The product and the sending of text messages from your forum is free. And with most US cell providers, receiving the texts is also free. If there were any charge whatsoever, it would be assessed to a cell phone owner for receiving a text message if their service plan didn't include free text messaging - and this would be a fee from their cell phone company - but this is noted on the cell phone number setup page, and as mentioned, is normally not the case.

Example 1: your cell phone plan includes free text messaging. You receive texts free (regardless of if the text comes from this modification, or another cell phone).

Example 2: your cell phone plan stipulates you receive texts at $0.05/text. You pay $0.05 for each text you receive (regardless of if the text comes from this modification, or another cell phone).

Does that clarify? :)

I've presented a product that is fully functional in itself, for the purposes described in the modification description (sending text message notifications to forum users with specified cell phone companies, on specific forum actions, free of any charge except that which may or may not be assessed by the cell phone provider depending on the user's contract with the company), without any charge to use the modification itself.

This is in complete accordance with vBulletin.org's Paid Modification Rules:

If I choose to provide a more advanced modification with full support for a fee, I have that ability. Others choose to put the work into their modifications (which may or may not be more advanced) at no cost. That's their choice. If you don't like that I'm able to charge a fee for my work, or you find the paid version to be too expensive or ridiculous, it is also your choice and ability to not use either the paid modification or the free modification.

The free modification adds real features and functions to a forum. If you don't find that useful, sounds like you've gotten a little too used to receiving all these modifications for free. And with that, I bid you good day and thank you for your interest in my modification.

Very cool, and kudos to you for developing something cool enough to get the freeloaders in a small uproar :D

What is the difference between paid and free?

Rob, when will the 3.8 release be out?

i doubt you will listen to me here but i'll post it anyways.

what you see as criticism is actually valuable customer feedback. lowering your prices might result in more profit in the end.

lower prices come when competition comes. If there's no competition, he shouldn't even think about lowering his prices. Capitalism 101.

If you can give him competition, please - do! I like lower prices as well!

The paid version includes more notification types (new blog comment, new photo comment, new group member, new group discussion, new group photo, new user registration, someone on your contact list signed in) and has around 100 companies in several countries.

As soon as I can get the time to finish it. I'm currently in the pre-process of moving, so my free time has been lower than it has been the last few months. I'd like to have it done within a week or two.

Of course I'll listen. :) I just dislike irrational whining. Obviously I'm going to lower prices if demand wanes or doesn't exist, or as suggested, if some sort of competition showed up. The initial pricing was not random, but it wasn't supposed to be rock solid and never change either. I will most likely adjust pricing soon, just like I'll continue to add one or two companies to the free version at a time as I verify there are no critical bugs with the product.

Agreed... haha. It's kind of funny, everyone freaking out like I'm never going to expand support to more companies for the free version or lower prices on the full version. ;) There is always a method to my seemingly mad... madness? Either way, patience is a virtue.

I think most of the people here are in an uproar because on your 3.8.x version, support for hundreds of SMS companies was 100% free. Now you roll out vb4.x version and alas there's hefty big subscription prices. I know when I first viewed this thread, I saw the support for only 2 carriers and that I had to pay for what was once included for free and said "No way in hell am I installing that." That said, thankfully my site is 99.999% US so now that you've included more carriers in your free/lite version, I can install and not worry about the subscriptions. Again, what once was offered free in your previous version you're now forcing international customers to people to pay for... that's the uproar.

Any free carrier versions for Australia Planned ?

ah, but there is competition. his 3.8.x version is completely free... which has set the price leader bar pretty high. there are a few other alturnatives to paying the subscription costs... but it wouldn't be right to talk about that here.

capitalism isn't about setting prices sky high. if anything that can damage a brands image and in the end hurt your bottom line.