SimplyTest.me Partners Program

SimplyTest.me, like other large efforts in our community, requires many types of contributions to be effective. Effective today, I am announcing the creation of a new partners program. While this program will evolve with time, we wish to kick off the effort of recognizing both the individuals and companies that helped us get here and are helping us transform. All types of sponsors will be recognized through ongoing social media campaigns. This is especially important as we look to formalize a roadmap and need trusted partners to help us execute.

Financial Sponsors

Nearly three years ago, we established our Open Collective. We have since raised $8,045 in funds from individual community members, community groups, and businesses both in the form of one-time and recurring contributions. Several companies and groups, like Tugboat and MidCamp made significant one-time investments that helped us toward our new Drupal 9 launch. I’d like to formally recognize Centarro and The Drupal Association for their current and previous ongoing contributions. I never imagined we would be this successful with our sponsorship program and want to send an enormous “thank you” to all of you.

Today, I’m proud to announce that any individual, group, or business who joins SimplyTest.me at a sponsor level or higher ($100+/month, ongoing) will be featured on our website and recognized during our livestreams.

Development Partners

Volunteerism is the community spirit of SimplyTest.me. We have had some individuals and companies step up with in-kind work they pay for. This has made a major impact toward the support and future goals of the project. I want to specifically recognize Bluehorn Digital (Matt Glaman), QED42 (several members), AmyJune Hineline (Kanopi Studios), and previously Hook42 (who would let me spend some time on it during my time there).

Today, I am excited to announce our Development Partners program aimed at incentivizing ongoing contribution to the project. Development is tied to the development of Simplytest.me across the board. This is not exclusive to just software development. Companies or individuals that offer five hours a month of ongoing support toward approved project activities (development, live streams, documentation, marketing, etc) will be considered. Development Partners will also have the right of first refusal for sponsored work (a concept I learned from buying a few houses). This basically means I’m giving development partners first dibs on sponsored work for the project through the Open Collective (based on the amount of their in-kind sponsorship in the last thirty days).

Service Partners

When I took over the project, I was torn if I wanted to do this. There is conflict between our commitment to open source and use of services, some proprietary, offered by companies. In retrospect, partnering with specific, strategic service companies that have sponsored their services has allowed our project to be sustainable, scale faster, and focus on our application without maintaining the full stack. Plus, those we’ve partnered with are deeply committed to open source through both their words and actions. To that end, these decisions have been some of the best I’ve made to help drastically improve the service we offer.

I’m announcing our active service partnerships, currently Amazee/Lagoon and TugboatQA, will get their logo on our site and recognized through our livestreams. 

Legacy Partners

Our project has evolved, and that sometimes means we no longer require the use of specific services. Both the technological landscape and community look drastically different than when the project was created. But we won’t forget those who helped us get here. In fact, we’re grateful they have supported the project as long as they have. We recognize our founding project lead, PatrickD, for creating the service. Companies like Maloon and Druid still continue to sponsor infrastructure of our current simplytest.me website and previously used worker backend. Linode sponsored all of the development infrastructure for Simplytest.me for almost two years. Most of these tools will no longer be required once our new site is launched, but our Legacy Partners are owed a huge amount of gratitude for their commitment to the project.

Legacy Partner criteria will be determined on an as-needed basis. Their logos will be shown indefinitely on our website and recognized during our livestreams.

Disclaimer

This is where we are starting our partnerships to try to tighten our definitions of those participating today and incentivize those who support our project. With time, I hope to evolve it further, especially if people have ideas on how we can offer better or additional incentives to our partners. I also need to have the sole discretion to add or remove partners, which will hopefully encourage people to think of creative ways they can help or allow me to remove a partner if something changes.

This partnership is gradually being rolled out, especially as we launch the new Simplytest.me. And, again, I want to thank those involved to date. I can’t imagine where Simplytest.me would be without all of these amazing individuals, groups, and companies helping out. Also, thank you to AmyJune who edited this blog.