# Feedback required. Online t-shirt designer prices



## TPrintDesigner (Sep 16, 2007)

Hi

Online t-shirt designers are very expensive  especially when your website and hosting fees are taken into account. I would like to know what price range you would pay if a company offered the following product:

1) Fully featured website/shopping cart with content management system 
2) Integrated flash script t-shirt designer with option for DTG or vinyl business
3) Free hosting

If this package used a topline cart such as Pinnacle Shopping Cart Software - Welcome and worked straight out of the box, what price per month would make you seriously consider it? 

Please note: The system would not be an outright sale, it would be a monthly subscription and include all future upgrades.

Looking forward to your input.
Dean


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## The T Shirt Man (Aug 29, 2006)

The only thing i would pay monthly for is my hosting. If i paid for software i would expect to own it, leasing this kind of thing really gives them too much power for me, they could put up their price, they could change their policy e.g. your monthly fee goes up if you make more money; If it all goes bad with them where do you go?

I have never been a fan of "business in a box" type of things.


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## cbpclothing (Oct 1, 2007)

yeah bad idea.. just takes the fun out of it.


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## oiskallmate (Feb 19, 2008)

triple agree, if your gonna pay for something make it something that's going to increase directly the usership of your site and then of course conversion. These knuckleheads prey on the "it's too hard to do it yourself" crowd and you spend all your cash flow on other people doing your work and then your screwed. Get a cheap or free cart set it up at a good hosting company and start hacking away at the immense amount of SEO and content it takes to get noticed in the industry today.


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## Arboristsite (Nov 20, 2006)

Weird I disagree with all of you. I like a monthly fee for a designer and here is why. If there is ever a bug, they will fix it, (you aren't stuck with it) and I guarantee it will happen eventually. You also get updates to make your site fresh all the time. Just like computers, websites get out of date also. So you pay a luxury of $50 bucks a month. If you can't make that back on it, you shouldn't have it in the first place. I have on online forum. I purchased the software and have a yearly fee for updates. I guess that is an option too if it were available. To just buy....no thanks.
My 2 cents.


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## Riderz Ready (Sep 18, 2008)

I think one issue is people do not realize is the cost of developing and mainting software code these days. In most cases people would not be able to afford to outright purchase a solution which is why so many companies have gone to a subscription based pricing scheme. 

For us we would never purchase a solution based on flash. It is slow and outdated.


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## Arboristsite (Nov 20, 2006)

I agree!! I like how ya think!!


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## TPrintDesigner (Sep 16, 2007)

On-line Jerseys said:


> For us we would never purchase a solution based on flash. It is slow and outdated.


Mark, have you seen the designer used by Blue Cotton? Easily the best designer out there and built with flash.
BlueCotton DesignStudio


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## MardiGrasTexan (Oct 11, 2008)

I've done quite a bit of research on the garment designers and I've found many companies/ freelancers/etc that can create a designer that you will own out right. I do like several of the ones that I've found online, but the prices that some are charging is astronomical....some even wanting a percentage of each sale of top of a yearly fee. I'd pay a yearly fee, but giving away profits just will not be part of the equation.


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## MardiGrasTexan (Oct 11, 2008)

On-line Jerseys said:


> I think one issue is people do not realize is the cost of developing and mainting software code these days. In most cases people would not be able to afford to outright purchase a solution which is why so many companies have gone to a subscription based pricing scheme.
> 
> For us we would never purchase a solution based on flash. It is slow and outdated.


Hey Mark...your jerseys are great!


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## Riderz Ready (Sep 18, 2008)

TPrintDesigner said:


> Mark, have you seen the designer used by Blue Cotton? Easily the best designer out there and built with flash.
> BlueCotton DesignStudio


If you are simply creating a shirt with some text and graphics anything will work well. In this market it is all about seperating oneself from the competition. That requires a much more sophisticated development platform then flash. Developing another flash based solution when there is already viable ones on the market already would not be a wise business decision.


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## Riderz Ready (Sep 18, 2008)

MardiGrasTexan said:


> Hey Mark...your jerseys are great!


Appreciate the comment - we are totally redoing our site as we have expanded into totally custom basketball shorts, board shorts, head wear, etc.


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

On-line Jerseys said:


> I think one issue is people do not realize is the cost of developing and mainting software code these days. In most cases people would not be able to afford to outright purchase a solution which is why so many companies have gone to a subscription based pricing scheme.
> 
> For us we would never purchase a solution based on flash. It is slow and outdated.


I think people realize it, however, they may just have different opinions on how they prefer to pay for it.

I've looked at a lot of these type systems and the 2 things that always turns me off is the monthly fees and the fact that it has to be hosted on someone elses server.

Sure, for some companies, they not want to worry about installing it themselves and the technical stuff, but there is a good amount of tech savvy customers that don't want their commerce data hosted by a company that also could be a competitor (many people that develop the software also have custom printing companies). Not that they would do something nefarious with the data, but I'd rather not worry about the option.

I prefer white label, fully branded services. Something I can customize to make my own on my own server. I already have a website, or know how to build one, I don't want to have to pay another monthly fee for yet another service. 

I personally prefer the pay a larger fee vs the software as a service model.

There are companies like vbulletin who have also spent tens of 1000's of hours in developing their software that many webmasters run on their site, but instead of the "monthly service" model to recoup their costs, they chose a one time fee model with "owned" license options and support/renewal options.

A nice designer that I've seen lately that has the "license payment" option vs the monthly fee is the one from LiveArt here.


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