It amazes me that V3 has been out for 4 months now and virtually all the commercial addons available so far from 3rd parties have already been published here for free.
Don't get me wrong, there are some developers who have produced some excellent addons but the ones surfacing for V3 recently have just been re-jigged versions of previous addons. A few of which have previously been posted here for free use.
Why not take a look at the User Voice and develop an addon from there? Safe to say these features are what CS-Cart developers and users wants, so why go to the hassle of developing an add-on when there's already a perfectly functioning add-on which does the same job?
Would be interested to hear addon developers reasons for this course of action instead of developing what users really want, not what they can already get from existing commercial/free addons.
Stellar, I read this twice and for the life of me, I can't figure out what you're really asking or trying to say.
I've not seen free versions of addons provided that replace a commercial one (not obvious anyway). There are plenty of reasons why more V3 addons have not been developed, but that is a separate topic.
I can only answer from my business perspective. I take addons to V3 that have a demand. I give free upgrades from V2 to V3 just like I would if an addon didn't work in a newer version of V2 that was developed on an older version of V2.
So generally this lets me identify what's in demand and what is not. Hence many become obsolete. I've had several customers offer to pay me to push an addon they want up in the queue which tells me that they like the product and want it for their business in V3 too.
I think we're at a point where V3 really isn't ready yet as a real commercial product. But it's getting there. And users don't want to invest in V2 because they know that's a dead end street. So for me, you can buy and deploy a V2 version and then when you're ready to move to V3, just let me know and I'll send you an update if that addon is available for V3.
Regarding free addons… Trouble usually is one of support. No one likes to keep investing their time in something to give it away. When you pay for a commercial module, you are really paying for support and maintenance.