[Announcement] It's Arrived! Edit Actinic from your browser, via plugin

[Folk]

Regarding Actinet:

I notice on the site it seems that this product is ready for sale?

I'm just wondering what others think of the pricing? I think this is a great idea but at the moment this is a desirable feature for me as opposed to essential (due to size of business etc). For this reason I think I would be a little reluctant to spend £300.

I'm sure you have done your homework with the price but i'm just wondering what do other Actinic users think?

Might there be another version for small users.. Actinet Lite or something?

[TraceyHand]

actually, even as a "small" user, I thought £300 was cheap!
It's considerably less expensive that the equivalent Actinic upgrade package (and wouldn't surprise me if it's more effective/efficient/versatile too)

[RuralWeb]

For this reason I think I would be a little reluctant to spend £300.

Cheap as Chips

[TraceyHand]

Cheap as Chips

that'd be some bag o' chips though!
Served on a silver platter?

Salt and vinegar with that? in a 24 ct gold shaker

[george]

I thought it was a bit expensive too, although we've already been well and truely shafted by buying Multi-User. One point that really p*ssed me off with M-U is that you can only have one Admin logged in at a time, and even then you can be restricted in what you do as the order dwarf can restrict you doing certain things. Actinet seems to have started to build the bridge though, although you cannot create products, you can however edit them. One workaround would be to have 20 (or whatever) new products sitting in a (hidden) section, ready to be used when needed.

I feel a bit guilty at not testing this, but if Gabriel knows of our recent (major) problem then hopefully he'll understand why.

To be honest I've been very wary of Actinic since this problem, hopefully I'll trust it again one day.

Its early days for Actinet, if anyone can make it an essential purchase for The Progressive Actinic User its Mr Pink. Good luck fella.

[Jan]

It's considerably less expensive that the equivalent Actinic upgrade package

That is not always the case because the Actinic equivalent is a multisite product. I think it's good price though and over the years I've had lots of people asking for access to their sites over the internet so I think it will be popular.

Regards.

[Darren B]

Just a little thing to remember, the guys working on this have done so to easy there frustration at the limitations of actinic, which they use, the software was written to help and as such these guys have put alot of time and hard work into creating this.

The main question for you is

What are the costs involved not being able to do the things this little add on does. can you save, travelling costs, staff time e.t.c

break it down and you maybe supprised.

If you ever going to make a purchase it helps to do a + & - chart, we all have our wants but without really looking at it you will never know if it was just a waste of money or not. just MO

D

[RuralWeb]

lots of people asking for access to their sites over the internet

It also means that Actinic can now compete with many other ecommerce products which have a web based interface - so we now get the best of both worlds - desktop AND web while all the others will never be able to be desktop capable.

[gabrielcrowe]

re: multiple sites.

you can install actinet on the same computer, and point each install to a different shop, either on the same computer, or on multiple computers. or, have multiple computers, and install a version on each computer.

all i did to get to them all, was make a folder of favourites in firefox, add each shop i have to it, and then every morning, right click on the folder and say 'open in tabs'.

voila. each tab is a shop. running anywhere on your network. all in one place.

there are a lot of people that have a computer running each shop. well, in that case, its simple to have a tab for each shop. and then have a general overview of each store. a sort of 'central hub' if you like.

though actinic supports 'sites' in a single app. this scenario is complex to maintain. and for those with 5 or more sites, you'll know what i mean

as for the price, well, we rationalised that the only way you'd *need* actinet, is if your company had grown past its 'hobby' status and into something that consumes your life. We think that the price is actually rather fair.

With all the extra features coming, you'll soon realise, that this *is* the lite version!

There are of course, volume discounts.

I must point out however in all fairness, that there is a lot of Jans software, that is a perfect partner for Actinet at the moment, and thats her automated upload and download. And order completion plugins. Since Actinet is aimed primarily at getting the data out to you, its very important to keep your shop uploaded and downloaded regularly.

The only reason its not actually on sale right now, is we are waiting for Protx to get back to us so we can fix online payments. and we're writing some documentation to help people install, and configure. we'd like to get everything right, instead of releasing something shoddy.

gawd, protx can be slow sometimes.

[pinbrook]

I had a price in mind for what i thought it ought to come out at, and the released price was bang on.

There already seems to be a split here, those of us who regularly quote for actinic work feel the price is realistic, those who build/run stores thinks is pricey - which in itself speaks volumes

[TraceyHand]

That is not always the case because the Actinic equivalent is a multisite product.

fair point.
what Actinet does do is open up multi-user capabilities to those of us who either don't need or can't afford the MU/MS packages

[gabrielcrowe]

anyway, site review: what do you all think of the site?

its a hybrid php cms (modx) and actinic8 with some convincing, i removed the 'brochure' pages, and used a cms. elements such as the navigation and the news feeds are shared between both apps with includes.

interesting mesh of technologies there, and one that was actually quite fun to set up.

[george]

those who build/run stores thinks is pricey - which in itself speaks volumes

Do explain?

[pinbrook]

Do explain?

developers who regularly quote for work have a better idea as to the real cost to develop and maintain a piece of software

[gabrielcrowe]

it costs me clumps of hair and caffeine poisoning.