JetBrains Marketplace Celebrates 5 Years
Half a decade ago, JetBrains Plugin Repository officially transformed into JetBrains Marketplace. As we celebrate this milestone, we’d like to take this opportunity to reflect on the incredible journey we’ve taken together.
TL;DR: Read this blog post to learn how you can join the ongoing celebrations and possibly get your very own gifts. Alternatively, you can visit the dedicated anniversary page and read all about the key milestones JetBrains Marketplace has passed.
Visit the Marketplace Anniversary Page
Our success is driven by collaboration and knowledge-sharing
JetBrains products are designed to be extensible from the start. JetBrains Platform lets you build various add-ons, applications, extensions, and widgets on top of JetBrains products (referred to as plugins for simplicity). These plugins can be easily distributed through JetBrains Marketplace. By sharing their plugins, developers provide others with the tools that help improve productivity, streamline workflows, and enhance the functionality of JetBrains tools.
Altogether, our users have created around 8,000 plugins. This figure doesn’t include those plugins created for private use, which are not hosted on JetBrains Marketplace. Many of the plugins originated as tools to address personal challenges. Yet, these plugins proved immensely helpful to the global community and earned their authors recognition.
Sharing plugins allows developers to both give back to the community and exchange opinions and best practices amongst themselves. This reality makes JetBrains Marketplace a platform not only for hosting and distributing plugins, but an entire ecosystem, facilitating collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and community growth.
A brief history of JetBrains Marketplace
In September 2018, we announced the evolution of the Plugin Repository into JetBrains Marketplace. The platform started out as a web service for hosting and finding plugins for IntelliJ IDEA and then other IntelliJ-based IDEs. At the end of 2016, we decided to migrate the TeamCity plugins to the same repository. In addition, there was also a separate ReSharper Gallery for .NET extensions that had been available since 2013.
What the plugins.jetbrains.com home page looked like in July 2016
How has JetBrains Marketplace evolved over the years?
First of all, JetBrains Marketplace expanded the concept to include a wider range of tools, serving as a centralized platform for plugins across all JetBrains products: IntelliJ-based IDEs, .NET tools, and team tools: TeamCity, Space, and YouTrack.
But, more importantly, the evolution to JetBrains Marketplace marked a shift in approach and user experience. Since then, we’ve been committed to making the Marketplace more convenient for end-users and plugin authors by offering enhanced infrastructure for sharing, discovering, and managing plugins. Our overarching goal has been to create and foster a synergetic ecosystem centered around powerful JetBrains tooling, catering to the global community of developers.
Some of the changes we’ve implemented to help us achieve our objective include:
Monetization possibilities for plugin vendors
Developers can benefit from monetizing their IntelliJ Platform plugins and setting up pricing models that suit their preferences. They can leverage the built-in licensing and billing solution offered by JetBrains, streamlining the sales process. Find out more about the benefits of selling plugins on JetBrains Marketplace.
A selection of commercial third-party plugins offered on JetBrains Marketplace
Those who don’t want to make a commercial plugin can still choose to be remunerated for their hard work by providing a donation link directly within the Marketplace interface.
Translation plugin accepting donations
Improved quality control for plugins
To ensure the quality of plugins uploaded to Marketplace, we’ve been constantly refining our Approval Guidelines and adding more automation to the approval process, while retaining the importance of manual moderation.
JetBrains Marketplace not only performs preliminary checks on plugin uploads but also ensures compatibility with the target platform throughout the entire lifecycle, thanks to Plugin Verifier, which is available for the IntelliJ and ReSharper platforms.
For transparency and the legal protection of our users, we oblige plugin authors to provide End-User License Agreements and source code for plugins distributed under open-source licenses.
In addition, users of JetBrains Marketplace plugins can always report any plugins they believe violate our policies, serving as an additional layer of scrutiny.
Report plugin feature
Better representation for plugins and vendors on JetBrains Marketplace
Users can easily discover popular plugins, those recommended by staff, or recently added, both on the JetBrains Marketplace website and within the preferred IDE.
The plugin listing page itself serves as an information hub and the primary asset that represents a plugin on JetBrainsMarketplace. It assists users in finding all relevant plugin-related information, such as the description, usage instructions, release notes, screenshots, plugin videos, and reviews. Authors can also include links to valuable resources like issue trackers, social networks, and forums, helping users to make a more informed decision about the plugin.
You can even take it a step further and transform the plugin listing into a comprehensive site with custom tabs holding additional information, such as documentation, promo offers, and more.
Documentation page for the Grazie Pro plugin
As we understand the significance of clear vendor identification for users, plugin authors have the option to upload a plugin under either their personal or brand name. An organization can also apply to attain a verified badge, meaning that JetBrains has confirmed that their profile is authentic and associated with a particular plugin vendor.
Deeper IDE integration
Users can install plugins to their IntelliJ-based IDEs right from the JetBrains Marketplace website.
The Install to IDE button makes adding new plugins a breeze
However, if users browse plugins within the IDE, we also aim to ensure that all essential information about the plugin is readily accessible. For this reason, we’re collaborating closely with the IntelliJ Platform team on this. Starting from the 2022.3 release cycle, users not only see a short description, but additional information about the plugins in the IDE Plugin Manager, such as plugin screenshots, helpful links, and reviews.
Improvements to the Reviews feature
Reviews offer developers added value by serving as a channel for communicating with plugin users. Simultaneously, they play a pivotal role for users in their decision-making process. As we strive to enhance review mechanisms, we have introduced several features over the years, including the capability to mark reviews as spam, reminders to rate a purchased plugin, and the introduction of the new Reviews Policy. We also provide an issue tracker link alongside the review button as a proactive response to the common use of reviews for reporting bugs.
Report Issue button on the Ratings and Reviews page
Plugin Analytics
The Analytics tab for plugin authors on JetBrains Marketplace has undergone significant improvements over the years, aiding plugin authors in tracking their plugin’s performance. We’ve added new filters, an improved UI, and adjusted calculation methods. We’ve also introduced basic web analytics to help evaluate the plugin page’s performance, such as page visits, traffic to your plugin page broken down by country, and referral sources.
The breakdown of Prisma ORM plugin downloads by product
These represent just a portion of the initiatives we’ve been focusing on. We believe that, through these efforts, we’re empowering plugin authors to create high-quality plugins, contributing to the growth and improvement of the software ecosystem as a whole.
A big high five to the community 🙌
It’s been an incredible journey so far, which would not be possible without plugin developers. That’s why we want to say a “thank you” to all the developers who have uploaded plugins, submitted pull requests, contributed to the documentation, and participated in the plugin developers’ community.
As a token of appreciation to the talented individuals who have been a part of our journey over the past five years, we’ve prepared a special anniversary swag pack. If you’ve already received an email from us with details on how to claim your swag pack, congratulations – You’re already on the list! If you believe you should receive an anniversary swag pack but haven’t received an email from us, we want to hear from you! Simply fill out this form and include the link to your plugin(s) along with a brief description of your contribution to JetBrains Marketplace in the “Сomment” field. Please note that the number of packs is limited, so availability isn’t guaranteed.
In addition, you can join the celebrations on JetBrains Platform (@JBPlatform) on Twitter (X). Send us birthday greetings using the hashtag #JetBrainsMarketplace for a chance to win an exclusive JetBrains Marketplace sweatshirt, which is not offered for sale on the JetBrains Merchandise store 😉.
We’re thrilled to celebrate this milestone with you and look forward to many more years of collaboration, innovation, and mutual growth!
Your JetBrains Marketplace team
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