Liferay today announced that the Marketplace they launched in 2012 has new ecommerce features. By this they mean that you can buy and sell apps. The store lets you:
- Sellers
- Select a license term with perpetual or non-perpetual
- Offer support services
- Define your pricing structure which can include bundles and discounts
- Price the app based on the Liferay instance (e.g. the actual installation of Liferay on site)
- Monitor your app sales performance
- See transaction history
- Buyers
- Define personal vs business/project buys
- Expected payment processing
- You can also renew or upgrade the app licenses
- Get app update notifications
- See transaction history
A snapshot of the buyer and seller screens
I wouldn’t call this ground breaking but it does highlight the importance Liferay places on expanding the portal. Given the direction I’ve seen where horizontal portals MUST compete in the Digital Experience marketplace against already in place vendors like Adobe and Sitecore. This concept allows the portal to bring extra functionality to bear while the Liferay team / community can focus on improvements to the core portal and web content products. It’s a good move on Liferay’s part.
