low support load, relatively minor fear of OS revisions, easy build process, no need to store anything in a customer “locker” on the server side, etc.
Obviously, our company is an outlier, and I don’t expect anyone to agree with me, but suffice to say that a cracked copy is not money out of your pocket, because that was never going to be your money to begin with.
Personally, I’d agree. However, I do some part time work for a professional workstation computer company. They sell machines and provides installations of your purchased software.
In audio and Windows machines, Cubase is the most used DAW. (Within machines purchased from that company)
For years, customers preferred to “arrange” Cubase 5.x. But as 64-bit is mandatory for heavy VI such as Kontakt, Spectrasonic’s, EW and others… Most would buy it those days. And those are the same people that would get it if it was available. Many of them will admit that VIs such as NIs they’ll obtain.
IMHO, protection might help but support and development (or price of third-party solution) should be taken in consideration.
If your product will be cracked it will usually takes almost a decade at least from Cubase (and what I’ve read here of Nexus) to get the “dirty” users back.
As @crandall1 suggested, For a small product starting off it wouldn’t be cost effective to develop and support protection…
Yeah, if you make something everyone wants, well… that’s a good problem to have and you can hire a Team to deal with it. For our purposes, where most of us have 0-5 employees, dedicating the kind of resources you need to combat piracy will result in resources that you don’t have to make a better product and market it.
I guess my point is that, at the level most of us operate, we’d see far more benefit from marketing and R&D than we would from combating piracy.
I see either point is valid, there are just different premises, different strategies, different price points. Everybody will have to find their individual ways.
But good that we got the different points of view collected.
