My Appexchange offerings are going away soon
Last Updated on Wednesday, 23 January 2008 04:56 Written by Steve Wednesday, 23 January 2008 11:21
Just a heads up that the Appexchange apps we’ve made freely available to date are going away soon. Salesforce.com has changed what they allow on the Appexchange and are requiring some significant hurdles to keep free apps up there. I may do the work necessary to keep our Plone Integration on the Appexchange, but I may also forgo that and just rely on the Wiki page to keep the project information. And if they take that away from us, we’ll just fall back to the plonesf Google Group. If Google shuts us down, I’ll send it to you via carrier pigeon.
These apps will definitely go off the Appexchange in the next few weeks:
It was fun while it lasted. We got no revenue from these posted apps, but I bet I fielded over 300 email requests from folks interested in using them.
I don’t think it’s a great decision by Saleforce to make it hard for these free offerings to be out there, but it’s their directory so they can do whatever they want with it. As of now, there is no way to easily share free components to other Salesforce.com users. But this URL is still available, so maybe someone will build a way to share uncertified, free apps, since Salesforce.com clearly doesn’t want to.
Update: To be clear (and fair), they aren’t kicking me off the Appexchange. It’s just that all apps now have to be certified on the Appexchange. And all vendors who are selling apps need to pay for each click-through to test drives. In their shift to this focus, I made the plea that free apps should be considered differently, and they agreed. It was just that I got a few too many emails from the system telling me that my apps were going to be delisted if I didn’t fill out the certification questionnaire. After some clarification from Salesforce.com today, I answered 3 questions and my native apps are now certified! Except the Functional Documentation app, which I want to have disappear anyway. The Plone app is a different beast since it’s a client app, so I’ll see where the process takes me there.
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That’s pretty lame. Bad decision, Salesforce.
This seems an unfortunate decision. Since the apps are free, Salesforce was not making any money anyway but was giving us a way to work around some of the less friendly aspects of sf.
For lead conversion, however, PeopleImport might provide some of the functionality as Lead Converter, but it will not create Households.
Hey Steve, I imagine that Salesforce.com is doing this to nudge these free apps over to their new Force.com Code Share community:
http://wiki.apexdevnet.com/index.php/Force.com_Code_Share
While I agree that its disappointing that they are pushing these free third-party apps off of the AppExchange (and I imagine that the backlash may cause them enough pain to relent eventually, or at least provide an alternative), it will be nice to collaborate on Force.com apps in an open-source model, and help rejuvenate some of the stale apps that are out there.
I imagine that the providers of the for-profit apps are pushing pretty hard to get the free apps off of the AppExchange because it diverts potential leads from evaluating their for-profit applications.
Thanks for your post, its helpful to know what is going on with the AppExchange and why these changes are happening. I hope that your apps are able to live on!!
Steve the link for “this URL” isn’t working: http://www.crappexchange.com/ What about starting a Wiki or google sheet for those applications with related private links? Or maybe a group in connect on demand (ok, ok I know it’s dead and or dieing)
I’ll ping you Steve – Not sure how this happened, but I’m pretty sure this is something we can fix.
FWIW- I started http://www.backexchange.com several months ago in anticipation of needing an online repository of unlisted AppExchange apps.
Just send me an email if you’re interested in volunteering to help maintain or administer this project. It’s an open Wiki.
Great idea Mike!