It isn't a sold product, it's a free hosted product. Much like a free blog on Tumblr, you'd get a free forum/community site on Microco.sm.
It is entirely cloud-based, we host the storage, API, back-end and front-end. You have the choice to host your own front-end client if you want to do some deep customisation of the presentation layer, but this isn't necessary and basic theming is supported.
We haven't determined costs, but in principle:
If you run a mostly public web-site, it will be 100% free.
If you run a mostly closed web-site, we will work out a fair rate to charge based on usage/activity (it will be very cheap, like a utility cost).
Given that your site and forum is public, yours would be 100% free.
Our revenue comes from affiliate fees, so if someone recommends a new chain from Wiggle, or whatever... then if that mention results in a purchase, we earn a couple of % of the transaction. What this means is that we'll earn a little money from each forum and together the volume of forums combined with us reducing the costs of running them is where we make money. So we have a good incentive to make the site really engaging and easy to use for your users... as if they don't use it we can't be earning.
It isn't a sold product, it's a free hosted product. Much like a free blog on Tumblr, you'd get a free forum/community site on Microco.sm.
It is entirely cloud-based, we host the storage, API, back-end and front-end. You have the choice to host your own front-end client if you want to do some deep customisation of the presentation layer, but this isn't necessary and basic theming is supported.
We haven't determined costs, but in principle:
If you run a mostly public web-site, it will be 100% free.
If you run a mostly closed web-site, we will work out a fair rate to charge based on usage/activity (it will be very cheap, like a utility cost).
Given that your site and forum is public, yours would be 100% free.
Our revenue comes from affiliate fees, so if someone recommends a new chain from Wiggle, or whatever... then if that mention results in a purchase, we earn a couple of % of the transaction. What this means is that we'll earn a little money from each forum and together the volume of forums combined with us reducing the costs of running them is where we make money. So we have a good incentive to make the site really engaging and easy to use for your users... as if they don't use it we can't be earning.
Any more questions?