When it comes to Fundry users, everyone is broken down into two main categories: developers and funders. As the names imply, developers are the users who actually create new features, while funders are the users who pay for features to be created for their projects. Whether you’re a developer or a funder, you can upload information about a project you’re working on to the Fundry site. Assuming you’re a developer, you can then upload information about certain features you’re planning to develop for an application or a project and then sit back and watch as your current users begin pledging money to go towards the creation of those new features. Each user who has pledged money will receive an email notice when your work is done, inviting them to visit Fundry and vote on whether your feature should be accepted or rejected. Assuming your feature was accepted right away, you’ll receive the money that has been pledged and your funders will finally be able to take advantage of the new web feature they’ve been dying to try.
Whether or not a particular feature is accepted or rejected depends on what the majority of voters think, and even those who have rejected the work will still have to pay if they fall into the minority in terms of overall opinion. For developers and web community users alike, Fundry offers an excellent way to help the users of popular web-applications get the new features and tools they really want.
Practical Uses:
- Get paid for adding features to an iPhone application you recently developed
- Encourage the developer of your favorite user community to add new features
- Donate money to the developers who built your favorite WordPress Plugin
- Decide for yourself whether the update a developer made was good enough to warrant a payment
Insider Tips:
- Developers can reject a request from a funder for a particular feature
- Funders must add funds to their account through PayPal before pledging money
- Users can keep track of the status of a project or feature by follow itsRSS feed
- Developers have to verify their projects by linking to Fundry from somewhere within their project
What we liked:
- Fundry has created a way for web users to get the features they really want
- Developers can actually get paid for creating new features, rather than adding them for free
- Developers don’t get paid unless the funders agree that the feature is satisfactory
- Fundry takes advantage of the fact that most iPhone and Android users would be willing to pay for certain improvements in their favorite apps
What we didn’t like:
- Getting started with Fundry can be complicated, since the instructions on the site are not very clear
- Fundry charges developers a 5% fee on any funding they receive
Alternatives:
- Kickstarter – http://www.kickstarter.com
- Next Sprocket – http://nextsprocket.com
Company Info:
- Launched: December 2010
- Privately Held
- Headquarters: Melbourne, Australia
- Founded by: Stateless Systems
- Web site: http://fundry.com
Costs:
- Fundry deducts 5% from the money any developer earns through the site
All articles are curated and personally reviewed by Dave Onkels. Dave is tech addict and has a passion for rich web applications. He has cultivated several tech startups and runs
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