Hi Rob,
dsIDXpress can be downloaded, installed, and used on your site for free indefinitely with our included sample MLS data. Once you install and activate dsIDXpress, the plugin will create pages on your domain for every listing in the IDX feed. The default free version of dsIDXpress adds 100 sample MLS listings to your domain. The free version is fully functional.
To add live MLS listings to your site that are regularly updated, you would need to purchase additional activation keys for each MLS feed. We send you the necessary paperwork and help you through the approval process for each MLS (which may include tweaks to your site for compliance) – which is why we have the $99.95 setup fee. The monthly fees of $29.95 pay for the costs of maintaining and updating the data feed on our end, regular product updates, as well as phone and email support.
In most cases, our fees of $99.95 setup and $29.95 cover all the costs for the data. We usually pay each MLS a bulk price for all our clients, and roll those costs into our $29.95 monthly fees. In the cases where the MLS charges us (or the member) fees PER USER, then you would be responsible for those costs on top of the $29.95.
All the links here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/dsidxpress/ should work (and did initially), but we recently changed our wiki domain from wiki.dsidxpress.com to wiki.diversesolutions.com – – so any of the links going to our wiki pages are now broken. Sorry for any confusion; we’re fixing those now. In the meantime, the two broken links are corrected below:
On the INSTALLATION tab…
– install wiki should go here:
http://wiki.diversesolutions.com/wiki:installing
– getting started guide should go here:
http://wiki.diversesolutions.com/wiki:getting-started
I hope this helps clarify a bit. The plugin is free to download and use indefinitely, but there are fees to use additional (live) data feeds with the plugin.
I’m sorry but I’m not sure the explanation clarifies things for me.
This plugin was brought to my attention, and I understand there’s no charge for the software.
If I can’t use the plugin with live data without paying someone a fee, then I’d just like to know that up front. Both your explanation and the plugin left me just confused enough to ask for a clearer answer. Telling me the plugin can be used indefinitely with sample data… helps me as a developer, but to my end user I think it was perceived as a shady business practice. Something like “Requires subscription…” as a disclaimer in the first line would be helpful. Maybe a better disclaimer would be, “You can use the plugin as long as you need to test it and get it working, but requires a paid subscription from the maker of the plugin to receive data.” and for your plugin, “in addition to the paid subscription with the data provider, MLS”. But it is parts 2 and 3 that I’m confused about. And I’m still confused if I absolutely need to pay you $99 for configuration or that’s just if I can’t do it myself – for which I would think you’d call that an optional add on service…
The repository serves other purposes I think so I would like to apologize if I sounded like I was sounding off an alarm – I was confused and trying to get clarification for a client quickly.
I have also brought up questions before about who approves plugins for the repository and I have yet to come across a simple explanation of what I should expect to get in the repository, and it’s quite honestly starting to freak me out. I can’t tell just how much care and vetting I have to do with plugins I find here – and this is more about disclosure and clarity, and has nothing to do with anyone’s honesty or integrity.
I’m pretty sure this is fine, but I’ll check up a level to be sure.
The reason I think it’s fine is that you’re not actually paying for the plugin, you’re paying for the MLS content (and the back and forth between the MLS servers and Dsidxpress, if I remember how this works correctly). We allow that with other plugins.
Just researched this for a site I dealt with today:
idxpress is whats known as a vendor:
– they pay a one-time fee of $3500-$4000 (and maybe a small monthly fee) to receive Vendor privileges for MLS feeds of which they can register unlimited numbers of subscribers to.
– you can either pay like $10 a month to embed an HTML <iframe> of the listings, or you pay these vendors a monthly fee for them to feed the MLS data to your site.
The business model is a load of BS ($100 set-up fee?) considering the actual amount of work required of these vendors, but Ive found this particular plugin to be exceptionally useful.
