Yeah, I understand what you’re saying. I too am a hobbyist, but even hobbies cost money.
I’m sure sewing isn’t free. I know because my girlfriend does this and she got a free sewing machine and some cheap fabric. She recently bought a moderately cheap sewing machine, since the free one didn’t do buttons well. And we’ve spent a pretty penny on fabric and patterns.
I have a hobby of making clay masks. I have a friend that’s a professional artist and she gives me clay either free or at cost, and lets me use her studio for free. But I just signed up for a $60 woodworking class and bought $45 for wood to make boxes to display these masks. And I am not done yet. I’ll get maybe 4 boxes from all this, I want 12. Just pointing out my cheap hobby is costing me real money. So total costs of boxes will be around $400. Guess what else cost me about $100 less?
I paid something like $90 for my pMachine license back in the day, $100 for my EE license (plus $50 for a forum license I don’t use so won’t count), $35 for the MSM, and $40ish for all the annual license renewals. That’s like $300 going toward EllisLab for six or seven years of using their product? And I may have used a free version of pMachine for a while before upgrading (I honestly can’t remember if there was a free version back then).
Anyway, that’s like $3.50 a month? Drop out the pMachine and just go with EE (and 4.5 years for being on EE) and it’s now roughly $3.80 a month.
Not bad. But I also pulled those numbers out of the air and my math skills suck. My point is it for sure costs me less than hosting and domain registration fees.
We’ll see if I’m as much of a cheerleader though when the final prices are announced, since if it costs me a chunk to upgrade, in addition to an increased maintenance subscription (speculating), the cost could conceivably be prohibitive. This happens I’ll stay on 1.6.x which works just fine, and will be maintained for the foreseeable future.
They have made provisions for the hobbyist though. People who want a site and don’t want to make money off it can currently use the free core version. And though I don’t think it’s been stated (could be wrong) I fully expect there to be a free core version of EE 2.0.
I was using a personal license for my main site, and two installs of core for secondary sites. When MSM came out I rolled some of my sites under this install. Eventually I will have them all under it, since I find even building “static” sites are easier within EE.
I am curious as to what final costs will be. In fact, unlike a lot of other people, I am more worried about this than I am any proposed features or changes. I am pretty sure it will be a superior product to what’s out now, and that I will want to upgrade, I just want to know what my “nut” will be.
Out of curiosity, do you have a current license for EE?