Where are good places to buy and sell addon aircrafts for MSFS?

Hi, I was wondering what websites are good for selling and buying addons?

simmarket.com
flightsim.com

do watchout tho, quite a few below par stuff
always find some reviews first and yt vids

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caveat emptor to all the outlets.

theres a lot of low quality shovelware out there.

sim market seems to get the most stuff, and the fastest
but that means a higher amount of low effort stuff as well

in-game marketplace and orbx are slow to add new products, but theyre good in that they make updates easier (with other vendors, you never know if or when an update has posted)

slow to add new product doesnt necessarily mean “curated , and held to a high standard”, at least it doesnt mean that for the in game marketplace

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You can add Orbx to that as well; they’re not above flogging some junk either.

I hadn’t noticed , i haven’t gotten much from them but no complaints with what i do have. Tacoma narrows was my first buy from them- and my first buy in msfs

Do you guys know how much is the “mark up” for selling on MSFS marketplace? Simmarket is 30% if YOU do the installer.
It’ too much
but yes I get it.

I believe the in game market place takes around the same slice; thirty per cent but the exposure is enormous and no need for your own installer or to keep the installer maintained and no need for your own payment arrangements on a website.
Also, items on the Market Place are encrypted which means the chances of seeing your add on pirated are much reduced.
For all the moaning, the Market Place has distinct advantages for small development teams.

Quite a few devs have left flightsim.to due to their policies. Too bad, because I think it’s an easy place to shop.

I don’t like forced download managers. Give me a downloadable ZIP file that I can extract to my choice of folders. I’ll worry about keeping up with upgrades.

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Marketplace is horrible. Many folks recently purchased TJPS and were left hanging with an incomplete installation, followed by a removal from the marketplace without letting them know. Very frustrating dealing with MS

Forgive me but what is TJPS?

The scenery of Ponce Airport by PhotoRico Scenery

I personally like the apps from Orbx, Contrail and iniBuilds, because they have user friendly UIs, products are easy to update, and they allow me to install my addons on a separate drive and link them with Addons Linker and so keep my community folder tidy.

The worst for me is Sim Market. I have a whole bunch of addons from there, but it’s a pain to keep track of the updates. The only reason I still occasionally buy stuff from there is because they are often the first to release new addons.

The official Marketplace is of course a convenient option but it clutters the community folder. I‘m also not a fan of their user interface and the download speed can be slow.
I think the marketplace is a bit of a missed opportunity. When the sim was released, I really liked the idea of being able to purchase and download all my addons directly in the sim. But due to the reasons mentioned above and the fact that 3rd party addons are (or were) often released much later than on other platforms I started buying from other platforms. Now I‘m back to keeping a spreadsheet to keep track of where I bought my addons, like in the olden days.

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Other issues with the Marketplace:

  1. You don’t get a receipt for your purchase, so when you have issues, it’s hard to get it right
  2. All addons purchased are encrypted, so you don’t have access to many files if you like to modify your addons
  3. There is a “no weapons” policy, so warbirds are “crippled” in the view of some people. You’ll note in 2024, the cannon has been replaced with a camera it looks like

Another advantage of selling on the Marketplace:

  1. Your reach for sales increases by ~100%, since the Marketplace is the only place Xbox users can purchase. (As Jorg noted recently, there’s about equal numbers of Xbox and PC users).
  2. Given that there are fewer items available on the Marketplace than you can purchase elsewhere, that’s another advantage as it effectively increases the likelihood of purchases further.
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