Shareware Beach

Many people feel that Digital River is fast becoming a monopoly. Yes, they have bought up a lot of the e-commerce providers specifically serving software developers. But there’s plenty of competition outside that niche. I doubt Digital River will be big enough any time soon to buy up a few players like eBay (PayPal) or Google.

This morning when I logged onto the SWREG control panel, I saw a big banner announcing a rate reduction. The blurb made no mistake about who DR is trying to compete with:

• SWREG has more international capability and customization than Paypal
• More Revenue Share opportunities than Google Checkout
• Increased Payment Options and flexibility verses our competitors within the industry!

However, as I immediately suspected, there’s a catch: to get the new rate, vendors have to agree to a new contract. Sticky points are that the vendor has to enable Digital River to sell extended download and backup services, and any kind of up-selling and cross-selling at Digital River’s sole discretion.

I wouldn’t care about this out all if SWREG was just another reseller. I’m all in favor of up-selling, cross-selling and just plain selling, to paraphrase Al Harberg. Resellers can monetize then customers as they like. If I get a cut, that’s even better. In fact, when Digital River offered a similar rate reduction with strings attached for RegNow, I had no qualms about it.

But SWREG is different. I’m using their “Advanced Level” to power the ordering pages on my own site, allowing customers to buy “directly from us”. I will not let my e-commerce provider dictate how I should sell my software on my own site. It defeats the purpose of designing my own ordering system entirely. And that would take away the sole reason I snitched to SWREG. If I’m going to link to their ordering pages, there’s or wide range of e-commerce providers I could work with.

Fortunately, if I don’t accept the new contract, I can keep the old one at the old rates. So that’s what I’ll do. Hopefully Digital River realizes they have a unique and powerful system with SWREG’s Advanced Level. I’d like them to improve the system and cater to the wishes of its clients, rather than lumping it together with the rest of SWREG. Or at least until Pay Pal rolls out it’s “Website Payments Pro” system worldwide, so I can vote with my virtual feet if I have to.