Does anyone understand the rationale of limiting demo versions to strategy tester rather than also allowing their use in demo trading accounts?

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Hi All,

Does anyone understand the rationale of limiting demo versions to strategy tester rather than also allowing their use in demo accounts? Limiting an indicator to a demo account is reasonably straight forwards and would give the user a better opportunity to learn to use and test out the product. Seems a bit of a crazy limitation, makes me wonder if there's something I'm missing being relatively new to the Metatrader platform.

Cheers

 
Richard Segrue:
Does anyone understand the rationale of limiting demo versions to strategy tester rather than also allowing their use in demo accounts?
The first thing that came to mind: use indicators on one terminal with a demo account, and trade on the second terminal with a real account.
 

The rules hint at how one can legally demonstrate the features of a paid product.

Rules of Using the Market Service

  1. The Seller shall not publish multiple copies of Products, which are based on the same idea and differ only in input parameter settings, symbols, and/or timeframes. Creation of similar Products having slightly changed descriptions and/or design shall be considered as spam and lead to the removal of all detected copies from the Market showcase, while the Seller shall be banned from all paid MQL5.com services.
  2. The Seller shall not limit Product functionality under separate demo versions. To demonstrate all the features of paid products (including trading panels and analytical applications), Sellers can:
    • add videos in the description;
    • provide a one-month product rental option for a small fee;
    • provide Expert Advisor monitoring results via the "Signals" service.


    The following products will be considered as spam:

    • products having words Demo, Free, Trial, Light or similar in their name;
    • products displaying a link to another fully functional Product in the description or on a chart during operation;
    • products with functional restrictions.
 
Vladislav Boyko #:
The first thing that came to mind: use indicators on one terminal with a demo account, and trade on the second terminal with a real account.

Thanks Vladislav. I did think that and I suppose it could be done if you're trading long time frames where the demo account data delay would be less of an issue. Would be good to give the indicator/EA dev the choice of how their product is restricted in demo mode.  I'm tempted to make my indicators available from my own site less restricted and then point users here to purchase. I just have to check I'm not falling foul of TOCs here first. 

Do you think the typical 15 minute demo account data delay would be an issue for most traders?

 
Vladislav Boyko #:

The rules hint at how one can legally demonstrate the features of a paid product.

I'm producing indicators that are at the lower end of the market, i.e less expensive. The $30 minimum price is probably the biggest limitation to getting paid products sold for me. It also makes the rental option not viable.

Maybe I should forget about the making money from indicators and save that for the EA I'm producing from the indicators. 

Thanks for the sanity check.

 
The limitation is mostly for protection of the seller’s product.
If demo versions were allowed to run freely on demo accounts, many users could bypass restrictions or use the tool almost like a full version. By keeping demos limited to the strategy tester, MetaTrader ensures the logic can be tested, but the product cannot be exploited or redistributed.
 
alianaharry #:
The limitation is mostly for protection of the seller’s product.
If demo versions were allowed to run freely on demo accounts, many users could bypass restrictions or use the tool almost like a full version. By keeping demos limited to the strategy tester, MetaTrader ensures the logic can be tested, but the product cannot be exploited or redistributed.

Thanks for the input.

I don't think allowing the user to use the product on a demo account only would allow it to be exploited for free to any great degree. The 15 minute time delayed data on a demo account is quite limiting in my opinion. Maybe too limiting to be useful in most circumstances. Just my opinion. 

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