Unit Verse

One-Time Licensing Fees Empower Design

• by Nathan Ford 1 year ago
• 4 Comments

The monthly fee model employed by Typekit, most CMSs, and just about any other design-centric web app, inhibits design decisions and leads to awkward conversations between a designer and client. Technologies that tie a design decision to a monthly fee are inherently prohibitive, and can ultimately solve nothing. In such situations, a one-time licensing fee is the only model that does not inhibit the designer’s choices… given that the product or service hopes to turn a profit.

The Ball and Chain Model

Designers need to be free to make the right decisions for their clients’ needs, and arrive at those conclusions solely within the constraints of those needs. Many products and services geared towards designers – especially web-designers – purport to simplify decisions while their pricing model just leads to more confusion. Jeffrey Zeldman noted this recently, saying (about Typekit) “a one-time font purchase as a line item in a design budget is easier to explain and sell to a client than an ongoing rental charge.”

In all of this, I am specifically talking about products or services that a designer would want to use in a project for their client: typefaces, content management, traffic reports, etc. Even if a designer/developer/account exec is able to help their client understand the importance of these monthly expenses, the question becomes: Who picks up the tab? One has to fear that such additions to a client’s overhead could easily be cut in the next budget, rendering a design useless. And if the agency or freelancer puts it on their tab, when does one stop paying?

Solution: The One-Time Licensing Fee

For just over eight months now, Unit Interactive has been proud to sell our little content editor: Unify. Without re-treading too much ground here, Unify is a plug-and-play app that allows a user to edit content on their page, we are mainly targeting web designers/developers who want a simple, reliable solution for their client’s content needs. Given these constraints, and after much discussion early-on, we decided that a one-time licensing fee, per domain [or sub-domain] made the most sense. A designer delivers a site, installs Unify, bills the client for the total cost, and everyone moves on with their lives.

Type foundries and print designers have long benefited from the one-time licensing fee; this is not a new idea.

Purchasing any product or service for a project is a complicated subject to broach with a client, and a major factor in these delicate deliberations is the pricing model for said items. The success of important design decisions – and therefore the project itself — can precariously hang on the business decisions of a third-party. This is just a hard fact of doing business. That being said, another crucial aspect of running a business is smoothing out difficulties; allowing maximum efficiency for minimal headache. It is for this reason alone that I believe that the one-time licensing fee is the ideal pricing model for all products and services aimed at designers, or any project-based work, and I’m perplexed that it is not more prevalent.