Free CMS market and premium segments. Who pays for extensibility and support?

Question

Drupal

Help me understand how the market works. There are several open free CMS, there is paid technical support, there are premium extensions: plugins and themes for money. I can understand those who download for free and use everything free. But who is willing to pay? Freelancing, small studios, small businesses?

Answer 1

To get the big picture, check out this breakdown of the CMS market www.realstorygroup.com/Reports/CMS
Situations in the category "Mid-Range Platforms" and "Simpler Products" are very different (and of course the same Drupal can appear in the category "Simpler" Products", i.e. the user downloaded, installed the theme - and the site somehow works).
The inclusion of CMS in the "Mid-Range Platforms" category means that large projects are made using it, in which the cost of the CMS itself is small compared to the project budget. Customers of such projects generally pay for the development of free CMS/CMF. In addition, the development of such CMS is funded by the web studios that make such big projects. An example is TYPO3, which is almost as common in Germany as Bitrix is ​​with us.

Answer 2

Those for whom it is cheaper than using the free approach.
You can google a solution to the problem in half a day and not receive money for the time spent, or you can solve it through paid support, spending your 10 minutes describing the problem and another 20 minutes on the solution after receiving an answer. Exaggerated, but the essence is somewhere like this.
And in civilized lands, this is standard practice, and not "we pay you, you decide," even if the company's decision comes out 10 times more expensive due to time.

Answer 3

Free CMS / CMF does not mean cheap to do something on them. This is the core, and then do it yourself or order from third parties.
Here are examples:
PrestaShop, OpenCart - see prices for additional modules, payment type
Drupal - the approximate price of a business card site is from 18 thousand rubles, an electronic store - from 30 thousand rubles. (these amounts do not include the cost of website design). I myself work with Drupal, reviewing everything free.
On Drupal, you can make a very simple site just by “clicking on it”, but there will be questions of theming in Drupal and then you will have to go to the specialists - the minimum price for a good theme (template) costs from 12 to 60 thousand rubles. - from my practice, because knowledge of layout in Drupal is indispensable, PHP, jQuery also need to be known. Well, from practice, my prices are: a business card - from 15 to 40 thousand rubles, a store - from 30 to 120 thousand rubles, a news portal with a social component - from 60 to 400 thousand rubles. (I also know million-dollar projects), online service - from 45 thousand rubles. That's free CMS for you.
Sorry for the PR of this CMS/CMF.

Answer 4

In the shortest possible time, those who do not understand this pay.
This is from the position of a computer scientist (I wanted to clarify - a developer, but then I thought that it was not necessary to be one) everything is simple: downloaded, uploaded, configured, if it didn’t rise, I smoked the manual and it works. And it looks simpler than a steamed turnip for a computer scientist. But at the same time, the computer scientist forgets that he is surrounded not only by people with the same mindset as his own, but also by slightly different people, for whom even installing and configuring WordPress is a matter of a couple of days of walking through the most incredible rake.
It's the same here.