FAQ: Commercial Licenses and Contract Work

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Become a Supporting Member

There are many benefits to becoming a donating member, including a permanent non-expiring license key for all of our programs, early access to beta releases and new reviews, discounts on popular shareware, and much more.

Still Have Questions?

You know the drill -- the first order of business is to search our site or forum for answers to your questions.

But don't hesitate to contact us directly with questions. We don't have secretaries - you'll get a reply right away from the same people who designed the website and coded the software here. Or post your questions on our public forum for a community response.

Live Chat

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Process Tamer: My New Favorite App
The third item I’d like to mention is my new favorite app. I’m sure just about every computer user who uses Windows has, at least once, had an application freak out and chew up all your cpu cycles leaving you with the most sluggish machine you’ve ever seen. Enter Process Tamer. This little app will save you countless hours of frustration and dollars spent on getting rid of that windows inspired headache. Its a very small (140k) app that sits in the system tray and monitors processes and how much of the cpu they are using. When a process rises above a certain level (that you set), that process is automatically lowered in priority. It doesn’t kill the process entirely. So if it is a legitimate, normally functioning process, it will continue to operate. But if it is being a bad seed, having its priority lowered will allow the normal execution of other apps and allow your computer to function normally. I can’t begin to tell you how much time and frustration this saves me. The very same day I found and installed this on one of my computers, I had a process go ballistic on another computer. I meant to install Process Tamer first change I got on my second computer, but being my procrastinatory self put it off. After fixing that rogue process I installed Process Tamer and have never had a problem since!

Read more…
W.H.

FAQ - Commercial Licenses and Contract Work

Here's a list of common questions and answers relating to commercial licenses and hiring us for contract work.

Can I use your software in my commercial business? How much is a site/business license? Are there special benefits?

We work hard to support our Commercial user base

We have a dedicated section of our site dedicated to Commercial Site Licenses.

There you can find complete information on Commercial Site Licenses -- what they are, when you need one, and how much they cost.

If you have any questions don't hesitate to Contact Us.

Can I hire DonationCoder programmers for a project?

Yes. We are available for contract work, and would be happy to talk with you about potential programming/consulting jobs.

DonationCoder.com is a small operation run by a handful of skilled programmers and web developers with backgrounds in Academia and the Micro-ISV field.

Most of our work is on application development for Microsoft Windows and in building online web services. We have expert-level experience with C++ (20+ years), PHP, Python, and Java, but we are comfortable in almost any language and platform. Our offices are located in Champaign, IL in the United States.

Rates and pricing

Our starting price for contracting/consulting work is $1,000. We don't take on small jobs for less than that because it doesn't give us enough time to become familiar with your needs, nor enough time to follow up with you and do the unanticipated final touches that are inevitably part of every project-for-hire.

Our rates for contracting work and custom projects are consistent with U.S. rates for highly skilled coders. We can arrange contracts based on hourly rates or on a per-project basis. The actual pricing can vary dramatically based on the platform, the scope of the work, and the exclusivity of the finished product. We do not work on commission.

You can find cheaper programmers at your local university or high school, or on sites like rentacoder.com, and we encourage you to use such sites if you are comfortable doing so and you are looking for a bargain. Our experience has been that hiring programmers from such places is something of a hit-and-miss operation, but there are good programmers out there.

Our services

We are programmers. But from our standpoint, programming skills are not all you should be concerned about when looking to hire someone for contract work. Just as important is hiring someone who can work with you to make sure you have a good solid idea of what you need - and help you fill in the gaps in your idea before decisions are made which will take you in the wrong direction.

It may be that you are not at the stage of wanting to hire a programmer, but you do want to hire someone to spend some time with you developing an idea and exploring whether there is a viable programming project that can be developed from it. Or perhaps what you really need is simply help figuring out the best software packages to use for a project and an estimate of how hard it would be to set up a certain system using out-of-the-box components. Much of what you are hiring us for is to give you good advice about such things.

It may be very difficult for you, as a non-programmer, to know exactly what you need in a software package or web service. You probably are not completely familiar with what software is already out there or the ramifications of different decisions about platform, language, database choices, etc.

We will work with you to develop your ideas and make sure that you end up with what you need, even if it means that instead of coding it from scratch we end up recommending you purchase an off-the-shelf system which just needs some minor customization. We will not let you waste money on something we don't think is in your best interests. And if we know someone who will do a better job than us on a specific job, we'll say so.

I'm interested -- what's the next step?

Our approach to contract work

Your ideas and concepts are going to change as development proceeds - that's the nature of contract programming - you're going to realize that you've changed your mind about certain things, or would like to add other things, etc. We expect that, and we can work with you to help flesh out your ideas and come up with something even better than you imagined.

We won't take on any job that we can't perform on time while surpassing your expectations, and we put the very highest premium on reliability -- once you hire us we will take on your responsibilities as if they were our own and we will make sure the job gets done right and on time.

Our contracting and consulting services aren't cheap, but you will get what you pay for, and you won't ever have cause to doubt that we are going to be there for you every step of the way to make sure you get exactly what you want, and be there for you afterwards to make sure everything stays running smoothly.

Why our first step is trying to talk you out of hiring us

Paying for the development of custom software or web services is an expensive and time consuming process. Our first responsibility when approached with a job is to try to identify existing software or services that can be used in place of a custom solution. Only after all such options are ruled out would we consider taking on a job.

Contact Information

If you have a project idea you'd like to discuss with us, we'd be happy to talk with you about it free of charge. Please don't hesitate to Contact Us page. Please tell us a little (or a lot) about what you are interested in hiring us for.