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Advertising to your paid customer's user base is not the way to go. [After update 3.20.0.beta.1 my opinion about it has changed]

lovedigit

👽 Chevereto Freak

Update: After seeing the "powered by" tab in person which was released on v3.20.0.beta.1, I no longer share these opinion. I am for chevereto branding now because the new text gives credit to the website, while mentioning that website is powered by chevereto. Which in my opinion is good thing, and I for one proudly welcome it as a change.

First of all, it is not even showing the branding publicly. And it gives credit to the website at the same time while providing the perfect platform to convey some of the information related to website operation.

Chevereto deserves all the exposure it can get. If it grows bigger, we'll be the one to benefit from it, because if Rodolfo looses interest it will just be one of those software that rarely gets updates. To keep him motivated, and to handle this huge code base, we need him to stay interested. Most of the people has no idea how much it would cost us if we had to develop a website like this from scratch and if we had to build it ourselves, we'll have to spend more than a year to perfect it.



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I saw the recent announcement about showing chevereto branding in users settings. Sorry, for sounding rude, but I don't mean to. If I do, it is only because English is not my first language.

Forcing your brands on your paid customer's user base; that they worked hard to build over a long time is not a way to go. It took me 4 years to build this community. I spent countless hours building trust.

No other paid public facing software (I know) does this, and when they do, there is always a way to legally white label the software.

Let me lay it out this way, our users (at least mine) are not your potential customers. They are using our website because either they don't know how to host a website as it is too technical for them, or they feel like it is cheaper for them to host on our website instead of getting their own self-hosted website (99% of my users think $2/month is way too much to pay for image host). And in some cases it is both.

People already know about chevereto, you don't have to be insecure about it. Everywhere I go, chevereto is always on top in self-hosted communities, where people are actually looking for software like this.

It is one thing to enforce it for free customers, but for someone who paid for it, and when it wasn't there at the time of buying the license. It seems aggressively enforced.
If current monetization plan doesn't work for you, then you shouldn't have allowed one time license purchase. Come up with better plan. Specially, now when most of the software are subscription based.

If you're really adamant to go this route, consider a yearly small fees for white label, where website owner is free to remove chevereto branding when they pay a fixed fees each year.
Or, better yet, make license plans based on this, and change your current model.
For example; Core license $30 One time fee, then $15/year extra for white label.
Network License, $90 one time fee, then $10/year per domain for white label.

You can come up with better plan, because you know your customers better. Also, you are the only one who'll be able to gauze how much these white label should cost.

Like you, I have done my research after our last conversation on discord. My users don't want to know how the website is made. They care about reliable service, mostly because they're looking for alternative to imgur/photobucket/flickr or similar services where they are unsatisfied. Also, announcing that you don't have control over the website code, actually diminishes the value of service. I tried with select group, A/B testing, and group which didn't know it was based on chevereto, actually ended up donating money to us. I am not making banks, and I am not planning to. I just want to sustain the service, and end goal is to have enough donations to cover server bills, in order to sustain the service. I am actually doing it to learn how to optimize and scale infrastructure on larger user base. It is my little side experiment to teach myself. And for that I need my user base to grow.

I may regret writing this, because no one else said anything about it. But, here you go.
 
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It’s true that Chevereto is already a well known image hosting script. The free version is pretty good, more than enough for a lot of people. This may reduce the sale of paid version.
 
Hi, thanks for the feedback.

I think that "advertising" is not the right word and using that term puts a completely different tone in this discussion. This is branding, not advertising. If you pay attention the message says something like "This service is made on top of Chevereto which is being generously provided by yourWebsiteName", that doesn't encourage you to use it, purchase it, neither it gives you any hint about it as a commercial product. It just says "made with".

When I posted this I was expecting to see a discussion about the branding removal fee, basically about how much I will charge for it. However the discussion you have brought here mentions stuff that I must address because yes, you were very rude.

No other paid public facing software (I know) does this, and when they do, there is always a way to legally white label the software.
For example, what about here in this community? At the bottom of every view you can read Forum software by XenForo® © 2010-2021 XenForo Ltd.. Mine is just a mention in the user settings, no ® neither © printed on every view. Most paid public facing software brands everywhere, I'm just putting a menu entry in user settings.

Everywhere I go, chevereto is always on top in self-hosted communities, where people are actually looking for software like this.
The problem isn't with self-hosted communities, is everything else. How people not into self-hosting could ever know about Chevereto if you are hiding it? I created Chevereto to make image hosting accessible for everybody and that requires to expose Chevereto.

It is one thing to enforce it for free customers, but for someone who paid for it, and when it wasn't there at the time of buying the license. It seems aggressively enforced.
To clarify, the license grants access to the software not to remove the branding. Kindly take all these years of no public exposure and allowed brand stripping as my gift.

If current monetization plan doesn't work for you, then you shouldn't have allowed one time license purchase. Come up with better plan. Specially, now when most of the software are subscription based.
The "powered by" removal is the subscription based service you mention. Is easy to prepare time travel and look back, I believe that one-time was never the issue and the more I think about it the problem was not to include this powered-by removal removal since day zero. This is great to monetize the software (both editions), and I should have went this route many years ago.

I'm in the process of increase the value of Chevereto and the current price will dramatically increase carried by the changes introduced in releases v3.19 (coqueto), v3.20 (macanudo) and v3.30 (supremo). Therefore, for removing the "powered by" branding I will ask $200/y.

For example; Core license $30 One time fee, then $15/year extra for white label.
Network License, $90 one time fee, then $10/year per domain for white label.
This was the saddest part for me to read. I mean, really? that's the yearly value of my work to you? I'm perplexed.
 
Hi, thanks for the feedback.

When I posted this I was expecting to see a discussion about the branding removal fee, basically about how much I will charge for it. However the discussion you have brought here mentions stuff that I must address because yes, you were very rude.
Thank you very much for your response on this post.
If you think this is rude, I don't know what you would have felt if I wrote what I originally was going to write. I toned it down as much as I could with my limited knowledge of English language. I don't know how to write something in more subtle manner, that doesn't sound rude. I am not trying to be rude.
Anyways, let's move forward.
For example, what about here in this community? At the bottom of every view you can read Forum software by XenForo® © 2010-2021 XenForo Ltd.. Mine is just a mention in the user settings, no ® neither © printed on every view. Most paid public facing software brands everywhere, I'm just putting a menu entry in user settings.
Yes, sure. do that. Xenforo currently asks for one time fees of $300 for branding removal. I am sure many will be happy to pay that if they really need to remove it.
In that case a link at the bottom of every page would be better than hiding the link in settings because that will give you better exposure with backlink.
Again, I am not questioning the way it is done. I am worried about not being able to white label website.
We're creating our own brand. Establishing trust with reliable service, dealing with customer shenanigans, providing support and moderating content. It takes countless hours, and considerable time before a service is validated among peers, and accepted as a trusted brand. I am sure you understand that. You can't just enforce branding one day to your paying customers user base that they invested countless hours to build without a reasonable way out of it.
The problem isn't with self-hosted communities, is everything else. How people not into self-hosting could ever know about Chevereto if you are hiding it? I created Chevereto to make image hosting accessible for everybody and that requires to expose Chevereto.
And according to you, it is ok to enforce branding on your paid customers? And we should advertise to every single users of ours to give you exposure?
You're already reputed across multiple communities, and people who are actually looking for self hosting their images, they will find you without using these brute force aggressive methods.
People who come across a chevereto website, already recognize it from the header, homepage, profile section, listings etc.
By enforcing this, without a way to remove it, you're only humiliating your paying customers.
To clarify, the license grants access to the software not to remove the branding. Kindly take all these years of no public exposure and allowed brand stripping as my gift.
Really appreciate it. And thank you. I never said I am (as well as many other customers) are not grateful for what we're getting.
I'm in the process of increase the value of Chevereto and the current price will dramatically increase carried by the changes introduced in releases v3.19 (coqueto), v3.20 (macanudo) and v3.30 (supremo). Therefore, for removing the "powered by" branding I will ask $200/y.
Sure, go ahead, make it $1000. It is your software, your choice. But, if you ask for high fees, it has to be one time fee instead of yearly subscription.
This was the saddest part for me to read. I mean, really? that's the yearly value of my work to you? I'm perplexed.
I guess you didn't read what I wrote after that? The price was an example. You're the only one who can determine what it should be.
 
I agree about @lovedigit a bit about fee, if you want to do it yearly then 200$ is way over edge.

Like he said xenforo does one time fee on removal of their copyright at cost of 250-300$. So why pay 200$/Year seems a bit redicolous.

So i would suggest you two fee types, 1 yearly for those who cannot afford a one time payment. So maybe fee on 50-100$ a year and then those who can afford paying full one time fee pays 200$?
 
What I really want from users is to show with pride that you rely in my work, that's why I picked $200/y as for our existing pricing it will felt a little too much. However I believe that $200 is still fair because the fee is per license, not installation. XenForo is per installation, you really want me to consider licensing per installation and not domain?

I'm really after the attribution, I mean it so let's talk to make it work in way that suits for all parties?

What I want is that you celebrate being part of an indie software project, that you support the creation of all this. That you are part of it, a peer. You all know how hard it is to run this (for you, me, all) so lets open the "how-it works" and "how much it cost" to end-user to make the load more easy going and transparent. I could take it even further, and enable users to see how much you contribute back to the project like you participate in the beta, that you sponsored some feature, etc. I believe that users must see you as supporter-of, not "user-of".

I believe that the "powered by" message should also include your monthly expenses and the hours/people have been working on it on your end. To state the modifications, people working. To show the end-user how much you care, how much we do to offer such service. Just as I believe that the end-user need to know that is my software, I strongly believe that they must know how hard it is to run it and how much you are putting to it.
 
xenforo is per license too, you buy a copyright removal for license as an addon. Not as installation.

Yet their cost is 250-300$ one time for 1 license. If you change domain on license then copyright removal will count on following domain as license changes too.
 
The new text on powered by tab in user settings changes things. Because it gives credit to the website first, and then attributes our deepest appreciation for chevereto. It has changed my whole opinion about this.
This is something I have no problem with. Before this change, the text on that tab felt like advertisement for chevereto targeted towards userbase of website owner. But, it is way more welcoming now. And we get to announce our proud support for chevereto.

To prove my point that users of our websites are already aware of chevereto; that they're not potential customer of chevereto and they don't want to spend time managing it for themselves, or spend money on it, I would like to share a conversation with one of my users on discord public server of my website.

419_tWMMy0CBC9.png

However, after the new change implemented by Rodolfo. I don't find it offensive. I am rather happy to spread the word about chevereto as long as it doesn't directly advertise to the users.
I don't mind giving it credit. I am proud to use chevereto, happy to be able to use Rodolfo's work and he deserves all the exposure he can get.
It takes countless hours to maintain the massive code base like chevereto. We're lucky to be able to use it for almost nothing.
I think chevereto should be yearly license. The age of one time payment for a software is long gone for most of the popular softwares, why not chevereto too?
Or at least what chevereto can do is, give software with one time fee for 1 year license. And if the user doesn't renew the license for next year, he should not be eligible for support and updates.
And there definitely should be white label plan. If it is planned to be high cost, I think there should be an option of monthly subscription option along with yearly one. Paying $200/year one time sounds massive, but paying $16/month sounds doable.

That being said, it is important to know your userbase. It is not a commercially profitable and viable software yet. And hence no one is making banks running this software at their end. Mostly, everyone is using chevereto to offer free service to build a userbase or running it for their forum or niche community. Anticipating that in future they will be able to monetize it once v4 is released with payment gateway, and better granular controls over various user access roles, user API, and better restrictions on multiple parameters like disk usage, upload size, number of images etc.; in order to sell unique plans.

My 99.9% users think that $2/month is too much to pay for image hosting, when it is available for free on other websites. So, I don't see them buying license, and putting $5/month on a VPS, even if they know enough to set it up themselves.
I am just one of the user among many. Other user's use case may vary.
This is just my opinion. It is not a suggestion or strong direction that things should be as I say. I am not trying to offend anyone, or trying to be rude.
 
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Yeah, I prefer not to have to pay more to keep the white-labeled. I'll probably stay at my current version then and choose not to upgrade and manually modify security patches myself. I understand Chevereto may be hurting for revenue, but, this is a complete 180 to an already existing user-base. Especially for those of us that are already very well established in our own branded Chevereto installations. I run the largest publicly known Chevereto image host as of right now, the other giants left, and the 1 that keeps posting higher numbers doesn't disclose their site URL. I disclose mine, and allow Chevereto to use it for their own "hey look we can do big sites too!"

$200 a year is high. this is only $64 less than my yearly hosting fee, which will make me double my cost of running my website to keep the White-label. This is a pretty big departure for the software of Chevereto, especially with a few competing scripts starting to rise to popularity. My users already believe like @lovedigit says that $2 a month is too much to pay for image hosting, especially with a plethora of other hosts out there. Very few of us actually will ever stand the test of time. Increasing our costs decreases our chances of standing the test of time. I choose Chevereto due to the white label over the other choices I had. Back when I first joined, Rodolfo, you were very hostile to the idea of changing or even suggestions and you shot down a lot of the most popular requests, that are now a part of the software. Most big image hosts left Chevereto, before you got to this point.

This is a huge change in scope, that is one of the biggest issues affecting the technical world today for tech software across the board, and studies have shown it has created negative effects for businesses. This isn't an adept attempt at negotiation, this is similar in spirit to how Photobucket did, for a money-grab. I understand that you are working hard to develop this software. That is fine. You deserve to be compensated. As the developer, you do have the full right to make changes as you see fit, and your users may not always see it. But, you must also approach these changes with a sense of urgency and caution.

If you are looking to get compensated you should address the issue in a different format by asking yourself of what process is insufficient to you, and what is failing to you. You must ask yourself questions about the change you wish to make. If it is not failing, don't change it.

  • What issue are you trying to address?
  • What is the goal of this?
  • Are you seeking to create more revenue?
  • What is the right way to approach this with your user base?
  • What is the right way to approach this from the development/business side?
  • How will this affect the sites that help define Chevereto's image on the internet?

One of the first steps for any business, of which you treat Chevereto as, is monetary and revenue, which is correct. However, to create any significant changes, you must always have a guiding coalition with others of your own organization or of your customer base. This is one of the important steps of the Kotter model, and the Kotter model is the definition for handling change management in the technical world. Along with this coalition that you need, you need a clear vision, and the vision must be communicated. Not thrown in a surprise on a beta. It should've been an announcement, at least towards the Inner-Circle to safe face, which the Inner-Circle was originally designed to do, to give an opinion about things before it goes public. You can even do this in your Discord, by making an inner-circle-only chat so you can get faster feedback and tag those of us in there that you trust enough to hear our opinions.

Any time something is changed, it must be able to be built upon. It may sound crazy for something like a simple branding change, but, the outcome does have to be considered, especially towards resistance. People are less likely to resist any change they have put their opinion on or made compromises over. This model is hurtful to those of us that already gave our support to Chevereto.

Schmitt, Leclerc, and Dube have run experiments on labeling and branding and they found that it caused negative outlooks among existing users on product perceptions and attitudes. This is a significant brand change for Chevereto. This is one that you are going to get a lot of pushback for, especially from the giants that use Chevereto.

This branding change makes no significant difference in increasing your sales. Do you know why Pepsi or Coca-Cola advertise? It's not to get more customers, it is to make their employees feel good! Chevereto is already the standard, this is just hurting it. When someone wants image hosting software, this is the first result in google. I say this again: the first result in Google for most first-world markets. You can't get a better ranking than that!

This is my view. I have a degree in Management & Leadership from a top United States University and am in grad school to continue my studies. I have studied the effect of change on technology companies significantly in my undergrad.

If you want an evaluation (for free) on how to possibly grow your revenue from the developer side, I am more than happy to create a roadmap that you can review and push forward. This can also help you pivot your business towards your goals for v4. I still believe v3 has a way to go as v4 is being made and before it goes solid (v4 needs to at least have the same capability as we do now, and more, to be in demand).

Don't create an exodus. We don't need Chevereto as much as it needs us. We can always choose to stay at our current level of software as well.
 
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Well, this is very sad as it seems that big website owners are against putting "powered by" in their websites.

Many thanks for the warm words.
 
I am personally not against it. After the recent change in latest beta, it looks absolutely beautiful. It allows us to give credit to chevereto.
I am just advocating that there should be reasonable way out of it. A well thought out plan that allows whitelabel. And I definitely agree that it shouldn't be cheap, because if everyon starts doing it because it is cheap, it will loose the whole purpose of doing it, i.e. to spread the words.
If anything, I think it gives us apportunity to showcase how much work we have to put into it to manage such service. I already have few ideas about what I will add on the "powered by" tab. Most definitely going to display the monthly costs and link to donation page there. And will change text of chevereto to encourage users to buy license in case they want full control over their data.
Pricing white label price just right, will keep it out of reach of most of the casual service providers, but more popular one's will be able to afford it.

Also, I really think chevereto should go for yearly license fees subscription.

Only concern is that until more granular control, user roles and payment gateways are introduced, it is going to be hard to shell out money if website is not earning enough.

I think my first post doesn't portray the right opinion that I have now about it.
 
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Also, I really think chevereto should go for yearly license fees subscription.
Something like that will require to label V3.20 as V4 and re-brand V4 to V5. This is required to void the V3 one-time licensing. I believe that such change is too huge as if affects about 6K users vs this stuff that bothers just 6 users or so? Being fair, I think that this could be bothering about ~100 users. We will see after the newsletter announcement if that's the case.

This branding change makes no significant difference in increasing your sales.
This is not about getting more sales, is to make Chevereto bigger as a whole by exposing it. You see these as potential lost users when you should be seeing them as new peers, with all that carries. More users to the software means more opinions, more offerings, more community, collaboration.

We need more peers around. I'm getting older, I can't keep being charge of everything, specially code-wise.

I've tried all means to get new peers, let me try this one before you dump it because you got a negative hunch.
 
Something like that will require to label V3.20 as V4 and re-brand V4 to V5. This is required to void the V3 one-time licensing. I believe that such change is too huge as if affects about 6K users vs this stuff that bothers just 6 users or so? Being fair, I think that this could be bothering about ~100 users if less. We will see after the newsletter announcement if that's the case.


This is not about getting more sales, is to make Chevereto bigger as a whole by exposing it. You see these as potential lost users when you should be seeing them as new peers, with all that carries. More users to the software means more opinions, more offerings, more community, collaboration.

We need more peers around. I'm getting older, I can't keep being charge of everything, specially code-wise.

I've tried all means to get new peers, let me try this one before you dump it because you got a negative hunch.
Yes, you're right.
But can't you do it for only new users?

About this thread, I think I jumped up on the anger wagon too quickly without looking into final product. I shouldn't have reacted on announcement before beta was released with it. My initial first few posts doesn't make sense now.
I absolutely love the "powered by" tab in user settings. So, you can count me out of those 6 or so people.
 
I still believe that advertising to a current paying user set (even in user profiles) is still a forced-branding, especially in a very low-visited area, that would have no effect on sales revenue. If you're going to go ahead and push this out, you should put in a method to track it. As I said, there are a number of ways to increase your revenue and I can list them out for you, that doesn't involve pricing white-label.

Image hosting hardly makes any money to support itself for a lot of the big sites, most should've noticed that nearly every single Chevereto with more than 1 Million images disappears after 1-2 years of hitting it due to not being able to afford it. My site, pushing close to 3M for example doesn't have any ads at all or paid accounts.

With newsletters being barely read these days, how would you be able to get an accurate assessment of it? Very few paying license users actually visit this forum.

For the "6" users, there are only about ten of us, in your entire user base, that check the forum on a regular basis to give feedback, or to offer opinions, or post in customizations. Us few have posted how to do edits, etc, useful things to other Chevereto members. Most visitors just come for support.
 
I still believe that advertising to a current paying user set (even in user profiles) is still a forced-branding, especially in a very low-visited area, that would have no effect on sales revenue.
To be fair, I understand that my initial branding proposal could be considered as advertising because it links to chevereto.com which it doesn't represent what I'm after to. I just want to build the brand "Chevereto" (name) so I'm totally fine if the powered by section doesn't link back, my goal is to expose the project as a whole, not the sales page.

With newsletters being barely read these days, how would you be able to get an accurate assessment of it? Very few paying license users actually visit this forum.
The newsletter is still the only official channel to communicate stuff directly to users, the forum is sort of "optional" for those who care. As is the most massive, what goes in the newsletter should be taken as permanent, or final stuff.
 
To be fair, I understand that my initial branding proposal could be considered as advertising because it links to chevereto.com which it doesn't represent what I'm after to. I just want to build the brand "Chevereto" (name) so I'm totally fine if the powered by section doesn't link back, my goal is to expose the project as a whole, not the sales page.
This is what changed my mind. Everyone has to see it in person to form an opinion about it.
It has totally different meaning now. And I definitely like it because it credits both website as well as software.
Besides, it can be great place to show off website expenses, process of operation and whatnot.
 
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