Collis Ta’eed, of Envato fame, posted an interesting link to Twitter recently. A new website called WP Plugins that is trying to be “The WordPress App Store.”
What exactly are they doing? They’ve set up a site reminiscent of the WordPress.org plugin repository, but for commercial plugins. As a customer, you can browse potentially useful plugins, and pay a flat fee (which the author chooses) to download the files. You can also opt to pay a subscription fee to gain access to an exclusive support forum, and instant access to upgrades to the plugin. (Those who pay the one-time fee instead of subscribing have to pay for the upgrades.) The plugins are all GPL, as WP Plugins requires it of all submissions.
As a plugin developer, you can put your plugins up for sale for a price you choose. You set the download price, and a subscription price if you wish to offer the option, enter a description, and then upload the plugin. WP Plugins takes a 10% cut of the sales, and you keep the rest.
What do you think? Is this a good option for commercial plugins to do with? It certainly takes a lot of worries away from individual developers, and could potentially put a lot of plugins in one easy to find place. It doesn’t necessarily seem too bad for the consumer either. I think it’s interesting, and I’ll be watching the site to see how things develop.
