It looks like MyCommerce wants to get rid of small developers, which do not generate enough sales.
We have been developing software for almost 20 years now. Nothing big, but nothing too small either. Since then, life as an independant software vendor did become harder and more complicated.
Back then, we developed our software and sold it. Nowadays, you have to deal with a lot of regulations. Terms for sales, terms for privacy, cookie regulations and other things were added in the past and I think we did have seen the end of adding more bureaucracy to small businesses.
But that’s a different story, and in the past we were lucky that some of these tasks could be handled by MyCommerce. MyCommerce offers services for software developers and allows them to sell and license software without much hassle. Basically, MyCommerce handles the orders, payments and license information, so that the developer does not have to worry about setting up an online shop for themselves.
However, currently MyCommerce seems to want to get rid of developers that do not generate enough money. The following email arrived some days ago:
We noticed that you have not been using MyCommerce fully in quite a while and that there are very few transactions being processed through our solution.
We very much regret but we are unable to keep accounts under a certain number of transactions open.
We have marked your account for closure on September 6, 2021.
Of course we asked how much revenue needs to be generated. The answer 6000 Dollars per year, as the following answer shows:
Unfortunately, the reality is that operational and payment processing costs have increased over the last years to ensure KYC(Know Your Customer) and compliance requirements for each of our clients.
…
which is unfortunately far below our limit of 6,000 USD per year, which means we unfortunately will need to terminate accounts below that threshold.
Depending on the type of software and the niche you might be developing in, this might be too much for small developers who just want to earn some money next to their job. There is also the question of how much time you have as a new developer to generate this money before you kicked out.
I also don’t think the explanation is very good. There should not be much difference on how many sales a developer or company generates. It’s an automatic process, and each seller and product is just a database entry. If there are more costs for small volume sellers, this could also be handled by a different fee for the services.
In the end, it’s another stab in the back for smaller software developers. There are not so many left as 20 years ago, and MyCommerce cannot be longer recommended.
We will be switching back to our own online shop we used before. However, we are very disappointed by the actions of MyCommerce.
