Howdy all,
We've had discussions in the past about licensing, and there are some themes that have come up quite a bit. With the new website (launching in the next few days, based on how much work I have to do on evolving the license manager and shopping cart setup) we'll be in a technical position to implement most of the most requested ideas...but, it would lead to overwhelming complexity to implement all of them while keeping the current licensing model and pricing.
Eric and I have been talking a bunch about it lately, and it struck me that it would be best to get you all involved in the conversation, because in the end, you're the folks who will decide whether these changes will be successful or not.
Some things that have come up in discussions, either between Eric and I, or with customers:
Keep in mind that we'd like to simplify the shopping experience as much as possible, rather than simply adding every option that everyone has ever asked for; we simply can't do all of them, and I think the best option is to choose one of them. Nobody benefits from confusion. And, to be frank, in order to sustain development, we need to increase revenue going forward without increasing our costs, so lowering prices dramatically probably won't work unless we also reduce how much we spend on support and development costs. Our current revenue simply isn't supporting costs at the moment; things have to change, or we'll have to scale back our ambitions for Virtualmin and Cloudmin.
Perhaps I can put it in concrete terms:
If you were planning to buy a Virtualmin 10 license, which option would you prefer, from among the following?
As always, upgrading to a new license would cost the license difference, regardless of how the license terms end up; you'll never be penalized for buying the smallest license that meets your needs today.
So, what do y'all think? What's the easiest way to pay for Virtualmin you can imagine? Do you hate the idea of any changes? Do you love the idea of monthly subscriptions so much you've been waiting for it before you buy? Do you think we should scrap Virtualmin Pro and go get real jobs and work on this stuff in our free time as a hobby?
Thanks for any feedback. I know y'all have some strongly held opinions, as we've heard'em for years. Now we've got the chance to make something happen on this front. The question is, which path do we take?
Cheers,
Joe
My suggestion:
Pay $75 up front, and renew at $75 each year - VPS
Pay $7/month recurring, for as long as you use the license - VPS
Pay $120 up front, and renew at $120 each year - Dedicated
Pay $12/month recurring, for as long as you use the license - Dedicated
no limits in number of domains for any (paid) plan
cut GPL to 10 domains regardless of VPS or dedicated
bonus: depending on inside information's you guys have, remove limits from GPL but keep them on number of domains and master/slave option
set the price for clients who want you to keep up the system (usually is around 30$/month) or per case (from 50-80$/hour).
I know my idea about GPL will start a hot discussion (again) but anyone who is opposing this are the same people who make profit based on GPL licence and not paying anything back to you. For normal users 10 domains its enough to host their site and site of their family or pets. Initially i was thinking to limit on 5 but if you want to be generous then lets say 10. You know right now there is many of them using GPL on big VPS-es or even dedicated servers, selling to others and not paying anything back to you. Plus running back here and taking time from you and others when they encounter a problem. If you dont cut the number of domains on GPL you will never move too far from actual problems. Just list the topic on the forum and see how many are using your CP on "home servers". This amount cant be seen on any other CP forum - ask yourself why.
Next i think there must be a difference between VPS and dedicated. On dedicated server you can host tens or even hundreds of accounts and it should be fair to pay more. In case of only one site it means that site generate (for any reason) so big traffic that its worth to be hosted on dedicated so its fair to pay more.
Compared to others DA is out because offer way less options and settings then Vmin, for plesk and cpanel you would be cheaper (a lot cheaper).
Last but not least, dont be afraid of people threatening to drop Vmin. If they really go in this direction you dont need them in first place. Keeping up with new stuff, updates and quality will bring new customers.
EDIT: Set the list or search option based on the domain so anyone can see if the host is using payed license. Same thing what you can do with cpanel, whmcs, etc. Is not fair that client dont have a way to see if the host is legit or not, its your duty to make this public to protect end users.
- I often come to the conclusion that my brain has too many tabs open. -
Failing at desktop publishing & graphic design since 1994.
There are some great ideas in here, and we're already on the same page with you on a few of them.
I've always been hesitant to offer an unlimited VPS-specific license at a very steep discount; these days, a VPS can host thousands of domains, and many very large sites are virtualized for ease of management reasons. So, that's my concern with that. Jamie added VPS detection code a while back, so it would be possible to license VPS vs dedicated, I just don't know if we want to go down that path.
We have some ideas about making it more clear who is hosting with Virtualmin Pro, and who isn't; and I think you're right that part of the value for hosts in buying ought to be that they can distinguish themselves from folks using Virtualmin GPL (and there are a lot of them out there at this point). We may need to begin asking folks to be more clear about which product they're offering, and using trademark law to put some weight behind the request. But, in the short term, we will begin putting a bit of flair on users that have active licenses. This will both allow us to more readily recognize when we're interacting with someone entitled to premium support and allow us to better support the folks who support us in our development, and will allow people reading about hosting offers and such to know they're reading someone who helps support Virtualmin and is providing the most powerful version of Virtualmin.
I'd also like to make some changes to make it easier for users to recognize when they're talking to someone who's been involved in the community for a long time. It doesn't always equal "smarter or more experienced", but it usually does. So it should be easier to distinguish between advice that is coming from a place of experience and a wild ass guess by someone who's new to all this (nothing wrong with new folks contributing; that's great, but it should be possible to earn some kind of badge to indicate you've been in the trenches for a while and know your way around). But, that's orthogonal to licensing, so I won't go further on that in this thread. And, it's something we'll work out after site launch, because I don't want to delay the new site any longer than necessary to get the shop and license manager working well.
I believe we have another idea for GPL that doesn't require limiting domains or require reducing its functionality. First part of that is returning to our model of introducing most new features in Virtuamin Pro and merging them down after a year or two. For a while we've mostly been adding features to both at the same time. It's been rare that we've added Pro-only features. This has probably been a big factor in our sales decline (all while usage was going up). But, another idea is to offer Install Scripts for GPL users, at a reasonable subscription rate per-server. Something like $5/month. Install Scripts are one of the biggest features of Virtualmin Professional, and we've actually got some competitors shipping products for GPL that compete with us on that front, which is telling us we're leaving money on the table. ;-)
On the Virtualmin GPL front, I'd rather lure with a carrot (offering new ways for folks to pay us when they use GPL) than push with the stick (limiting what people can do with GPL). We like Open Source and we want to keep providing what is clearly the most powerful Open Source control panel.
I do like the idea of reducing the number of license sizes. Maybe if we dropped out some of the middle tier licenses and lowered the price of Unlimited? So, maybe kill the 50 and the 250 licenses, and drop the 100 and Unlimited licenses in price a little bit to make them more comfortable for people who've been using 50 and 250. Having three tiers would feel satisfying to me. And, we made more money and more sales back when we had fewer sizes of license and simpler buying options (even though prices were higher back then).
e.g. (and this is just back of the envelope calculations, I haven't actually looked at our license size distribution to know if this will actually even maintain current revenue, so don't hold me to this):
This might be uncomfortable for 250 domain license holders right now, though...since renewals are only $130/year. That's be a big bite for those folks. So, I guess we need to keep the 250 around, too. So, maybe that one fills in the gap between 100 and unlimited at $190/year or $17/month. That leaves all of our licenses (much) cheaper than cPanel for dedicated servers, and all but Unlimited cheaper than cPanel for VPS. Much cheaper for the vast majority of people.
I really like the idea of a "managed Virtualmin" product. There are lots of companies that do that for specific niches, and we're obviously well-suited to handle it for Virtualmin customers. So, a full-service support option where we handle things like system updates, service monitoring, backup management and verification, and the usual troubleshooting and such that goes into managing a server. That's a great idea, and I believe we have a pool of qualified people here in our community that we could employ to do those jobs if it were to be something that scaled up. Most of those folks charge more along the lines of $40 to $100 per month, depending on what they're doing. So, we'd have to figure out what kind of labor we'd be looking at, and whether it would distract us from development and existing support obligations. But, if we got enough customers committed to it, we could expand staff to cover it.
How many people have IT people that you're paying for managing your Virtualmin and Cloudmin systems? Would you be interested in a flat rate monthly management offering from us? There's certainly no other way I can think of that you could get somebody of Eric's caliber working on your box on a regular basis for less money. ;-)
Thanks for your excellent feedback, Diabolico.
Oh, one more thing: We're rebuilding the reseller program. Things will actually work going forward, and for folks who offer virtual machine hosting, it'll get a lot easier to put Virtualmin on it and make a profit on those sales.
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First to say that i fully understand all your points but lets break things so its easier to keep track on the conversation:
I've always been hesitant --snipped-- I just don't know if we want to go down that path. You are right, right now there are VPS what could hold a hundred or even more accounts but they are so expensive is not worth the money. Actually its cheaper to buy dedicated server. Take for example French company OVH, they are so cheap but the quality of their servers and network is great and they are not the only one. So there is a limit when the cost of the VPS cant hold anymore and the option to switch to dedicated become more cost effective. Thats why i think the price should reflect this and be different for VPS and dedicated because we are talking about two completely different things. VPS cost less, offer less so its good to have cheaper control panel. Dedicated is whole different game, it can hold hundreds of accounts so its fair to pay more.
We have some ideas about making --snipped-- helps support Virtualmin and is providing the most powerful version of Virtualmin ///
I believe we have another idea for GPL --snipped-- which is telling us we're leaving money on the table. ///
On the Virtualmin GPL front, --snipped-- Open Source control panel.. I understand your argument of what you said about GPL and "lure with a carrot" but from the marketing point of view i find it better to offer GPL what is actual copy of Pro version but with limits. Lets just use a little logic here - who need a control panel for personal use or testing with unlimited domains? We need to be honest here and the answer is no one. I cant think of any case where someone would use Vmin for personal hosting or testing and need unlimited domains, no way. So i agree with limits like max number of domains, no install scripts, no master/slave, maybe few more but essentially i would keep the rest. This is how i see "lure with a carrot", you like it, you need it and its cheaper then other cp... Then buy Pro version. Doing this you will still have open source (free) version but for professional use you must pay. Who dont like it there is Plesk and cPanel with double the prices (based on my suggestion).
I do like the idea of reducing the number of license sizes --snipped-- buying options (even though prices were higher back then). ///
e.g. (and this is just back of the envelope calculations, I haven't actually looked at our license size distribution to know if this will actually even maintain current revenue, so don't hold me to this): ///
///
10, $7/month or $75/year 100, $13/month or $150/year Unlimited, $25/month or $250/year ///
This might be uncomfortable for 250 domain --snipped-- and all but Unlimited cheaper than cPanel for VPS. Much cheaper for the vast majority of people. Reducing the amount of different licenses will make it easier for clients to understand what they get from each one of them. Thats why i find it VPS and dedicated best option to split them. Plesk and cPanel are doing the same so if anyone who is using their control panel come to see Vmin it will be much easier to see all available options and compare the prices.
When you have well know competition and you want to change the prices you must take them into account. Lets start with your last two plans. For example cPanel VPS license can be found around 14$/month. Your second plan is too close to control panel who is well know by almost everyone and one what is being advocated by majority of hosting companies. Even Plesk 12 what is best version of that control panel ever to the point i personally think is even better, faster and proven to be more secure than cPanel still have a stigma to be "second option". And cheaper for 1-2$ just to not forget. Both control panels come with unlimited domains. Now when we come to your last price you see how become hard to keep up. While you are cheaper then both CP dedicated version you are double the price for VPS. Thats why i said it must be difference between VPS and dedicated or you will never sort this mess with your prices. They will always be too cheap for X or too expensive for Y and you will never manage to come to some sort of middle ground. Limiting domains probably was ok 10 years ago but today cant hold anymore. For the first price you can have DA with unlimited domains or in some cases even free (depending on the hosting company and the server price).
I really like the idea of a "managed Virtualmin" product --snipped-- we could expand staff to cover it. ///
How many people have IT people that you're paying for managing --snipped-- your box on a regular basis for less money. ;-) This is great way for making extra money and it could end even with some hefty amounts. Even here you can present your clients with two (or three) options for support:
forum where you can continue like its now, well maybe cut the waiting time to not go over 2 days
monthly subscription for XX and here the problems are really limited as you will be in charge of the initial setup and keep everything in order.
per case what can be XX up to XXX per hour where the price must be at least double the amount of the subscription.
Please dont take me wrong. This are all my ideas/suggestions. I would never dare to ask you to enforce what i said, from price suggestion to everything else but i think you guys must move away from current business model, its old, doesnt hold anymore and doesnt benefit anyone aside of people abusing GPL license. Not even saying that you must copy your competition but why reinvent the wheel - it already here just adapt to suit your need, vision, ideas, etc.
P.S. Its late here so if something is not clear enough free to point it out and will go deeper with my explanation.
- I often come to the conclusion that my brain has too many tabs open. -
Failing at desktop publishing & graphic design since 1994.
To respond to this and to see if maybe we can get on a similar page about what our major competitors actually charge:
And:
This is comparing a reselling hosting provider against retail prices. Which isn't ideal, and it's why I mentioned we're overhauling our reseller system, and it will actually work going forward. So, the ideal would be that we'd be competing on the same playing field, rather than our retail prices competing with hosting providers passing on their wholesale prices to their customers. We offer discounts to hosting providers who resell Virtualmin; we just haven't had a good system to implement it up to now, so it hasn't been pushed by us, we haven't done the biz dev needed to get Virtualmin Pro into these hosting provider's shopping carts, etc.
When you browse to cPanel's website, you can buy cPanel for VPS for $200/year or $425/year for dedicated. It is only when you go through a high volume reseller, or hosts with bulk licenses, that you'll see prices lower than that. When reselling like that, they become the first point of contact for support, and we don't have that expense any more; meaning we can sell to resellers cheaper without it hitting our bottom line.
Those folks that are selling cPanel for $14/month, would qualify for discounts from Virtualmin, as well, is what I'm trying to say, and they would have the option to pass some of those discounts on to their customers, as long as they're offering it as part of a supported hosting product. Whether we can build a reasonable network of hosting providers over the next year is probably what determines if we're successful in our plans to make Virtualmin the top choice for people setting up new servers.
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Hi,
Chipping in with a couple of thoughts:
1 - Support or management: I am not sure you want to go there, I have been in this business for a long time and it's not pretty. You also risk getting a lot of bad press. At work we are bulk resellers of CPanel and Plesk and we do that for next to nothing, all the while having to support the customer - when we fail we go upstream and this is another step where it could get tricky - CPanel's support has been - to us - very competent and fast, while Plesk's usual reply is "we'll get back to you within 12 hours"; we're in the process of letting Plesk go altogether. Don't be Plesk. :)
2 - Please do not crazy limit GPL to 10 domains or what not. When I got started it was a great opportunity to use GPL and I would not have had the money to pay for it and even if I had I would have gone with CPanel from a reseller probably, forced by the circumstances (and bosses).
I would make the licences even cheaper and super simple, say $5 a month for Pro (period) and would try to tempt people in from GPL via extra features like the installers or perhaps even more sophisticated stuff like "launch docker stuffs and proxy the website to it" (just a trendy idea).
my 2 pence
No hosting just cheap control panel license including some other products used in hosting industry: licensepal[dot]com or this one buycpanel[dot]com/special/.
- I often come to the conclusion that my brain has too many tabs open. -
Failing at desktop publishing & graphic design since 1994.
No, I don't mean we plan to do hosting. That's not at all one of our goals, and we've nixed the idea on a number of occasions in the past when it was suggested by investors. We don't want to compete with our own customers.
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2 - Please do not crazy limit GPL to 10 domains or what not. When I got started it was a great opportunity to use GPL and I would not have had the money to pay for it and even if I had I would have gone with CPanel from a reseller probably, forced by the circumstances (and bosses). And this is what i was talking in my previous post. GPL license should not be used to make money and you just make my argument stronger. No one should be able to use GPL to make any money and that is the reason there is Pro version of Vmin.
Even in the situation where you dont have money 10 domains should be enough to pay for Pro version so how ever you put 10 domains on GPL is still enough.
Looks like because of bad business model some people even feel entitled to make money on free version of Vmin. This was going on for too long and i know there will be some people crying for the domain limitation but this is how it should be from beginning.
- I often come to the conclusion that my brain has too many tabs open. -
Failing at desktop publishing & graphic design since 1994.
No, I don't mean we plan to do hosting. That's not at all one of our goals, and we've nixed the idea on a number of occasions in the past when it was suggested by investors. We don't want to compete with our own customers.
I was referring on this: as long as they're offering it as part of a supported hosting product
- I often come to the conclusion that my brain has too many tabs open. -
Failing at desktop publishing & graphic design since 1994.
Ah, I think I don't understand what you're suggesting, then. So, you mean we shouldn't offer discounts to hosting providers based on the idea that they'd act as the first line of support for their customers (and thus those users would demand less of us)?
The idea all along has been that we want people who are signing up for hosting, whether it is a VPS or dedicated server deal, or a shared hosting account, to be able to choose from a variety of hosting providers who will pre-install Virtualmin for you or use Virtualmin for their services (in the case of shared hosting). Our lackluster (practically non-existent and always broken) reseller system has been a major impediment to that goal. But, in an ideal world most users would never deal with Virtualmin.com directly, just as most users don't deal with cPanel or Plesk directly; they buy from a hosting provider who buys from those upstream vendors. We just haven't ever built a credible infrastructure for doing that, until now (and most of the pieces for this are already functional on the new website...reseller accounts will work, and work well, on the new site within a few days of launch).
Does that make sense? Is that what you're suggesting we shouldn't be trying to do?
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This forum can sometimes be so confusing and i think we lost each other. When i saw as long as they're offering it as part of a supported hosting product i had feeling you think to offer reseller ONLY to hosting companies.
I mean your idea to offer discounts to hosting companies is great but i would not limit only on them. Like the links i posted before, you should offer reseller even to people who just want to sell your product. Nice bonus would be affiliate program but the money will be used to buy your product(s) so no cash-out option. Of course for resellers i would leave the option to use the money on your products or cash-out. Maybe to facilitate everything using API keys would be best option, similar to what you can see with domain resellers.
- I often come to the conclusion that my brain has too many tabs open. -
Failing at desktop publishing & graphic design since 1994.
Before you dwell into this discussion, do you have some data on what percentage of your customers have Virtualmin Pro Licence vs the GPL!? If you have 96% GPL and only 4% Pro, then think about the reason.
Personally I have like 4 GPL in use, and never bought a Pro licence. This is not because I did not love the product, but because I felt the price was too high (actually I just noticed the price has dropped to 99$/year, I remember it being much higher and that has influenced my decision on staying GPL all these years).
So you have a product we all love. If you are planning to increase your revenue and deciding on planning pricing policies, first of all consult your data. Virtualmin is widely used because it is free as well. Maybe consider using value-added solutions, like CloudLinux and make the money through these solutions...
The suggestion of Diabolico about 10 domains on the GPL will kill a large part of your users.
And "We already find that we have to spend more time/money supporting our lowest priced licenses, since those users tend to be new to web hosting", seems not a a problem, but an opportunity! There you have a specific target group, who rely on your authority of a good product and they badly need support!
It would only "kill" people who are abusing GPL and thats fine. They just use free version of the product to make money, scamming their clients with false advertising and many other bad things. If the percentage is really so high on GPL then this control panel will die as developers dont have any reason to keep up... and Joe even said this (read between the lines). Users who need Vmin for their personal use it would not have any problem with the limit of 10 domains.
So you want them to change everything but the part what could compromise your money making on GPL what is not intended for this exploitation.
But in reality what Vmin have to loose? People who are already using Pro version will benefit even more when the price go down, leechers will drop but there isnt harm in that. Vmin will not lose anything frankly quite opposite. It would free the precious time for them (developers) to focus on coding and helping people who actually pay for the product.
Like i said and this is a fact, anyone who is opposing the change for GPL and reducing the amount of domains to 10 are the same people who are abusing free version of the control panel. Point. Based on the quality Vmin is in range with other big players like cPanel or Plesk and if anyone is not happy and threatening to go for something else is more than welcome. I would like to see when they get hacked because some free control panel have more holes then swiss cheese. Please go ahead and use any other free control panel on production server, i dare you.
- I often come to the conclusion that my brain has too many tabs open. -
Failing at desktop publishing & graphic design since 1994.
I just wanted to clarify something -- we're happy that folks use and enjoy Virtualmin GPL, even to make money -- we wanted to make an awesome product that people can use for free.
We're not looking to get rid of it, or to remove it's features.
We are, however, looking for ways to make it so that Virtualmin Pro is enticing to people.
And we're also looking for how to enable Virtualmin GPL users to buy things that may be useful and awesome to them, without actually having to upgrade to Pro. For example, what if folks using Virtualmin GPL could purchase Support incidents? That's one of the things we've been considering in the last few days.
So we're not getting rid of or limiting Virtualmin GPL... but ideas of how to help us pay the bills, while allowing people to use the products they want -- we're all ears!
-Eric
Joe said to name a few features of the Pro version, indeed I do not know them. Here's a no-brainer:
do not "hide" the Pro features or at least some of them in the GPL version. Let them be linked in the menus and when you click on them instead of opening that particular module, just display a text summarizing what the features it adds and how to enable it (by buying the Pro license).
if the feature only has like a secondary link on a page just grey it out, perhaps with a question mark explaining it's available in Pro.
This ought to raise some awareness.
Also, another thing that could be improved in Pro only is the UI. I have grown accustomed to it over the years and now even like it in a way, but it's not a good UI. When I introduce people to vmin this is almost always their biggest complain; it's all over the place and confusing people. So, just make a theme that comes with UI only that has increased usability, perhaps talk to some UI expert about functionality, ergonomics and so on.
HTH
Because people who use GPL to make money are wiling to spend money on extra service(s). That would never happen but i wish you luck with your ideas, i'm out of this conversation.
- I often come to the conclusion that my brain has too many tabs open. -
Failing at desktop publishing & graphic design since 1994.
We agree, and acknowledge that extracting money from Open Source software users is like squeezing water from a stone. ;-)
But, somehow we'll have to make it work. Compromising our open source values isn't an option. You're also absolutely correct that the cost of having no one pay for the software is that development won't happen at the pace we'd like it to.
I suspect the biggest problem with having a free version that is almost as powerful as the Pro version is that it sets the value in people's mind close to zero. No one complains about cPanel charging $200, or even $425, even though the product is (by most measures) actually less featureful/complete than Virtualmin. But, folks look at Virtualmin GPL vs Virtualmin Professional and think, "Why should I have to pay all this extra money for these five extra features?" And, occasionally, angrily demand we charge even less than we do.
So, we don't disagree with you that an unlimited GPL is a big problem for our bottom line. But, for a variety of reasons, we'll have to figure out how to explain the value of Virtualmin Pro better, rather than making GPL less capable.
I don't want to seem like we're completely clueless about how to go about it, but I'm trying to not to lead the conversation, too much. I'm trying to gather honest feedback to help me shape what we do on the new site. But, we do have a variety of changes coming in the future that will make it easier to distinguish between Pro and GPL and easier for folks to recognize the increased value of Pro for their business. It's not all product changes; a lot of it is just making it nicer to run a business on Pro by having a stronger support network, a stronger Pro brand, better pricing for people who sell hosting, and infrastructure for automating it all.
Here's the biggest thing that I think we've failed on thus far, and why I think our revenue is way down in recent years even while Virtualmin usage has grown at a constant clip: Can anyone name three big features that Virtualmin Pro has that GPL doesn't? I bet nobody here can without doing some googling. There are real differences in the products, particularly for people who make money with Virtualmin. We need to do a better job informing people about those differences.
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Well Joe after so long post you deserve some feedback. You are right, even i would have problem to name all the differences between GPL and Pro and you are right about why Pro when there is GPL. But lets pause for a moment at your idea and lets say Pro in next few months will have 10 or even 20 amazing new features. But GPL right now is good for many people to abuse free version to make money and you really think the new 20 amazing features will make them pay for Pro? Ok lets be full optimistic and say some people will go and buy Pro because of new features but how many of them? Do we talk about 1%, maybe 3% but i'm too generous here. At the end you will not move from the situation you have now.
How i can see long time ago your planing went in wrong direction and now you will hardly change anything without drastic cuts, in one way or another. Dont take me wrong, i dont think free version of Vmin is bad actually is quite opposite. But in the same time you must be realistic when we talk about changes you want to introduce with Vmin. I would really like to think that will help you guys and give more reason to work on Vmin but based on my experience with people i dont think you will move from current state.
Limiting the number of domains you could still offer most of the new stuff so people can get a feeling what they will get and not worry too much how many of them will abuse GPL. Some coprorations offer 15-30 days trial without limits and after that you must pay (like cPanel). If you limits the number of domains you would cover both full trial and in the same time offer free version forever. The price of VPS is going down as with everything, even the dedicated servers become cheaper. On VPS with 3-4GB memory you could host more than 10 clients and even if someone go with piling up VPS after some amount will stop to be cost effective as dedicated become cheaper than 5-6+ VPS.
How you can see however you take with limiting in domains everyone will benefit, people for personal use would still have great control panel for free and others who need for business will need to pay, you will get deserved money what would help you to maybe even expand (support, programmers to help you, etc) or at least give you more reason to keep up with new stuff.
Point is if you dont change GPL all this is useless, even if the new changes from Pro to GPL will take a year people are happy to exploit current state of GPL why they should bother with new stuff in Pro.
You can think or dream whatever you want but this will not change the facts regardless if you want to accept them or not.
- I often come to the conclusion that my brain has too many tabs open. -
Failing at desktop publishing & graphic design since 1994.
I'm confused Joe. In your point 4 you mention removing annual subs to accept monthly subs only. Yet when you put it in concrete terms you refer to annual subs.
As an individual preference I would definitely go for $99 up front, and renew at $45 each year (The current way licensing is priced). Personally I'd pay more upfront initially knowing that it would decrease an annual sub quite significantly.
If you feel you need to accommodate a monthly option based on client feedback, why do you have to exclude an annual renewal option?
Hey cyrus,
Thanks for your feedback. We've gotten enough people chiming in here and in other threads with a preference for annual options, that we will be providing both annual and monthly methods of purchase.
And, if we change prices in such a way that it increases renewal prices for existing Virtualmin license holders, we will provide some sort of discount or coupon to make it more fair for them on their next renewal. We never want to punish our existing users with price changes (which is why we're slow to change, and why we consult with as many users as possible before making the change).
The change to unified purchase/renewal pricing has been on my mind for years, and I think it's time to give it a try. It solves a number of problems caused by the current renewal pricing, and I believe it can work out fairly even for existing users as long as we send our current users a gift to make their next renewal the same price they were expecting.
The new shopping cart allows us to provide all sorts of nice features, and we want to make sure we provide the nicest experience possible. Too many options makes it confusing; and we've often had confusion over our licensing vs. renewal vs. upgrade prices. So, we're gonna try to make those questions go away, both with a much better user interface with more clear pricing and terms, and a simpler pricing model. The fact that the pricing gets cheaper for people to first get into VIrtualmin Professional is a really nice side effect. Price is always a very big deciding factor for folks in whether they use GPL or buy Professional, so a lower barrier for that first purchase is nice.
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Diabolic, it's not right what you say about GPL users.
We are not parasites but use a great product and also promote it.
GPL should always be free and unlimited domains.
I seen no mention here of licences being used on multiple servers.
The Webmin team can make money on support.
I would gladly pay a premium for support on each server I have. ( instances )
The webmin team seem to be busy with static math.
Chaos Reigns Within, Reflect, Repent and Reboot, Order Shall Return.
Diabolic, it's not right what you say about GPL users. We are not parasites but use a great product and also promote it. I just presented the facts and its not important if you or anyone else like it or not. Really that doesnt change anything. If you feel i call you out that is your problem and probably there is a reason for that. To me its simple, if you are using GPL version to make money you are abusing the license, now if you want to call this a parasite or something else its up to you.
GPL should always be free and unlimited domains. Why? Is there any rule for this. Do you feel entitled to have GPL in current state?
I seen no mention here of licences being used on multiple servers. There is no control panel who offers one license on multiple servers. Always was and it will be one license = one server.
The Webmin team can make money on support. That is correct and i hope they will introduce server management in the future.
I would gladly pay a premium for support on each server I have. Thats great but you are paying only for their time needed to manage your server, for the time invested in coding for Vmin you must pay separately (Pro) if you want to use this control panel in business, e.g. making money.
The stigma what was built around Vmin is absolutely wrong and need to be changed. Until now i didnt see any valid reason to keep GPL unlimited. But anyone is welcome to come and change this just skip the part where you "think" how you should have anything free.
- I often come to the conclusion that my brain has too many tabs open. -
Failing at desktop publishing & graphic design since 1994.
Diabolico,
Don't forget GPL means open source, bypassing a 10 domains limit will be trivial, just a switch in the code. Also, all these people that are not paying for vmin, they'll go elsewhere. You'd be losing userbase which though not paying, I'm sure they're not totally useless either.
It's perfectly fine making money with GPL software, in fact it revolutionized the world. Imagine how the world would look like now if everybody had to pay licenses to use e.g. the Linux kernel.
I think the ideas I submitted previously might be actually possible to implement and raise some awareness that there is a Pro version and it actually brings some valuable features.
There is nothing wrong with folks using Virtualmin GPL for any purpose -- no one is abusing anything.
We have given Virtualmin GPL away for free, in the hopes that people find it awesome. We will not be limiting it's features.
Let's keep this discussion relating to Virtualmin Pro, and how to make it awesome :-)
Let us know how you'd like to see Virtualmin Pro licensing work!
-Eric
Let's keep this discussion relating to Virtualmin Pro, and how to make it awesome GPL and Pro are too much interconnected between each other and just changing one will not make much difference. But if you want quick resolution then:
split Pro license to VPS and dedicated with different prices
be slightly cheaper than mainstream like Plesk and cPanel
remove domain limit
make it faster because compared to others Vmin is slow especially vs Plesk 12 where they did amazing job
remove obsolete and rarely used modules and make them install by request
This will be enough to give you fair chance to enter in the game. Anything extra you add to Pro version will be just a nice bonus.
- I often come to the conclusion that my brain has too many tabs open. -
Failing at desktop publishing & graphic design since 1994.
Hey, I will fight Diabolico once more :) In my point of view you will become a crap company if you will limit somehow GPL - just don't pour anymore all those nice features into it, this is as far as I would go. Keep it as it is today as the feature goes and that's it (see below). Enough is enough, I agree. Still, do not destroy any GPL version, else what will be the reason for its existence? Do you need a demo - well, than offer a proper demo?
The reasons were explained countless times here: you will loose all the respect in the community - should I remind the nice article Linux Foundation wrote about you (posted on FB a while ago)? Or the plethora of blogs that are supporting your direction? And the sysadmins years of consideration and respect - if for Diabolico doesn't matter, for me it would.
What is this non sense "not letting people making money out of it"? Is it GPL or not? If it is they should be making money, if they can of course. BTW Diabolico - I have Virtualmin Pro 100 and Cloudmin 10 if you are wondering why I am writing this, so I am already a customer. I am speaking out of principle here, for the sake of OpenSource, the growth of the community, and your products market penetration. Use that, don't destroy that. This is as hell not the moment to "close" but to "open" even Microsoft is getting that, and you have a strategical advantage - don't loose it.
Diabolico, once again - you have no right to shame people for using GPL software, call them leeches, parasites, abusers, bad, false and stuff? WTF, I am still thinking you really have no elementary idea what Open Source is. As I told you in a thread that even began to be moderated, and our posts deleted, take your snobbish attitude and shove it, elsewhere. And don't start the answering to me routine, watch Stallman or such to clear your head boy. You mad for money or what?
I am also for another scheme than Diabolico - it's exactly the opposite: do not split and make none-sense licensing between VPS hosting and dedicated. What is the difference, and the meaning of it for your customers, I really don't get it... In fact you shouldn't do it - just tell me the number of domains to know exactly what am I expecting/paying for. Why should you care in what kind of the machine I am using your product??? In fact I should have the liberty to move my domains as I see fit, where I see fit. You will loose me as your client if you take this away from me.
In fact my old request stands - give us the freedom to split the number of domains, between any number of machines, virtual or physical, as we see fit.
Because I am the kind of guy who loves his freedom, been a corporate sale guy for 10+ years, so maybe I know a thing or two about licenses. And I really hate the stupid ones. And I am choosing products strictly on this criteria.
As for the billing I couldn't care less how you do it, you should of course decide in your best interest here. I would be fine with any scheme, but I prefer though to bulk buy the number of months I want (if monthly billing will be your direction) please don't get me worrying each month/always be in the danger of expiring licenses/not getting updates or anything in this direction. I don't need another thing to watch and worry for, and I hope there will be enough of us to hate this. So if you will bill monthly give me the option to buy 6, 12, 24 months let's say.
Don't take the name of root in vain...The freedom to spread the domains across servers would be brilliant and more people would buy the Pro I would have thought, I would that's for sure. I use the GPL version on my servers but I will start to offer the PRO if a client wishes at cost price added to the server. Not sure how a domain owner would profit other than more 1 click installs. I would have more bells and whistles though to play with. :)
Chaos Reigns Within, Reflect, Repent and Reboot, Order Shall Return.
Might be too late here but thought I'd throw in my 2 cents...
1.Monthly subscriptions.I prefer an annual subscription but you won't lose me as a customer over this.
2.A lower cost, lower end license.Maybe the gpl could be unsupported, or community supported only.
3.Unified renewal pricing.I'm not sure I agree with this one, the longer you have a customer the less support they should need with knowledge and experience using your product. Many software products are sold then maintained with 20-30% renewal pricing (which I'm not suggesting) but those scenarios typically involve big initial investments, but the logic still holds, right? Growing customer base with mix of new and renewal sales. I would suggest that part of the fix here could be a better support environment, specifically self-help support to help ease that burden.
I have personally spent hours searching for information in the past for a particular issue but half the "hits" are outdated legacy docs and the other half support/forum posts that either don't have a resolution or if they do it's not relevant to my needs. This forces me to open a ticket with you guys... When I do that you guys rock, I mean absolutely rock. Some of those instances are me being stupid, some are fixes or adjustments you guys need to make, but we usually can find a fix. The result of this is I'm being trained to just open a support ticket whenever we have an issue - that's not good. We do everything we can in our organization to minimize tickets - support is expensive.
The second part of this is that I wish Virtuamin had a simpler interface. Create/disable/delete, add/edit/delete users for ftp/sftp/email, dns, databases, backup/restore. That covers 95% of what you need to for each domain. Take email for example, editing users/aliases is straight forward but then you have Server Configuration -> Email Settings; Services -> SpamAssassin Configuration; and Server Configuration -> Spam and Virus Delivery. Want to edit a user signature, that's not located in user preferences that's located under the Inbox. For me I find it un-intuitive to the tasks performed.
4.Only monthly subscriptionsSame response as 1 above, perfer annual but you won't lose us as a customer over this.
Some other comments on information from other posts in this thread.
Forget about vps/ded pricing - hosting resources (vps or dedicated) are just that, resources to provide hosting services.
I don't agree with limiting or hobbling gpl, I do agree with providing more separation between it and the pro version. I can name only 2 things different between gpl/pro - Reseller capability and install scripts.
Regarding my number 3 above, I think you could save yourselves a lot of time with some changes in these two areas. I want you to make money, we are vested in you as part of how to service customers and manage our environment. I don't want you to disappear, that would be a nightmare...
The idea of licensing number of domains across multiple servers is interesting to me. We currently run a mix of cloudmin/gpl and pro. We have a gpl that does nothing but manage DNS (create the zone and push it to our DNS servers). I don't need pro to do that but have no problem having it covered under a site license, etc. How would you handle mydomain.com on web server A, mail server B and database server C? Would that be one domain or 3? This is interesting to us though.
I do think some paid project work would be a good offering, I'm less excited about paid support - not because of the cost but rather the organization issues for you - that would be a huge shift in how and what you currently do. Support would need to be provided in minutes/hours under a paid plan.
This is exciting and I'm sure everyone here will support you the best we can through this change. I definitely want you guys to be a stronger company tomorrow! Thanks for all you to!
It's not too late, and these are great thoughts, and I appreciate them.
To answer some of your concerns and suggstions:
"1. Monthly subscriptions."
We've had enough feedback in support of keeping annual options that they will be sticking around (they'll even be slightly cheaper than monthly). So, you'll be able to buy annually or monthly.
"2. A lower cost, lower end license.
Maybe the gpl could be unsupported, or community supported only."
GPL is already supposed to be predominantly community supported; but we end up picking up the slack a lot more than we'd like (and a lot more than we can really afford, if we want to have money and time left for UI, docs, new development, etc., which I think we'd all like to be true). That's an issue to be addressed in a variety of ways: Simpler UI (we're working on it), more docs (we've already got 1000+ pages worth of docs, but that's a problem in and of itself...Virtualmin and Webmin are deep products with an incredible amount of complexity). We may need to have a serious "What features and options do we kill?" conversation with the community going forward, in order to simplify the products and reduce people's confusion. Moving some things out into optional plugins would also be a path forward that could simplify the UI without dumbing down the product.
I think, at this point, we're sticking with our current license sizes, and not adding any new ones. Initial pricing will drop, since we'll be unifying prices for new purchases vs. renewals.
"3. Unified renewal pricing.
I'm not sure I agree with this one, the longer you have a customer the less support they should need with knowledge and experience using your product."
That's why we've got the pricing we currently have. But, it has some big negative side effects that I believe have been too costly for us as a company (and as a community that needs to grow in order to thrive). Here's the biggest problem with the current model: It makes getting setup with Virtualmin look more expensive than many other options on the market, even if long-term ownership is quite a bit lower. When people compare a $99 purchase price (or, in the past a $139 purchase price) to some of our lower priced competitors, it was hard to swallow if they weren't already aware of the value of Virtualmin vs. those lower cost options. What's worse is that very few of those folks ever looked to see that the renewal cost was only $45, making it cheaper longterm than almost anything else out there.
But, I know it's going to be a hit for our existing customers, and we never want to punish the folks who've supported us over the past ten years. We'll balance that out. I'm having a heck of a time implementing the method by which we do it, but for the folks who've been with use for years, you'll get a bonus when the new pricing goes live, or soon after. We want you to be as happy about the new site and new store and new pricing as everybody else will be (at least, I'm pretty sure everyone will be happy). And, we also want to make more sales while keeping all of our existing customers coming back. I'm highly sensitive to changes that are going to hit those existing customers in their wallet.
In short: I think you'll be OK with changes we're settling on.
"Forget about vps/ded pricing - hosting resources (vps or dedicated) are just that, resources to provide hosting services."
I agree with you on this front. It's kind of old-fashioned to think of a VPS as vastly under-powered vs. a dedicated server. But, I think we've come up with a plan that'll make the folks suggesting this happy, anyway, even though we're never gonna see eye-to-eye on a VPS being somehow less of a server.
"I don't agree with limiting or hobbling gpl, I do agree with providing more separation between it and the pro version. I can name only 2 things different between gpl/pro - Reseller capability and install scripts."
The third really big one is system statistics tools (the graphs of CPU/memory/etc.), which can also be shared to Cloudmin. But, there are several dozen other small things.
Nonetheless, in the new shop, there will be a really clear value proposition. And the value provided by Professional will be larger and more clear. And, I think we've settled on the plan of going back to major new features always landing in Pro first, and trickling down to GPL over the next year or two. We won't be limiting domains or otherwise hobbling GPL with arbitrary limits.
"The idea of licensing number of domains across multiple servers is interesting to me. We currently run a mix of cloudmin/gpl and pro. We have a gpl that does nothing but manage DNS (create the zone and push it to our DNS servers). I don't need pro to do that but have no problem having it covered under a site license, etc. How would you handle mydomain.com on web server A, mail server B and database server C? Would that be one domain or 3? This is interesting to us though."
We're not going to do multi-server licensing, at least not in the simple form of dividing domains across servers...because our biggest paying customers would suddenly be worth almost nothing to our bottom line (an unlimited license would effectively mean no one would ever need more than one license, no matter how many thousands of servers they have). Realistically, split server licenses, even without the Unlimited license being qualified for it, would reduce our revenue by a bit more than half overnight, and would bankrupt us in a year. There's just no way that licensing change would double the customer base.
All that said, for your scenario, we've been working on those kinds of features, and it's one of the new things we're launching with the new site; it's been in private beta with a few people, and I've talked about it a bit with folks, but we're launching it widely soon, with docs and a full product in the shop. You won't need a Virtualmin license for the "extra" servers (like DNS, database, mail scanning, which are the first three services we support off-loading from your Virtualmin servers), so they would not consume domains on those other servers. You'd have your domain on one Virtualmin server (and an optional backup/hot spare/development server, which is already, and has always been, allowed) and then the DNS, database, and mail scanning, could all be happening on four other servers (two for DNS) without any need for worrying about domain counts on those systems.
"I do think some paid project work would be a good offering, I'm less excited about paid support - not because of the cost but rather the organization issues for you - that would be a huge shift in how and what you currently do."
Very astute. We've built the company as a software company, not a support company. Which is why we're so few people; we may be good at support (or, at least, Eric is very good at support, while me and Jamie somehow struggle through). Becoming a support company would, by necessity, alter our course quite a bit, and it's not a thing I necessarily want to do. It's always kind of a default answer when people discuss Open Source projects trying to make a living from it, but I've never considered it a good answer. It's like saying, "I really like building cars." And someone responding, "I know! You should become a taxi driver."
The better answer may be to make things easier to use, rather than spending a bunch of time doing hands-on support to help people use it.
We're thinking hard about this, and won't be announcing any major new support offerings immediately, but may introduce some sort of support offering in the future. In the short term, the only support-related thing we'll be adding is the ability to get premium support for our Open Source tools; this will be on a per-incident basis, so buying Professional will still be the best way to get support for Virtualmin for most folks, but for people who want to stick with Virtualmin or Cloudmin GPL, or who need help with Webmin or Usermin, we'll have a way for them to give us money in exchange for help.
"This is exciting and I'm sure everyone here will support you the best we can through this change. I definitely want you guys to be a stronger company tomorrow!"
We do, too, and it's certainly been weighing on me that our website and shopping experience has stagnated for such a long time; the Drupal upgrade has been a bit of a quagmire that I've been slogging through off and on for over a year now. Drupal has been a blessing and a curse...mostly a curse, when it comes to upgrading. But, the new site, new pricing, and some other new stuff coming, I believe, will be really nice for everyone. I'm pretty excited to be as close to launch as we are, and to have so many little surprises up our sleeve for the launch. And, me finally being free of the website migration will allow me to work on my huge todo list for Virtualmin and Cloudmin (also, Ilia and I have some big plans for the UI/UX).
Thanks again for your thoughts. I think we're gonna launch the new site with changes that folks really like.
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Hi Joe,
I think it is good to have alternative in subscription plans, some people maybe want to test things out month by month, and maybe then switch to a yearly plan. But adding a monthly plan should not change the yearly plans.
I don't really see any big difference in $75/$75 yearly and $7 monthly, other than the monthly plan would give me more administrative work.
And I think the way subscription plans are now is really attractive, pay a few bucks more at the start and then have a lower yearly fee. This is also how most of the business people want it - in my opinion. If you use a printer much, you don't buy a cheap printer with expensive small toner cartridges, you probably buy a more expensive printer with cheaper and bigger toner cartridges.
Removing your current plans would be totally wrong! But that doesn't mean that you don’t should add the other options, $75/$75 yearly and $7 monthly. And if you would like to upgrade from these plans to $99/$45 you have to pay $99 the first year before dropping down to $45.
We have been a Virtualmin Pro customer for 10 years now and have been very happy with the current plans, and there would be a big difference in price for our 10 years looking at current plan and $75/$75.
If you need to charge more for subscriptions, that’s fine by me! Virtualmin have the best support ever and the software is worth every dollar!
Best regards, Leffe (Blueforce)
Thanks for chiming in, Leffe. I'm always happy to hear longtime supporters opinions.
We won't forget about existing customers, and we'll go out of our way not to punish folks who've been loyal by hitting them with big price increases. But, we do need to simplify our product offerings rather than increase them (this one is something I've known for a while, and it's something that I've gotten flack for for years from product and marketing people that I've talked with about it).
As it stands now, I think I can say with confidence the following:
We'll have both monthly and annual options.
There will no longer be a "renewal" price. Annual and monthly products will renew at the same price, but that price will be lower than the current purchase price (probably by quite a bit). So, your renewals will go up by a few bucks, but not a lot, and new licenses will be quite a bit cheaper than they currently are.
Our long-time users will get a credit, or coupon, or a free license extension (I dunno exactly how I'm implementing this yet) to balance that change out to make the hit smaller and to make up the difference in what you paid for the initial license vs. what new pricing will be.
More importantly, we'll be focusing on ramping up the value that Virtualmin Pro and Cloudmin Pro users get out of the products, without making GPL worse (i.e. we'll begin pushing new capabilities and new modules out for Pro, which will trickle down to GPL over time, as we did things for the first few years...back when we were making enough money to pay ourselves and go to trade shows and stuff!).
I'm not gonna reveal too much about specifics, but I think folks will like what we're doing and where we're going with the products, the projects, and the company.
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I've been using virtualmin gpl for years, I have about 10 Linode servers using it. The reason we never purchased virtualmin is because of the domain limits, or expense of it for higher limits. To have pro on all our servers would cost us loads more. We use Linode and manage servers ourselves to save money. If we had Pro on all servers then we may as well not use Linode and virtualmin but go to a host that support managed cpanel servers and put more sites on fewer servers.
But I would like to pay for it. I would like to give something back and I would like more priority on support. Just not on a per server or domain limit basis. And it can't cost a lot more each month. A support plan is a good idea opposed to a per server license. We won't need 10 times support than having 1 server, there is no difference in the support we need having 1 server or 10, or 1 domain or 100.
Hi Joe,
I've been using both Webmin and Virtualmin since the beforetime. I have a few thoughts and ideas based upon my usage, which I don't ascribe to any other use cases, so feel free to reject everything out of hand. That said, if you have the time to hear me out, it would be appreciated.
For the purposes of this discussion I am going to consider Webmin and Virtualmin as, if not one and the same, intrinsically linked. They are in practice for me.
WEBMIN:
First off, I use Webmin for every single Linux box I work with. It is my default management interface as I support systems in mixed environments with a lot of Windows admins. Virtualmin is deployed on the rare system that hosts multiple websites. I would love a way to pay a nominal fee per Linux VM to support the ongoing development of Webmin. $25 per year? Maybe $50?
What I would like to get for the Webmin fee is something similar to Spacewalk (http://spacewalk.redhat.com/). It doesn't have to be much. It just has to be a "single pane of glass" that individual Linux servers can "register" with so that I have one "Linux server managment page" to go to which in turn has every single "registered" server. No discovering the IPs of 50 different boxes and logging in one at a time.
More critically, I would like to be able to handle - at a minimum - patching for all systems from this single interface. Sort of a WSUS for Linux. Ideally, I would have a single UI that would show me the basic service monitoring as well. In a perfect world, linking up Webmin servers to the central system would also shuttle a copy of their logs to a central syslog server.
VIRTUALMIN:
Virtualmin has several use cases for me, each of which I realistically need to have the ability to license differently.
1) A really basic Virtualmin instance deployed to support a few websites, usually for non-profits or personal use. Functionality limiting is (mostly) fine here, as long as the basics are met. But it needs to be GPL/free.
2) A full bore Virtualmin used for testing, or for training. Here is where I, for example, host my personal sites. I have more than 10, less than 50 at any given time. I can't afford to pay hundreds of dollars out of my own pocket per year or a thousand up front. Yet I need to be able to keep my skills up with the full bore package. Could there be a "full/proper Virtualmin for personal/training use" license? Maybe restricted to about 50 domains? $100/year is something I could probably swing past the wife.
I would like to offer the point that I am perfectly fine NOT HAVING SUPPORT for this option. The forums are fine. I just need the full meal deal in terms of functionality.
3) Full bore Virtualmin for commercial use. Here I'm not talking about using this as a service provider. I use Virtualmin with SMBs looking to host their multiple sites in one place. $1000 is an acceptable price, as it comes with support. Monthly payments are of little interest to my SMBs because they often operate in boom and bust economies. They pay for things during the boom, sweat the assets during the bust.
Features requested for Virtualmin:
1) The "WSUS for Linux" concept discussed above in the Webmin section is critical. Managing the rapidly multiplying Linux servers is becoming difficult.
2) SSL that doesn't suck. Most of these companies do not have IP addresses for each site. It just isn't going to happen, especially with IPv4 exhaustion. So I need the ability to manage SSL certificates through Virtualmin such that each site can have it's own cert but all sites share one IP address. The mail server just needs to have a cert related to the hostname, it doesn't need to be responding with a different cert for each domain under management. Just get Apache working.
Similarly, Let's Encrypt support is critical. I think it ties into the above portion of SSL management. The public beta starts tomorrow and to be perfectly frank new domains configured in virtualmin should by default have SSL certs from Let's Encrypt and be set up for auto renewal.
3) A "global domains under managment" payment option. Assuming the feature requested in 1) (WSUS for Linux) is implemented, this would give us the ability to see all systems (and their configured domains) under management for a given organization. I would love the ability to use this for licensing.
How about $25 a year for Webmin-only nodes attached to the centralized management system, $50 per year for Virtualmin-attached nodes and then a per-domain charge? This lets us distribute and alter the systems and domains under management as we see fit, but you still get the funds you need to keep the lights on.
4) Docker support. By this I do not mean "Virtualmin works inside Docker". I mean "Virtualmin manages Docker". In a perfect world a Virtualmin-managed Docker would do the following:
A) Spawn a load balancer which would claim ports 25, 80, 443 and so forth B) Spawn Apache, MySQL, Postfix, Busybox, etc. containers for each domain configured C) Configure the load balancer to pass back requests received to the relevant container
This would provide perfect isolation for domains from one another while still sharing a single IP address, management structure, etc. This is probably worth being a separate product, licensed separately, etc. It's worth good money, but IMHO is worth more if it integrated with Webmin/Virtualmin and is part of the familiar environment we've worked with for years than if it were some completely separate UI for a completely separate product. We're here because we like Virtualmin and want to keep using it.
As always, the above are my personal use cases, desires and dreams. They are not demands, but sincere requests.
Above all, thank you for all the effort put into the *mins over the years. Your efforts make Linux better.
Hi Joe,
For licenses monthly and yearly licenses is the way most business work with. Yearly licenses usually have a 1 or 2 months discounts. This leaves room to increase a little monthly price in a way that yearly prices may reflect current unified price.
In the case of lower ending cost that is not profitable, you may try the following:
1) IMPROVE THE DOCUMENTATION (KNOWLEDGE BASE) - this is one of the worst documentation maybe it is the search engine but I can not find solutions that I need and that are there. In contrast support it is great!
2) KEEP DOCUMENTATION UPDATED - As new ticket are solved, add the solutions to the Documentation or the Knowledge base.
3) OPEN DOCUMENTATION / KNOWLEDGE BASE to all versions paid and not paid, so less support request are generated
4) PROVIDE SUPPORT TO PAID VERSIONS - this is less desirable but it might be based on time to answer as in SLA or engineer lever to answer, low priced versions may get a engineer Jr.
Thanks for the great support and the great products!