Roddypod

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking of how I’ll be distributing my software and accepting money for them. There are several solutions out there but choosing one has been very difficult. So, I was able to narrow my search down to two options: Golden%Braeburn and Potion Store.

Golden%Braeburn:

I’ve been waiting almost a year Golden%Braeburn to be released and see what it would offer. G%B is the open source in-app store framework that was created by Wil Shipley for his application Delicious Library. The great thing about the G%B framework is that it will accept credit cards within your application, send them to a server, process them, and return a software license if cleared. Localization for your application for different countries/languages is also a benefit to using the framework. Unfortunately, this is going to be a little pricey.

G%B needs to have a dedicated back-end “server” running Mac OS X “Leopard” that is always connected to the internet to accept orders. I could dust off my old G4 Power Mac and use that at my house to save on hosting costs but my Comcast internet isn’t 100% reliable, especially in the winter. Power outages are also a problem. So the only solution is dedicated Mac hosting. I could the Power Mac in a data center but that costs hundreds of dollars. Then I saw Mac Mini Colo. You can buy a Mac Mini and send it to this company for them to host. You have to pay for the space and the bandwidth and could cost around $60 per month. Add that to the $600 it would take just to buy the machine.

G%B requires PayPal’s PayFlow Pro which will do the credit card processing. This costs $60 per month with a $249 setup fee. On top of that, PayPal takes 10 cents per purchase. Then G%B takes 5% for itself for providing this framework (which I think they should). So in the end, no matter how you look at it, it will cost a LOT of money per month to implement this solution. For me, I can’t afford to do this because, for example, I’d have to sell at least 20 copies of my software just to break even for the month.

Potion Store:

The Potion Store is an open source application that was written in Ruby on Rails by Andy Kim of the Potion Factory. There are no fees to use the store. All I have to do is implement a script to generate licenses and put in my PayPal Website Payments Pro merchant account information and start selling my software. The store can accept credit cards, PayPal, and can also be used with Google Checkout. This will appeal to lot a lot users by saving time with their saved information. The Potion Store comes complete with an admin interface so you can look at sales, history, receipts, and even create coupons for discounts. Also included is a way for customers to find their licenses if they lose them.

I’ve read in the discussion group on Google Code for this project and there are a lot of users on their that have little experience with Ruby on Rails and have had almost no trouble getting the store up and running. The Potion Store is actively being developed and have very few open bugs.

The Potion Store uses PostgreSQL as the database back-end. This will hold all of the customer data used at checkout and keep track of the software licenses produced by the script. The database, however, will not record financial information. This is a HUGE liability if the database is hacked and someone steals credit card numbers. Because PayPal is going to process credit cards, they will hold the credit card information and I won’t see it. All PayPal or Google Checkout tells my store is if the credit card purchase was accepted or denied.

Since I do consulting, I need a way to send invoices to my customers and have them payment directly through my web store. Currently, my customers send money to my PayPal account. I want to be able to send them an email with the invoice attached as well as a link to a payment section of my site where they can log in with an existing account and be presented with their current bill. They can then fill proceed to pay using a credit card, PayPal account, or Gmail Checkout.

So, I’m taking the less expensive route and will implement Potion Store as my means of accepting money for my software and consulting services. Why reinvent the wheel when there is perfectly good solution already out there?