Moved from "mycommerce" to "FastSpring"... why?

[axel.hennig]

The subject says it all.

Prevousliy located in Germany (mycommercy and DigitalRiver), now USA (FastSpring). Correct?

And: Any downside for us?

[Mario]

Prevousliy located in Germany (mycommercy and DigitalRiver), now USA (FastSpring). Correct?

Correct. When I started, I selected the German company share-it! in Cologne. Awesome people, great service.
After some years, they became MyCommerce which then was bought by the U.S. company Digital River. Worked fine and reliable for years, no complaints. About six or eight months ago, the first "signs" showed up. Changes to contracts, service reduced to an online ticket system, payout schedule doubled to two months+,...

When you google for digital river not paying vendors, you'll understand why I had to switch.

I have not received any payment for any IMatch sale since October 2024. Everybody who bought IMatch or an upgrade since October paid good money to Digital River, got an IMatch license, but I never got the money. And probably never will. This is not a problem for the customer, of course. The IMatch licenses are valid.

Digital River or MyCommerce don't communicate anymore, except with hollow phrases in their "support" system.

Digital River also moved their place of business to Minnesota, to make it almost impossible for small European software vendors to sue them. Not without hiring an US lawyer, which cost more than Digital River owns me. There may be a class action, though.

I've worked hard over the past weeks to pull everything over to FastSpring. This required a lot of changes in my customer database and the APIs I have to provide to connect with FastSpring. So far, everything is working just fine.
I need some more time for testing and I want to get the first payment from FastSpring end of the month to see if things really work. Their system is great and when I've had a question, my contact Job from FastSpring always responded within a day.

I cannot release IMatch 2025 unless I'm sure payment processing works reliably and I actually get the money my customers pay to FastSpring (sans fees). I'm quite confident, though.

And: Any downside for us?

No. FastSpring is used by companies like Adobe, CaptureOne, Luminar, TechSmith and many others.
And now photools.com is happy to provide reliable and secure shopping via FastSpring. Albeit with itsy bitsy micro sales

On the upside, I've had a lot more time to test IMatch. Spending weeks running it from a users perspective, on several different computers. This helped a lot to work out some final bugs, improve smoothness of operation and solve some user-interface issues.

[mopperle]

I've read months ago about the problems many devs have with Digital River and oustanding 5 digits payments. Most devs are moving elsewhere, in Germany some use JDS, those with an international customer base move(d) to Fastspring.
And running your own shopsystem is simply impossible for small software companies.

[Mario]

I've read months ago about the problems many devs have with Digital River and oustanding 5 digits payments. Most devs are moving elsewhere, in Germany some use JDS, those with an international customer base move(d) to Fastspring.
And running your own shopsystem is simply impossible for small software companies.

The DR payment schedule was two months. The money for October should have been sent to my bank account in December. When it did not came, I opened a ticket. And, based on their bla-bla reply, I've started to look for another company who takes on the "role of merchant", which is important.

Some were relatively unknown. Some had a monthly minimum limit (e.g. 25,000US$) before they accept you. Or you have to pay very high feeds for not meeting the minimum sales. I don't make 25,000US$ per month - I'd wish, though

If you sell something internationally, you are responsible for collecting and distributing sales tax. And that's impossible for a small company, because e.g. in the US, sales tax depends on the ZIP code of the customer. And there are even weirder rules and  reglementations to follow elsewhere.

Companies like DigitalRiver or FastSpring take care of that, and also ensure that sales follow the laws of the customer's country, that embargoes are enforced etc. The also perform fraud detection etc. I could never do all that myself.

I was happy with MyCommerce / DigitalRiver for many years (since 2001) and I would have never thought that they would resort to ripping off their customers so badly.

Anyway, I'm selling IMatch licenses and upgrades via FastSpring for a week or so and it works fine. Some minor issues in my customer database initially, but all sorted out.

Another option would have been, or actually is, the Microsoft Store. Microsoft has opened the store to "regular" applications like IMatch. But if you want to sell via their store (and use their billing etc.) you have to provide your software wish an MSIX installer.

MSIX installer install applications in an isolated container, similar to smart phone apps. This means that each MSIX app gets an isolated virtual file system for folders such as "ProgramData" or "AppData". And this does not work well with IMatch, which stores it's settings database in the "ProgramData" folder accessible for all software - usually. Also, MSIX does not support services, which means IMatch Anywhere in it's current form cannot be sold via the store. I have an idea for that, though.

The benefit of MSIX is that software can be installed and removed cleanly. Windows just removes the container file. And MSIX apps are isolated and cannot fiddle with other applications data (in folders like ProgramData and AppData).

I already have a special version of IMatch which can be installed with MSIX, and it works fine. The settings database cannot be shared between users, and there are some issues to resolve with Pack & Go (which has to exchange data with IMatch). But I'm sure that I can solve this once I have more time. I already have a shop account in the Microsoft Store and will look into this again when IMatch 2025 is out and things run smoothly.

Microsoft takes a hefty cut of 15%   but they do security checks, host the application, do the billing and IMatch would be available in the store, which is ensuring for users and provides some visibility and marketing. May be worth a try in the future.

[Mario]

My (previous) distributor for IMatch, Digital River and it's German subsidiary MyCommerce, filed for bankruptcy yesterday.

All the money IMatch users paid them in October, November and December will most likely be funneled to the managers in the US and I will never see a cent.

[axel.hennig]

Sorry to hear that. Hopefully the new distributor is better in that direction.

[Mario]

Sorry to hear that. Hopefully the new distributor is better in that direction.

I hope so to. Their first payment is due in February. But I have not seen any "bad" reports about FastSpring, and they have many large customers selling via them, e.g. Adobe.

What broke DigitalRiver / MyCommerce (apparently) was the US sanction against Kaspersky antivirus products, which was the largest customer of Digital River.

I still fail to understand how a company that takes money from users (e.g. IMatch users buying or upgrading), taking their cut and then sending the money to the software company (me) can get into financial troubles.
Unless they burn so much money that the demise of one large customer is enough to get them into the reds.
No idea, really.

[graham1]

That is a sad story, and I am very sorry to hear it.  

My one comment is about Microsoft and Microsoft Store. I hate to be tracked, I even more dislike the idea of having to log into anywhere simply to use my own computer. Although all my computers and laptops (except the iPad on which I happen to be typing this) are Windows, I have always managed to set these up without creating or linking them to a Microsoft account. Each version of Windows makes it harder to do this, and updates nag about creating a Microsoft account, but I have always managed to do this. This means I have no access to Microsoft Store, a limitation I am happy to accept in return for maintaining privacy. I would not buy anything which could only be bought and installed from Microsoft Store, if that would mean creating a link to Microsoft and my computer, after years of successfully keeping away from having to register with them.  

It is not that I have any nefarious reason for doing this, it is just that I do not like being tracked and having Microsoft spying on me and having my data available for marketing purposes. There are too many instances of being required to create accounts and log in to so many sites, for no good purpose other than to skim your details for yet more marketing, which makes me all the more determined to be able to continue to use the computer and operating system which I have paid good money for without having to log into a Microsoft account every time I use it. Maybe I am in a small minority, but I know of several people of a like mind who would never use Microsoft Store. 

Maybe this would be totally irrelevant to how many copies you might sell, but i thought I would share these thoughts for what (if anything!) they are worth. 

Good luck with sorting out your issues, via whatever route. It is awful to hear that you have been scammed like this and I hope that whatever route you do go down will be better for you. 

Graham

[Mario]

Many, many people all over the world got scammed by Digital River, I guess.

The problem for small, even intermediate, software creators is to find a company that will take on their business.
I was declined by some due to my small monthly sales volume. Others only take on SaaS customers (aka subscriptions).

If I cannot find "merchant of record" who handles payments and taxes, the only remaining solution is the Microsoft Store. I doubt that this would be a no-go for the majority of users, though.

And all that only IF Microsoft accepts IMatch, which is solely their decision. And IF I can change IMatch Anywhere to not be a service, but a regular app. The Microsoft Store does not accept services. And they have very strict rules when you want to use their store and payment processing.

Another possibility would be to use Patreon and only give access to IMatch to Patreons who pay a few dollars per month.

I'm not a fan of subscription models, though. You buy IMatch and you can use it as long as it works. There are plenty of IMatch 5, even IMatch 3 (!) users around.

Unfortunately - from a business perspective

Companies switch to subscription models if not enough users upgrade to solidly finance development and support. That's how it is.

[rolandgifford]

Companies switch to subscription models if not enough users upgrade to solidly finance development and support. That's how it is.

Macrium have just done that. They won't be getting any more of my money (but would have if they had stuck to the one-off purchase model)

I'm another user who won't buy through the Microsoft store. Partly for the reasons stated and partly because I'm not interested in the Apple model where I'm instructed how to work. Affinity 2 was originally Microsoft Store only but is now available outside as well due to resistance.

[Mario]

I've upgraded to Reflect X (with the subscription) during Halloween sale, giving me a 20$ annual subscription fee for life. Considering how important Macrium is, I consider this fair. 40$ per year would also be fair.

If the only way to sell software for small ISPs is the Microsoft Store, due to lack of alternatives, the Microsoft Store it is. We still have options, luckily.

[mopperle]

Companies switch to subscription models if not enough users upgrade to solidly finance development and support. That's how it is.

I second this. To ensure further development, companies need a constant revenue stream. Whether it is a big company like Adobe or a relative small company like Macrium. And many others will follow. You can not rely on a onetime sale and that maybe a certain amount of users will upgrade regularly to ensure your income or at least cover your costs.
In the enterprise business subscription, ok it is called maintenance fee, is the gold standard since many decades.
I myself have a lot of software based on subscription, but I also skipped some, as there was no further develoment, an moved to other software
Roland gave a good example: I still use the Adobe Photo subscription as there is no real good alternative. For a while I had subscribed the complete Adobe Creative Cloud, as I was using Indesign and Premiere. I cancelled this subscription, because the price was not relating to the frequency I used those products. Indesign was replaced by Affinity Publisher and Premiere was replaced by DaVinci Resolve. But I would never replace LrC or Photoshop with anything else and I'm good with paying around 80-90 Euro each year.
You may ask why Affinity can survive with onetime sales, TBH I'm sure they will midterm change their portfolio and also move to a subscription model. Davinci Resolve? You can get it for free or pay a fee for a more advanced edition, and it works, as Blackmagic makes its money not with software, but with highend hardware for video production.
Conclusion: Subscription for ,,professional" software will be the future, whether you like it or not.
So, Mario move to a subscription model. 😄

[rolandgifford]

So, Mario move to a subscription model. 😄

At which point his income from me probably stops. Even though the current licencing terms mean that I have to buy another licence for my wife to work on our single PC/database when it looks like she will have time to start doing that, as the licence is per user and not per seat.

I will buy very upgrade (which avoids the MS Store)

I don't envy him.

[Mario]

Even though the current licencing terms mean that I have to buy another licence for my wife to work on our single PC/database when it looks like she will have time to start doing that, as the licence is per user and not per seat.

This is how it was for more than a decade. IMatch is licensed per user. The licensed user can install IMatch on any number of computers, I'm not greedy. I also don't believe in working for free. And the IMatch project is a lot of work, I can assure you!

If a second person is going to use IMatch, he/she needs her own license. Else one IMatch license of IMatch could be "shared" between you and your wife, you and your family, you and the 100 people in your photo club....

This would not be a sustainable business model. I don't cross-subsidize IMatch by selling customer data. I don't show ads in this community or on my web sites. The money I make from IMatch goes right back into developing the next version and supporting the current version.

If a second license is not affordable, maybe consider a license for IMatch Anywhere? Which goes from 2 to 5 to any number of concurrent users. Works on any operating system, allows you and your wife to work concurrently with the same database etc. And the HOME edition of IMatch Anywhere costs only about 50$.

[rolandgifford]

Even though the current licencing terms mean that I have to buy another licence for my wife to work on our single PC/database when it looks like she will have time to start doing that, as the licence is per user and not per seat.

This is how it was for more than a decade. IMatch is licensed per user. The licensed user can install IMatch on any number of computers, I'm not greedy. I also don't believe in working for free. And the IMatch project is a lot of work, I can assure you!

I wasn't complaining. I'm sorry that you seem to have read may post as if I were.

I was simply saying that I prefer the current licence model even though that means I have to pay two licences for one PC/database.

I will continue to buy upgrades even though I am not necessarily interested in the improvements. I was excited about the AI capabilities of 2023 before I upgraded and quickly found that they are actually of no interest to me at all. I expect the 2025 improved AI capabilities to also be of no interest, but I will look. Other changes will probably make other improvement but the main reason I will upgrade is that I know you have to eat.

Subscription models force me to upgrade. Using two examples already mentioned -

I upgraded Affinity partly for the same reason that I upgrade IMatch, they have to eat, but I regret doing that. For me it is worse than version 1.  I use version 1, not version 2. I'm delighted that I'm not effectively paying for version 3 that I am very unlikely to want.

Macrium changed to subscription and I did the sums to compare that price to the upgrade price (based on time between upgrades) and they were close BUT I currently have a 4 seat home licence covering 3 PCs and a laptop and replacing that with 4 subscriptions isn't close, so I have stopped paying them. Hopefully they will come up with something, because they also have to eat.

[Mario]

Thank you for your business. Much appreciated

The support for modern LLM AIs in IMatch 2025 is just one point in the release notes. It will be very useful for many, I'm sure, but it's not the major/only/primary feature. At least for me, I can say that I use it now every day. It's really good. But I know that many users won't have a need for it. Which is perfectly fine.

The release notes for IMatch 2025 have 107 (!) entries. I've added another bug fix just today.
Each release note means minutes (rarely), hours, days, weeks or even months (rarely) of my lifetime.

The majority cover enhancements and new features. And a lot of bug fixes, in IMatch and 3rd party components IMatch uses. Security updates, e.g. in the integrated web browser IMatch uses to run apps.

Also, things like the support for JPGXL in DNG. Adobe introduced this in a recent product line, and broke every software out there which supports DNG - but not DNG with this JPG compression method. If a user does not use DNG, this does not affect her/him. If a user uses DNG, this may be the one feature that totally justifies the cost for the IMatch upgrade.

To make this single feature work, I've had to learn about Adobe's DNG SDK, learn how to make it work with LibRaw, learn how o compile all the dependencies andwhatnot. What took effectively a week of my lifetime is summed up in a two sentence release note.

I've spent weeks to design and implement features like the new background processing system. Months (!) on features like the new ribbons and menus, drawing about 300 icons as vectors in Affinity Designer from scratch.
All of this looks good and modern and allow IMatch to scale nicely from 1600px laptop screens to modern 5K monitors, I'm happy to say. But it took so much work to make it happen.

And, since I did all the new ribbons, icons and menus, I've also had to re-do almost 290 screen shots for the IMatch help system - so what is shown in the help matches what user users see in IMatch.

Then there are things like the Authenticode certificate (Digital Certificate, software signing certificate) I have to use to "sign" IMatch binaries and installers. The price just tripled last year, to over 300$ per year.

I can no longer just certify that I am me, and provide all the documents and stuff to get a certificate. And downloading certificates to local storage is also no longer allowed. I have to provide a hardware "key" to store the certificate or use a secure online signing facility, where my digital certificate stays inside a secured enclave provided by a commercial entity. Which also costs extra money.

But when I don't sign IMatch installers and binaries, every virus checker from Windows Defender to Sophos will immediately distrust IMatch and block it from running.

What I mean by all of that is that it actually costs me a lot of money just to develop and distribute IMatch.
Developing tools - cost money.
Licenses and annual royalties for 3rd party components - cost money.
Certificates - cost money.
The server this community runs on - cost money.
The servers photools.com runs on - cost money.
The computers I use to develop and test IMatch - cost money. I need a new PC this year, my current PC is five years old...
The Windows licenses I need to test and test installs of IMatch - cost money.
The time I spend learning about new technologies related to IMatch - cost money (or lifetime).

Don't get me wrong - I'm happy with spending time and money to enhance IMatch.
But this is not an open source / free for all project. I believe in getting paid for the work I do.

I charge for an upgrade every 12 to 18 months. Last time was June 2023.
And I can only hope that enough users upgrade to allows me to continue IMatch....

[rolandgifford]

Thank you for your business. Much appreciated

Thank you for your support which is in a class of its own. I can't think of any other software that I use where the support direct from the developer is in a class even close to IMatch

Don't get me wrong - I'm happy with spending time and money to enhance IMatch.
But this is not an open source / free for all project. I believe in getting paid for the work I do.

I charge for an upgrade every 12 to 18 months. Last time was June 2023.
And I can only hope that enough users upgrade to allows me to continue IMatch....

It is very fortunate that this DigitalRiver collapse has happened just before the release of 2025 (and that you noticed) rather than just after which I assume would have probably been the end of IMatch

[Mario]

It is very fortunate that this DigitalRiver collapse has happened just before the release of 2025 (and that you noticed) rather than just after which I assume would have probably been the end of IMatch

That's true.

As soon as I saw the first signs of trouble, I decided to delay the 2025 release. I had initially planned it for December 2024.
Unfortunately, I've lost all of the money of a huge batch of IMatch 2021 users upgrading to 2023 to avoid their discount being voided and to get the upgrade to IMatch 2025 for free. This really hurts, financially.

[beeellecee]

I shall upgrade for selfish reasons! I want IMatch to continue. Done with Adobe. So sorry you lost money with the DigitalRiver fiasco.

Anticipating IMatch 2025!

[kiwilink]

I'm saddened to read all of this.  

I will always upgrade because of the support you provide.  Many companies require a support program to ask for help.  Not IMATCH.  And, your responses are always first class.  

Whatever you decide on, I'm on-board.

Looking forward to IMATCH 2025😎

Kiwilink

[Tveloso]

Unfortunately, I've lost all of the money of a huge batch of IMatch 2021 users upgrading to 2023 to avoid their discount being voided and to get the upgrade to IMatch 2025 for free. This really hurts, financially.

This is horrible.

I'm probably being naive, but bankruptcy or not, they shouldn't be able to take their cut of those payments, and then also keep yours!  That's just stealing.  There ought to be some legal remedy...(I'm angered on your behalf Mario).

[mopperle]

Unfortunately, I've lost all of the money of a huge batch of IMatch 2021 users upgrading to 2023 to avoid their discount being voided and to get the upgrade to IMatch 2025 for free. This really hurts, financially.

This is horrible.

I'm probably being naive, but bankruptcy or not, they shouldn't be able to take their cut of those payments, and then also keep yours!  That's just stealing.  There ought to be some legal remedy...(I'm angered on your behalf Mario).

Google for Chapter 11. Finally it means Digital river will get everything and you will get nothing. Creditor protection as we know it in Germany means in the US just the opposite.

[Mario]

There is a German MyCommerce in Frankfurt, but I'm sure they don't have the money.
Digital River is a Minnesota company and I'm sure their lawyers and recently appointed CEO (lawyer) already funneled my and the money of all their other customers away somewhere the courts cannot reach it.

Some of their biggest customers which have their own law firms may be able to squeeze some money out. For small people like me, not a chance.