Sueetie was created to provide small business and individuals an affordable, customizable online community application with all of the features of packages costing many thousands of dollars more. Hi, I'm Dave Burke, the founder of Sueetie and your narrator.
I've been building online communities in one form or another for 10 years, before there was an Online Community product category in fact. While establishing my Community Developer credentials in the mid-2000's I was hired as a Community Evangelist for one of the first Windows-based Online Community products. After working as the company's first Community Evangelist for a year I left to start my own business in Custom Community Development. It was an exciting time, and the Online Community space was really taking off. Unfortunately, the companies behind the commercial Windows-based products of the time knew it and started pricing themselves out of reach of the small businesses and individuals who were my primary clientele.
For the next couple of years my freelance business was earning six-figures providing custom Community Development Services, but I saw the writing on the wall. For small businesses to have an affordable, robust Online Community Platform that IT Providers like my company could customize, we would have to build it ourselves. So in December 2008, I wrote the Sueetie Manifesto and announced Sueetie v1.0.
I always felt that the real action in software development has been in Open Source, and even back in 2008 when we were planning the core design of Sueetie there were great .NET-based Open Source Social Networking applications available. We knew if we could bring them together as a loosely joined yet integrated application that we'd have a fantastic community platform. Sueetie was the result, and organizations everywhere have been loving the ability to use YetAnotherForum.NET, BlogEngine.NET, Gallery Server Pro and ScrewTurn Wiki in a single community application.
Revenue Points
The question of where the money comes from is always a good one when talking about Open Source applications like Sueetie. Coding is the easy part; finding a revenue model is hard, especially when remaining true to the Open Source Model. Sueetie LLC was created in 2009 to oversee Sueetie's ongoing development. We have multiple points of revenue. The first is our Sueetie Total Care Plan where we take all of the work out of installing and updating Sueetie Community Sites for our Total Care Partners. We also provide Sueetie Contract Development to create custom solutions for our clients. Finally, we created a Premium Edition of Sueetie with features not found in the free Community Edition. Two types of premium licenses are available: Professional and Enterprise. Sueetie LLC makes a contribution to each of the four Open Source applications used in Sueetie on all Professional and Enterprise License purchases.
The Next Chapter
We're building equity with every Sueetie Site Launch and every download. Each new release--and we average a new release every two months--gives us the ability to add more innovative technologies to our baseline of community capabilities. It's going to be great. I hope you'll come along for the ride!
Thanks for reading!
Dave Burke
Sueetie Head Ice Cream Dipper