I maintain an unlimited storage subscription that I essentially do not use. That is a demonstration of the high value that I place on Zotero.

My adventure in academia is on indefinite hold, but I gladly support Zotero with a 60G subscription.

I don't use iOS, but I hope that Zotero doesn't go subscription for features. One of the major attractions of Zotero for me is that if you don't co-author, everything about Zotero can be free, and I think it's fantastic that a struggling academic doesn't need to compromise here. If you do co-author, it's a bit more setup for all involved, but you can still get a free setup if your budget doesn't allow for the convenience of Zotero sync.

yeah, I'd rather donate than pay for a feature I don't need.

An app with a free trial period that expires after two weeks has no barrier to entry and allows users to determine its value up front. Companies benefit in many ways from the consistent revenue stream that subscriptions provide so going that route makes sense. I was a long-time Mendeley user -- just installed Zotero today. If the importer allowed me to transfer 20 documents for free so I knew it worked, I would have paid them just for that function. Instead, I bought 6GB storage for my 2GB library.

I developed software for 20 years so know a quality product when I see one. A $50 annual subscription for the iOS app is less than a once a month visit to Starbucks...

Ah OK, gotcha. I think that is a good point.

Literally the first item on the “Support Zotero” page suggests to upgrade storage. https://www.zotero.org/getinvolved

IIRC, Zotero many years ago did accept donations, but the accounting issues with doing so weren’t worth the small number of donations received.

(If people are eager to support Zotero's components, I'll just note that we at CSL really don't have any source of revenue other than donations and have sponsorship button on our github repo: https://github.com/citation-style-language/styles -- the money goes to Rintze who feeds it back into CSL, e.g. to pay for development)

Interesting thread - I agree that it's not obvious on how to help fund Zotero. I do maintain an unlimited storage and have for years - I didn't need the storage but now I do!

I agree subscriptions would limit the usefulness of Zotero for co-authoring - it's a massive advantage in getting people to switch, and as someone who goes in and out of academia and non-profits is a major reason I advocate for Zotero everywhere.

I can see the point about donations being too small to be worth the pie, although now micropayments are more common wonder if it would be worth a try, with more visibility on how to donate.

I have helped a number of organisations transition to Zotero who do normally pay for Endnote, and it seems a missed opportunity since they have the funds already (in general, as they are maintaining their own file service they can't justify paying to upgrade storage). Their main concern in transitioning from Endnote is support - I wonder if a service offering might be a different approach. I think in a previous forum there were concerns raised about a 'paid' channel for support, but a one-time transition fee might work both to increase usage and increase funds. In general, to get an organisation to switch over, I would have to: 1) convert the Endnote database, 2) train staff on how to use Zotero, 3) provide a package of educational resources for ongoing use, 4) set up some of the more advanced features and default settings. Most of that stuff can be more efficiently (and no doubt better!) done by Zotero as a paid service.

I agree though that as demand/customer concerns go, a direct "premium" support channel would add real value. E.g. someone able to get on a Zoom call to sort out an issue. The question is how to do that logistically. Obviously Dan can't provide that support, so who is knowledgeable enough about Zotero - and available for hire - to do that? As bwiernik says, most existing examples of direct support are less than inspiring. (Mendeley's support during their first ~10 years comes to mind as an exception, but that was so expensive - two highly qualified London-based employees - that Elsevier scrapped it within a couple of years of their purchase)

Personally I think some version of enhanced/paid support is worth considering both as a revenue stream and to encourage/facilitate lab/institutional conversions to Zotero. But the Zotero core team would have to make the call on that and organize it.

As for style requests -- we actually do a fair amount (I'd say ~1/months) typically via citationstyles.org. @damnation is doing most of those, which is nice because that means he also gets some income out of the massive amount of work he's putting into free and public styles. This isn't direct Zotero support, obviously, but it does support an important and otherwise largely unfunded component of the ecosystem (disclaimer: I'm obviously not unbiased on this). All this is to say: we do have the structures and capacity to do this already, so any ideas on how to further advertise (without being pushy or discouraging people from figuring it out themselves) and if we need to think about a model for minor changes (a style from scratch is typically in the $200-300 range, but obviously something like "remove the DOI from style X" or so would be much cheaper)

I've just renewed my storage subscription for the 3rd consecutive year. Although I submitted my dissertation now, I consider it worthwhile just to maintain what I have gathered.