Black Friday/Cyber Monday Sales on Joomla Extensions
Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday are known for their sales targeted towards consumers; however, businesses can also save! If you have a site on a Joomla platform, one recurring expense beyond domain registration, hosting, and maintenance is often membership subscriptions for any commercial extensions installed on your site.
Thanksgiving Weekend Sales on Joomla Extensions
AcyMailing and AcySMS
Save 20% on AcyMailing Enterprise and AcySMS
Sale Dates: November 24th, 2015 to November 30th, 2015
Discount Code: ACYBERMONDAY
Third party email systems such as Aweber and Mailchimp are convenient and easy-to-use. Pricing is based on the number of subscribers and the number of emails sent per month. These services will be the best choice for many small businesses.
For those who would like to host and send emails directly without a commercial service, Acymailing offers the ability to create newsletters within the Joomla system, incorporating both Joomla content as well as that from other components such as Jevents. When combined with an SMTP relay, such as ElasticEmail, I’ve found the deliverability to be just as high as with Aweber, Mailchimp and Constant Contact.
When working with newsletters on sites that have frequent updates or many types of content, Acymailing is a huge time saver. It is very easy to select articles to insert, display modules within the newsletter, and even create newsletters that will be automatically generated as new content is added.
The discount code applies to the Enterprise version of the component as well as AcySMS, which allows you to create and send text message campaigns.
App Carvers
Save 35% on all purchases
Sale Dates: November 25, 2015 to November 30th, 2015
Discount Code: ACTHANKSGIVE
Costs for mobile app development range all over the board depending on complexity (on app sales, more on development costs.), However, for popular platforms, third party services that manage apps and premade apps based on the platform can cut down on the costs significantly. Joomla does not have as many ready to go app options available, but App Carvers is one that not only offers mobile apps for Joomla, but also some of the extensions such as EasySocial and Jticketing.
CMSPlugins
Save 25% on all extensions and templates
Sale Dates: November 23rd, 2015 to December 4th, 2015
Discount Code: E1115AFO25
DJ Extensions
Save 40% on all products
Sale Dates: November 24th, 2015 to December 1st, 2015
Discount Code: BLACKDJ40
Extly
Save 30% on all new subscriptions and renewals
Sale Dates: November 25, 2015 to December 1, 2015
Coupon Code: 2015BLCKFR
I use AutoTweet from Extly on several sites. This is a must have if you want to automatically publish content like events from Jevents automatically to Twitter. They also have several interesting extensions that make others like JomSocial and SobiPro more manageable. If you’ve ever worked with the directory component, SobiPro, you know it’s a great program that is easy to use, but not that simple. It takes a little bit to wrap your head around. Extly’s XTDir makes it a little easier as well as adds reporting to the entries. Some of the features are also available in SobiPro’s memberships, so compare SobiPro’s addons and Exly’s XTDir to compare features.
Function90
Save 20% on all purchases
Sale Dates: November 25, 2015 to December 1, 2015
Coupon Code: GIVEMONFRI15
Function 90 develops the Joom Profile extension that adds more flexibility to the core Joomla user profile.
J2Store
Save 25% on all subscriptions
Sale Date: November 24th, 2015 to December 2, 2015
Discount Code: FRIDAY2015
Joomla Monster
Save 33% all purchases
Sale Date: November 23rd, 2015 to November 30th, 2015
Discount Code: BFCM2015
Templates for Joomla.
Joomlage
Save 35% off all template purchases or club memberships
Sale Date: The blog post doesn’t specify. Obviously at least from the publish date November 29, 2015 to Firday, November 27, 2015.
Discount Code: BF35
Joostrap
Save 35% off everything
Sale Date: November 22nd, 2015 to December 1st, 2015
Discount Code: BLACKCYBER15
Before the advent of Joomla 3 and its switch to Bootstrap as a default, Joostrap was designing responsive templates for Joomla on the Boostrap framework. Their templates integrate Joomla’s flexible module system with Boostrap’s flexible columns resulting in a template that you can truly do anything with.
Smart Addons
Save 50% on all Joomla templates and extensions
Discount Code: THANKS50
Save 35% on club memberships
Discount Code: BLACKFRIDAY15
Sale Dates: November 23rd, 2015 to November 30th, 2015
Techjoomla
Save 35% off all extensions
Discount Code: TJTHANKSGIVE
Save 30 to 35% off product bundles (excludes Shika)
Discount Code: TJTHANKSGIVEBUN
Sale Dates: November 25th, 2015 to November 30th, 2015.
Techjoomla has a number of interesting extensions that all focus on one thing, helping you grow and make money from your web site. Their Joomla shopping cart, Quick2Cart is a popular choice for Joomla ecommerce. Along with Hikashop, it is one of the Joomla 3 compatible shopping cart extensions that is in the running for replacing Virtuemart as the go-to component for Joomla.
Techjoomla is one of the companies that develops complementary extensions. Each focuses on social an revenue growth for your site. For example, Jticketing and JGive work with Quick2Cart to sell tickets and offer a crowdfunding/donation feature on your site. Rather than reinventing the wheel, Jticketing works with well established event extensions such as Jomsocial Events and Jevents.
In addition to product sales, tickets, and crowdfunding, the Social Ads extension offers an opportunity for another revenue stream as a advertising and and banner management system for Joomla.
ThemeXpert
Save 40% on Club memberships for Joomla and WordPress
Sale Dates: November 24th, 2015 to November 30th, 2015. (The blog post says December 30th, but I think that must be a mistype.)
Discount Code: BLACKFRIDAY
Templaza
Save 50% off all template subscriptions, both for WordPress and Joomla
Sale Dates: November 23, 2015 to November 26th, 2015
Discount Code: THANKS50
Save 40% off all template subscriptions, both for WordPress and Joomla
Sale Dates: November 27, 2015 to November 30, 2015
Discount Code: BLACKFRIDAY40
Know of a sale on a Joomla extension? Comment below to share.
Why Are Joomla Extensions Sold on Subscription?
A few months ago, I listed my top 10 extensions for Joomla based sites. Some of those extensions were free and some are commercial. Joomla developers tend to follow a little different payment structure from WordPress developers. There are many commercial WordPress plugins available for a one time payment. There are some commercial Joomla extensions are offered for a one time payment; however, the bulk of the established commercial plugins are sold on a subscription basis.
The reason for this is that things change. The base platform changes. The libraries used on the underlying servers changes. Vulnerabilities are discovered. For the same reason a maintenance program is recommended for your Joomla and WordPress sites, plugins and extensions also need to be updated.
For developers, a one time payment for ongoing work is not a viable business model.
If your web site is a crucial part of your business and it is important that it function properly, it is also important that the plugins and extensions used on your site are created by developers that are in it for the long haul. Researching and testing new extensions can be very time consuming, trust me, I know.
If I come across an extension that is a one time payment, seems inexpensive for the complexity, or if the developer does not seem to have a business model that will provide longevity for their business, I’m a little wary. I might test the extension out on one of my own sites, but I would hesitate to install it on a client’s. I want to work with developers who will be keeping the extensions up-to-date and secure and are in it for the long haul.
Tips for Saving on Joomla Extensions
Plan Ahead: Make a list of all of the commercial extensions used on your site and any that you would like to use in the future. List the name of the extension; the developer name, contact information, and web site; a link to the extension on the JED, the price of the extension; the terms (length of subscription,) and current subscription expiration date if applicable. If there are different subscription plans available or a lifetime subscription is offered, make a note. If the extension is on your wishlist, prioritize the extensions. I keep a listing of extensions used in a spreadsheet. A Google spreadsheet would be another good option.
Watch for Sales: While this may seem obvious, it pays to keep an eye out. Once you know you are going to stick with an extension, make sure to subscribe to the developer’s mailing list, follow their Facebook page and Twitter account, and pay attention for sales. Look through past status updates to see when they ran a sale in the past as the odds are they will run another sale during the same time in the following year.
Also keep in mind that Joomla developers are located all over the world and won’t necessarily be running sales for Thanksgiving or the Fourth of July. I caught a great sale from Techjoomla during an Indian holiday.
Pay Ahead to Save: Some developers offer a discount for an early renewal. If so, make a note of this in your extension spreadsheet. Each developer may structure their subscription a little differently. Some extensions can be used on any number of web sites owned by the purchaser. Some license per domain. Some offer lifetime licenses. Others offer developer licenses that can be used on any site a developer creates for any number of clients.
Of these licenses, developer versions are usually the most expensive; however, they can be used on multiple client sites. For an individual business or site owner, a developer license may not make sense, but a lifetime license can be a very good value. Lifetime licenses are usually priced at two and a half times the rate of a single year’s subscription. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, it varies depending on the extension developer, the extension, and what is offered in the subscription.
