Why subscribing is cheaper
In previous posts, we have looked at the value you gain with our developer subscription compared to other services, and also shown the real cost of Upwork with nearly 20% of your hard-earned cash taken. Right from first formulating the idea of Developer Connection, we made the very conscious decision to cut through the expensive, confusing, hard to decipher pricing of other services to give you a low cost, clear, transparent pricing model that makes it easy to know exactly what you are paying for before you pay for it. It was also extremely important to make the service incredible value for money for both clients and developers rather than just focussing on maximising profit at the expense of the users as is the case with other services.
Nobody wants to give away a percentage of their hard-earned cash to a third party when developing a Magento store so we decided to change what has unfortunately become largely the norm when using other services. By charging a percentage fee for every hour worked, other services like Upwork, Freelancer, Guru, Toptal, Commerce Hero, People Per Hour and others immediately make themselves less attractive as an option as clients know they are going to be over-paying for the work they have done, and developers may very well have to take a cut in rate to stay competitive and attractive to the client. I'm sure you have felt pressure to compromise on your rate when working through these kinds of services despite the years of experience and countless hours of development you have under your belt justifying the rate you charge. There are many more reasons why at Developer Connection we have chosen to consciously chosen to stand out from other options but the cost to the developer is certainly a key one.
In our previous post looking at the cost of using Upwork, we were amazed to find that for an average project, nearly 20% of the budget is being thrown away to Upwork themselves. This additional 20% has to come from somewhere and it's not hard to imagine that a client won't be very happy to allocate an additional 20% funds for nothing more than just finding a developer. Every developer will understand that, and no developer could in clear conscience happily charge their usual hourly rate passing the 20% rate on fully to the client-side as they would certainly jeopardise the likelyhood of landing the project. So this really is where the pressure to compromise on rate comes from but we don't feel like it's a fair deal as neither the client nor the developer wins. Who does win? Only the service charging the percentage.
We don't believe that a service just designed to connect client and developer has any right to take any cut of project work completed. Have they brought the money into the business which is going to pay for the development work? Have they spent years developing Magento day in day out to get the skills and experience the clients needs to get the job done right? We can of course safely say no on both counts. Having developed, and paid for the development of many stores ourselves over the years at Hussey Coding Limited (we develop and run Developer Connection), we don't believe that the pricing models of other services are the 'right' way of doing it.
Clients and developers are understandably enticed into using these services by the fact that it's free to find both clients and developers. The problem is that once you have done that all work has to be done through the service as well and that's when you hit the large service charges. So they give you the cheap bit free (connecting with a client or developer) to get you in the door, but then charge heavily for the expensive bit (actually working on the project). And you can think again if you want to try and circumvent the restrictions and work outside of the service because, yes they are watching and yes they will ban you and permanently close your account. Thanks, but we'll keep our 20% and go elsewhere.
With this as a background, you can see why we decided a small monthly subscription for developers is a much fairer way of doing things. By doing this we are reversing the pricing model of other services and instead charging a minimal amount for the cheap bit (connecting with a client or developer) and not charging anything at all for the expensive bit (actually working on the project). Fairer and far, far cheaper for both developer and client. After all the sum total of what we are trying to do at Developer Connection is just connect two parties for quality Magento development work, so why should you pay for anything else?
So start your fair, low priced developer subscription today and stop throwing away your hard-earned cash to some third party. And if you are a client create your project with us safe in the knowledge you won't be overpaying for your development work.
