ActionTiles Dashboard Custom styles

Well I agree with you!
I have the same with Google home lol.

Even more it is by recognising that I got what I paid for when I bought my license is why I come up with this.

AT doesn’t have the big pockets that big companies due to invest in R&D and they already do a lot with the amount of requests they have. So if the community can support that development, they are investing in a better product for themselves.

This is a process:

  • Check viability of the idea (Market Research) this thread.
  • Market research is successful, discuss with AT it’s implementation.
  • Implement the Campaign
  • Start campaign.
  • Reach Goal
  • Develop Theme engine

I agree with you to a certain degree, but I’m just more realistic about $$$$ and what it takes to accomplish something like this and have a developer give up their sole source of income for another 100%.

What do you think a full time software developer makes per year (industries differ)? And I’m not talking about a SmartThings community developer giving the farm away for free because they enjoy doing it in their spare time.

Let’s just ballpark on the smaller end and say $125k per year per developer.

Let’s say ActionTiles had 5000 licenses sold at $23.99 (old price) since Feb 2017. That’s almost $120,000 for a years worth of work to split between 2 developers, not including equipment costs and other expenses.

Now if you were to start a campaign to raise monies, it isn’t going to be for a small amount to fund just adding Themes for $10 or $20 thousand. It would take an amount of money for them to shift their entire focus on ActionTiles 100%, dropping whatever else they were previously doing and have the backing behind them to jump into an unknown future that would support them for the foreseeable future while they focused on nothing but ActionTiles. So whether it was a straight fundraiser, an injection of capital or one huge donation, I don’t see something like that realistically happening for less than the large 6 figure number I have in my head. It’s not paying for a specific enhancement. It’s paying for a company / people to shift focus as this being the primary business and majority of income, and they arent going to take that risk. They are so locked into (right now) as to what the functionality of SmartThings does today. There are no guarantees that the platform changes tomorrow and makes ActionTiles obsolete whether it gets replaced because of functionality in the new Samsung Connect / SmartThings application that is slated for rollout whenever it happens.

Call ActionTiles somewhere between a profitable hobby and a part time business with almost full time support for a very reasonable cost that will continue to be built and enhanced as time allows.

Themes would be great to see, but it’s not a guarantee as to when or if. However, in the meantime, these additional custom solutions are being built around ActionTiles to give another alternative to gaining access to a Themes based ActionTiles. :slight_smile:

You raise the money for them and do all the legwork that it will take to get that done, and then I’m sure that it might gain some traction.

Not disagree with you on the main points.
But let me ask you:

  • if they keep it as it is today. They got paid, picking on your example, let’s say 150k from all licenses to date. That was a one off payment. So that has paid their development to date. So have they such a user traction to be sustainable without any other funding? I doubt think so.
    They will need to decide if they have a company or a hobby. The moment that they decide that they have a company than tough decisions need to be made. If it just a hobby eventually it will die as good will doesn’t pay the bills.

Secondly a developer in the us might earn that but worldwide I can assure you that they don’t earn that. I have managed several development teams worldwide and I can tell you that you can get senior developer as low as 30k a year. It just depends where you get them.

For example median annual wage for a developer across EU (not considering the UK/Ireland) is roughly 45k to ,50k
If you go to east Europe and india for example you don’t imagine how low it can go.

This. I think this has to be a real concern.

We saw just this past week several community handlers go pear-shaped due to some back end changes that ST made - and without any heads-up from ST. Those destructive changes were rolled-back for now after we griped but that’s just a glimpse in to what’s coming in my view. AT is a ‘Works with SmartThings’ product but I have little confidence that will prevent any derailment of AT as ST starts to rip and replace their development platform. I hope I am wrong.

1 Like

Totally agree

Well let’s just say here in the US it’s 100k or more. I am one and in my market I’m low balling numbers, just to give you an idea of salary / hourly rates in the states.

As for many of the SmartApps out here in SmatThings that are charging a one time fee or a contribution/donation cost,none of them rely on this to support their sole source of income. None of them.

So let’s talk about the continued support that both Terry and Alex provide daily. The one time cost you see goes toward supporting the product to make sure that continues to function across so many different devices and platforms and browsers. That cost alone being inserted into the one time cost of $23.99 or $28.99 now.

Unless costs and ongoing support (monthly) costs were able to provide those numbers to justify a full time business or job and offset what they are doing now and replace that 1 to 1, it will remain a part time venture.

You have to be happy with what ActionTiles does today, that’s it. Tomorrow is unknown. If the cost or functionality or the lack of a visual theme based model doesn’t meet your requirements, it’s pretty simple and you just say nah, not for me.

I take my hat off for what they did.

But is not sustainable in the long run and that is the hard reality.

They need to get other revenues streams…

But as a customer I’m also free to vouch my opinion and if needed I’m willing to pay extra.
I’m not say for them to do it for free.

In fact all these thread is about supporting them and not a negative critic. It’s about a crowdfunding campaign to support their ongoing efforts. Obviously we also need to gain some benefits from it and one of them is styling

Shiznit :grin:

Shiznit :joy:

Shiznit :rofl:

3 Likes

Doesnt it make more sense for the guys who actually run actiontiles to worry about their development strategy?

1 Like

As customers we’re not allowed an opinion?

Well sure, I’d like more customizable dashboards too. I just don’t understand why they should listen to anyone else about whether their current model is profitable, if they should crowdfund for a specific feature implementation, etc. None of us has any real clue about the inner workings of the company, even if it is just a two person operation. So this is all just wild speculation, right?

I agree. That’s none of our business really.

This is also true.

My only point is there’s no harm in throwing thoughts and ideas out there even if they’ll likely go nowhere.

1 Like

Otherwise how do you adapt to what your customers need? They are building a customer product and not a product solely to themselves. Finally don’t forget that a customer has unspoken expectations (those expectations that even though are not said are so core/basic to them that they expect to be a given), Must have expectations and nice to have expectations . This is how you balance profitability and investment.
So yeah they don’t need it it should be the air that they breath.

Also companies need customer insight and feedback for their all operations either to feed into R&D or to improve their operations.

They have a pretty well established system for voting on feature requests within their own community forum (as has been mentioned above).

2 Likes

Maybe its just me but this is kind of like posting on Ford’s website to give the manufacturer of the aftermarket rims you bought for your truck insight into why they should be powder coated a deeper shade of blue … and telling them how to mix it and that if only they had the exact color you want they would be selling like crazy

Action Tiles’ site is probably the most apropos place for this but /shrug

2 Likes

I’m sticking with Chevrolet :smile:

1 Like

We all have our opinions, suggestions and recommendations and they are all accepted, but they don’t have to agree with them.

We would all love to see more bells and whistles, but from the release of this product for $24 and being able to almost completely replace the ST mobile app with ActionTiles (even if they added no additional enhancements from day 1), way more improvements / enhancements than I expected to come from 2 guys and a pickup truck (Chevy - John) have been rolled out to / for us over the last 12 months. People take a great thing for granted and sometimes have unrealistic expectations.

But when you start telling a company how they should be running their business or what they aren’t doing right, well that isn’t going to go over well. Sure, it’s your opinion, but it’s their business and they will run it as they see fit as will any company.

Maybe it’s just verbiage being used or misconstrued in posts, but I don’t think so from reading replies in other posts directly to the owners of AT.

1 Like