To be fair that’s not a great indicator either as users go to the forum to get questions answered, once the forum has reached a certain level of maturity they can find their answer by searching historical posts and thus don’t need to ask it.
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That could be true when and if there would not be web1 and web2 and API1 and API2 and many other stuffs. So it is not like that resding the old forum entries will bring the solution for all problems. That would be so. But it is not. On the other side: looking on other community forum projects for example for Java language you will find also questions already asked by users and answered by other users.It is not so that you will have always the answer for every problem you can face in your life. That’s not how it is working. People will have other problems.
By the way, asking Monkeybread said that his plugin sales decreased within the years. And you need still plugins for the use of Xojo Language cause it has too many leaks, DB connectors are slow and so on. So I guess there isn’t the big user base they had.
Looking from the other side: there are so many products in use for programming starting with C# or Java but also other low code tools. The market is full of projects like this. Most people are not publishing on iOS, Android, Windows, Linux and Web on all platforms as a server. So I guess that is not so complex to see: the user base decreased within the time.
So you say all the questions about Xoxo have been asked and are answered? That doesn’t sound like any ‘active’ forum with new users I’ve ever seen. Starters on other forums (even for big, well known programming languages) ask the same basic questions all the time because they don’t do a search (or sometimes don’t exactly know the terminology yet for their question). I see no reason why new users with Xojo would be uniquely different in their behavior. Compared with a couple of years ago, the Xojo forum is dead, and I can’t believe it is because everything has been asked before…
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DELL? They got a lot of flack for their shoddy hardware, first deleted the posts, then closed their support forum.
There are others …
Yes Sir. Even StackOverflow is full of questions asked years before. And there is not even a API1 and API2 Story behind. People are asking while they did not found the question asked before from several reasons. So they ask again and getting answered again. You may see this on every forum on this planet.
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admittedly its at best a proxy
but the search functions on the forums arent usually good enough to find the answer
and with API 1 vs API 2 its might give suspect answers
Yes, there are others which following the same policy. Dell was one of them. It is not helping. They lost also many customers. So I guess that is not the best way handling customers. But in this case people believe that Xojo makes everything right. They feel disturbed. May be there is a better way treating customers. I can understand increasing prices especially when the customer base decreases. The entire point is: in Xojo forum there are the same rules. But the people are thinking that this behavior is OK.
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I just want to know how to get all those “I buy the new license but never use the latest releases. Just to support them.” to send ME that money instead 
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Made my day Markus. Made my day!
I believe Xojo is trying to figure out how to stabilize their revenue
All the outward signs are that their user base has shrunk
How significantly ? I have no idea but thats how I read the signs
And that directly impacts their revenue
I’ve seen other companies jack prices as the user base shrinks & its rarely staves off the inevitable
Delays it sure
but never halts it
Growing the user base might but I suspect they are way past that point & Geoff wouldnt even consider it
Basically make “Pro” 399 and drop the other accordingly
Lite = $29 (maybe $39)
Single platform = $149
Give long time license holders a 50% off update to get a current license
Anyone who HAS had a license in the past gets that discount - doesnt matter what kind of license you had
Yeah its crazy but sometimes crazy is the only thing that works
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sometimes attempting to sell a higher quantity at a lower price beats an attempt to sell a potentially lesser quantity at a much higher price.
Other times, everybody bails and the product just fades into obscurity
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The Walmart model
Sell a billion make a little on each one
Yes, it is possible that they would sell much more for half of the price. But nobody knows. And nobody wants to make any experiment there. They need the revenue. Sinking amount of customers means higher amount of money. While people locked in with their projects they can act so.
Xojo is available only in one IDE. Their own IDE. That’s why C#, Java, Go, Python and all of the other languages are not that kind of a problem. Working with it makes you platform locked to the Xojo platform. There is no choice between something.
I guess they will not change this model at all. Why should they?
I honestly don’t understand why so many still think that way. I’ve seen it dozens of times, and it has never worked. It always leads to even fewer customers and even lower revenue.
I see only three possible reasons for Xojo’s recent behavior: sheer stupidity, preparations for a company sale, or a state of financial emergency.
I’ll rule out the first. The second and third seem entirely plausible.
But one thing is certain: this move has severely damaged trust in Xojo.
No halfway serious developer would start a new project in a language whose future is now so clearly uncertain.
New professional developers? Out of the question.
Most of those who don’t want to switch away right now have likely extended their license for a few years (2 to 5 were possible?).
That certainly brought in more cash than usual in the short term.
But it also means these customers won’t renew again for several years.
So it’s inevitable that Xojo Inc. will face significant revenue drops soon.
I’ve discussed this with several people, and they all agree.
How does Xojo Inc. plan to handle that?
From my point of view, it will be impossible.
I honestly hope that the company is simply going to be sold. That would probably be the best possible outcome right now – a buyer with a genuine technical vision, clear communication, and the determination to rebuild trust. Anything would be better than the aimless stumbling around that Xojo is currently showing.
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I cna’t see anybody buying XoJo. Why should somebody do it? The potential is gone. The customers going away cause of so many reasons. Their goal, native UI, is not the goal people will sink in. Using QT for example makes it less complex running native UI with several language bindings available for it. So a few may concern to buy QT for 500 Bucks a year to be able to sell on all platforms. I have Customers done exactly that and switched to C++ with QT especially while they do not have to take care of garbage collection (QT uses reference counters). So in this case people changing the paradigm. But it is not such a big jump to do it. A the end people are happy that they have a software spitting out native interfaces and is running on all platforms even mobile.
Also many of them switched to Java while they say: native is not the most important for me. Also that is a point of view I can understand. The people want to get their project running. And there is no difference when building up an application in Xojo or Java or C++. It is always the same amount of work. But with C++ and also Java or C# or other modern languages they have the guarantee that their Soucecode will run for the next decade without any problem.
Saying this and looking on Xojo I can say: they had this chance too. But as a basic dialect and as a company selling a language and IDE package for such price it is complex. Looking on QT I get the most stuffs I will need for running my business for less money. Anyhow people renewing Xojo. Now renewing for one year pro is two times more expensive than QT.
And there is another thing I can see at the end of the line: people working for their hobby projects having often no problem to do this as a GPL licensed Software. In this cae they can use the products of QT for free cause it is available in QT’s open Source licensed version. So people even do not have to pay.
The same you can find with Java, Netbeans, IntelliJ CE and also Eclipse to name the three big IDE-projects are for free to use. In case of the Java language: even also for free for commercial use. That makes it a good solution. People will follow new path’s they will find. Also other languages they will try and find out it fits their needs, for example purebasic.
For Xojo the change for selling their toolchain is decreasing in a high speed. If they are not getting a way out they may have big problems in near future. Especially when too many people buying now their two years packages thex will not buy next year. In many cases the money is spent then already what leads often in chapter eleven.
So I could not recommend anybody to start new projects with this language as long as they are not changing their behavior and their update policy. But in many cases people are realizing that much too late.
Another fundamental reason why Xojo will not have soo heavy increasing of the customer amount is simple: there was a big community writing Software with VisualBasic from Microsoft. This community is becoming smaller cause of their age. Most of them are “Boomers” born between 1960 and 1975. This people are being retired soon and will not need professional software development. Maybe for hobby use there is something. But if they will spend 500 Bucks for a single platform solution (Desktop, mobile or Web)? I don’t think so.
So the future is coming up lso with a problem. They are no low code tool and also no no code tool. They are a programming language and framework. When younger people looking for a language they are looking for something what is used in modern applications. So they will not even come to the point to choose XoJo while there is no use in the entire industry for this skills. I believe that is a main factor why nobody will buy this business for too much money.
True. The question is who? One thing is for sure you’re buying a wreck that will need a major overhaul on several levels (outdated technology, lost trust of users, promises made by the old guard the users will expect you to finally handle, … ).
My best guess would be someone like Christian, who might feel compelled to step in as he has already invested so much of his own company in Xojo. Just hope in this case his due diligence is meticulous so he doesn’t overpay for something that will require this much work to stabilize and rebuild…
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companies are sometimes bought for the customers not the product.
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But which amount of customers you will get then? 300? 4000? Nobody knows. Even if you may get 4000 paying customers what I regret that they have: it is too less for being interesting for bigger players in this market. They are looking for companies with 200k customers and more.
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I agree, companies are sometimes bought to take over the customer base. But Xojo’s nowadays?
There used to be some blogs and social media posts to try to make some kind of buzz, but even those all died over the last decade. So I doubt they are on anyone’s radar. Xojo has hardly left any footprint or has any recognition value
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