I have been doing webdesign for a small business in Denmark, which alrady have a deal with a larger company to create the final site.
Among this companys proposal, I see that they charge a rather large fee for installing Magento on my clients server, and an additional fee to integrate the design.
Same company forbids my client from having FTP or similar access to the server, and they are therefornot able to install this themselves.
My question is : is resale of the Magento really allowed by the licence? This company wants to charge a rather steep amout for even installing a blank version of it, no Magento-licencing included.
Ihave looked larger company up, and this company does NOT have a standing licence for Magento. And even if they got one, I have a sneeky feeling that something is legal/licence wrong here.
The reason I share this with you is that I have a guts feeling that I should raise some critical questions and suggest that My client uses another company for their webaite, but I need to be certain that Im on the right side.
The IT company has no partnership with Magento/Varien, and have a somewhat tarnished reputation already…
I have mailed Magento about this, but have not had any response yet.
I can understand the position of the ‘large company’ providing the managed hosting for the Magento build. However, I also understand your concerns.
Assuming that you are only working on the design, there is no reason why you cannot implement your design on localhost with the Magento ‘demo store’ products. You can then take your design along to the ‘small company’, get your designs signed off, archive the /skin/frontend/default/macguffin and /app/design/frontend/default/macguffin folders, hand them over to the company providing the ‘managed hosting’ and then collect your pay-cheque.
By not allowing you access via FTP the ‘managed hosting’ provider are ensuring that their clients have no third-parties able to access any-of-their-stuff. Furthermore, design is not that big a deal in a Magento build, there is also the payment gateway, the shipping setup, analytics and everything else that happens on go-live. They are also taking the responsibility of providing uptime, availability and the aforementioned security.
You and I know that you can do all of that on a virtual-private-server and get it done in a matter of days, with lots of testing but no client liaison meetings, office overheads to pay for, an expensive project manager to explain everything to, excessive time-sheeting to keep up to date and so on.
However, the ‘small company’ will have reservations on allowing someone other than the ‘large company’ doing all of that. Given that their web presence is pivotal to the success of their business, given that they may not have management resources, given the fear of the unknown, given a lack of in-house expertise, politically the solution they have arrived at can be considered as making business sense to them.
There is nothing wrong with the business arrangement from a legal/licensing point of view. From your point of view of getting the job done, you can do your design offline, i.e. on localhost, deliver the deliverables and collect your cheque.
If the deal with the ‘large company’ does not work out then, if your work is good, you will be well placed to take on the project, to charge ‘freelancer’ rather than ‘agency’ rates and build a long term relationship with the ‘small company’. However, you are not there yet, your best bet is to forge a close working relationship with the ‘small company’ and the ‘large company’. For all you know, the ‘large company’ may have other clients, and, if you work well with them (i.e. drop the suspicions and animosity-from-the-outset), then you will possibly get other design work from their other clients.