Just got the email - going from $45 a month to $850 a month - What are you all migrating to?

[lbeachmike]

14 minutes ago, yggdrasil said:

Ethical? No. Legal? Probably yes, since they keep making you agree to new terms of services every time you update the software.

They are not taking your software away, just making it obsolete or end of life.

Rendering your software obsolete is no different than taking it away.

WHMCS forgot to whom they owe their success.

[Bigol'tastynuggets]

15 minutes ago, lbeachmike said:

Rendering your software obsolete is no different than taking it away.

WHMCS forgot to whom they owe their success.

Forgot or just don't care? 

They've already rinsed you of the money for an owned license! Your support is probably less than a month's money now! 

It's explicitly forcing you into either two scenarios: 

A) Pay them monthly 

B) Use insecure software when they've pushed enough upgrades and security patches to terrify those not yet in compliance! 

It's not a way I would do business personally! I think the fan-boys point of its only "x amount a month" or its "not a stable business if you can't afford an increase" is irrelevant when you bring up the immutable point its just not a company I'd be able to trust going forward! 

The fact they hid some higher pricing to combat the percentage increase they were being critiqued on is just a clear indication of how they think! 

They don't care, they just want your money and they'll hide being marketing terms and falsehoods in order to do so! I'll be voting with my wallet! 

[xyzulu]

I'll say it again.. they could have averted this issue if they just allowed those of us with owned licenses to keep them (yes, we know technically they have not removed our licenses) and only target new people with the new pricing. I can't see why they chose not to go this route, but they must have thought it would be better financially for them this way. I don't see them changing their decision either.. 

[lbeachmike]

Technically the took your investment in your licenses and made them valueless.  I would not continue to make the differentiation you are making.

They did some math, and figured out how many people will leave, figured out how much money will come in via the remaining customer base at new pricing versus previous, and cared only about the money.

In 2021, success seems to simply yield greed for more.  Anybody with a conscience would not have simply discarded the customers that got them here, which clearly are all of us with the owned licenses.  Class and integrity in business are scarce in 2021.  Greed is in great abundance.

 

[yggdrasil]

55 minutes ago, Bigol'tastynuggets said:

Forgot or just don't care? 

They've already rinsed you of the money for an owned license! Your support is probably less than a month's money now! 

It's explicitly forcing you into either two scenarios: 

A) Pay them monthly 

B) Use insecure software when they've pushed enough upgrades and security patches to terrify those not yet in compliance! 

It's not a way I would do business personally! I think the fan-boys point of its only "x amount a month" or its "not a stable business if you can't afford an increase" is irrelevant when you bring up the immutable point its just not a company I'd be able to trust going forward! 

The fact they hid some higher pricing to combat the percentage increase they were being critiqued on is just a clear indication of how they think! 

They don't care, they just want your money and they'll hide being marketing terms and falsehoods in order to do so! I'll be voting with my wallet! 

Then put your money somewhere else. Companies only understand issues when it affects their balance.

[yggdrasil]

46 minutes ago, xyzulu said:

I'll say it again.. they could have averted this issue if they just allowed those of us with owned licenses to keep them (yes, we know technically they have not removed our licenses) and only target new people with the new pricing. I can't see why they chose not to go this route, but they must have thought it would be better financially for them this way. I don't see them changing their decision either.. 

I suspect because most licenses are owned licenses and they need money quickly.

[yggdrasil]

29 minutes ago, lbeachmike said:

Technically the took your investment in your licenses and made them valueless.  I would not continue to make the differentiation you are making.

They did some math, and figured out how many people will leave, figured out how much money will come in via the remaining customer base at new pricing versus previous, and cared only about the money.

In 2021, success seems to simply yield greed for more.  Anybody with a conscience would not have simply discarded the customers that got them here, which clearly are all of us with the owned licenses.  Class and integrity in business are scarce in 2021.  Greed is in great abundance.

 

I suspect this is true, they probably calculated how many would leave. The problem with this sort of moves is that it can heavily backfire, if most people leave, the ones staying will have to make it up with the bills, which means those sticking with WHMCS can potentially suffer even more price increases in the future.

Knowing WHMCS they will probably do this by some trick to avoid people claiming they raised price again in such a short timeframe. Example, they will start to charge additional per active product, or count subaccount towards the license or something similar, which technically is another increase while claiming the monthly price is the same. Do people remember what was one of the biggest updates they made to WHMCS before this announcement? They made changes to how contacts and subaccounts work. They put some real work in changing this, which was welcome. I speculate the hidden reason behind is how they are going to count licenses in the future.

This is the main reason some  people will leave. They lost trust, and nobody can guarantee any user that current monthly prices will stay and not increase in the future. Even if the monthly pricing was very low, the issue is they are not honoring sold licenses and keep changing their pricing and licenses.

[lbeachmike]

55 minutes ago, yggdrasil said:

I suspect because most licenses are owned licenses and they need money quickly.

Want, not need.

[lbeachmike]

Imagine this -

You buy a brand new car.  You own the car.  You intend to keep it for many years.

After a couple of years, the car manufacturer announces that your car can no longer pass annual state inspections without a $200/month maintenance subscription fee.  Your car still works fine.  You just wouldn't be able to use it.

Can you imagine that happening?  That scenario would be identical to what WHMCS has done here.

[Magicklug]

Agree, this is too much to just accept it and go on.

[bear]

9 hours ago, yggdrasil said:

I suspect this is true, they probably calculated how many would leave. The problem with this sort of moves is that it can heavily backfire, if most people leave, the ones staying will have to make it up with the bills, which means those sticking with WHMCS can potentially suffer even more price increases in the future.

This is coming in any case, and was already in the planning, I'd suggest. It's not based on how many leave, it's simply a climb to increase until it stops growing enough, to see how far they can push that before it slows sales and retention.

[Bigol'tastynuggets]

13 minutes ago, bear said:

This is coming in any case, and was already in the planning, I'd suggest. It's not based on how many leave, it's simply a climb to increase until it stops growing enough, to see how far they can push that before it slows sales and retention.

I agree, it'll be a few years at least until the dust truly settles! Not everyone has in-house capabilities to make a switch initially IF they want to!

Whmcs/ioncube going out of business should be in everyones DR plans though and people should have mitigation incase their billing software situation went bad/got hacked/major security flaws but the same as you see people complain paypal shut them down and they can no longer operate - you're seeing people saying they're stuck!

We're taking our time as we are in a good position to meet and exceed what whmcs offers us currently with the same amount of cash we'd pay in the 22/23 tax year! Provided we're done by October we'll break even by the same time next year! We could in theory switch today but  we want to fully customise our new home to be a huge improvement! 

For me, the money is irrelevant it's the disrespectful way in which it was done that wildly offends me

[stormy]

Exactly. It’s not the amount that matters. I would have liked to switch right away but I’d rather do it right, even it it means sending some terribly undeserved money to WHMCS.

I think we can switch before the next payment probably. We still want to put in more work so it’s not just a change but a clear improvement for our customers.

WHMCS is in for a nasty surprise when all the serious companies make the jump in the next few months. 

Edited August 23, 2021 by stormy

[Bigol'tastynuggets]

37 minutes ago, stormy said:

Exactly. It’s not the amount that matters. I would have liked to switch right away but I’d rather do it right, even it it means sending some terribly undeserved money to WHMCS.

I think we can switch before the next payment probably. We still want to put in more work so it’s not just a change but a clear improvement for our customers.

WHMCS is in for a nasty surprise when all the serious companies make the jump in the next few months. 

Yeah, you do what's right for your company I.e your customers! We decided after years of serious errors and messing around (Including whmcs getting hacked twice) and the unwillingness to take ownership of issues it's just far too unstable for production! 

 

Fortunately we started looking elsewhere when they messed up the stripe payments as we have to spend a good hour each morning sorting that! Then the price rise was just the final straw! I can forgive incidents happening! I do understand things aren't always smooth but at least they used to show (feign?) humility about issues - they just don't seem to care anymore and seriously have delusions about value offered! 

[malfunction]

13 hours ago, lbeachmike said:

Rendering your software obsolete is no different than taking it away.

WHMCS forgot to whom they owe their success.

No, they didn't forget about you at all, they explicitly identified you as a member of a class that was generating little or no revenue for WHMCS and set out to change that.  They have admitted that officially in remarks like this from the CEO:

Quote

Support and Updates was a flawed model, allowing some users to receive many months or years of updates when only paying intermittently for access. It is for this reason that we are no longer going to permit gaps in payment of Support and Updates, and this will be achieved by requiring Owned license holders to migrate to monthly billing.

You can't just pay occasionally, you have to pay all the time, even if you already bought the product outright.  Heaven forbid you should only pay for what you actually get, they want more and more and more.  This is what being owned by vulture capitalists gets you.

They think they can't lose with that policy, either they continue to receive the same zero dollars per month from you, or you capitulate and pay monthly.  I believe that the actual result is they will make less, with the "intermittent access" payers like me refusing to go monthly on principle, and the reputation damage from a lot of disgruntled customers hurting them more widely.  You don't want the core of your business enmeshed with a company you can't trust, and you can no longer trust WHMCS.

[bear]

2 hours ago, malfunction said:

this will be achieved by requiring Owned license holders to migrate to monthly billing.

The flaw in this is the "monthly billing" thing. If they really wanted uninterrupted payments for owned license holders, the simple fix would be denying updates unless back payments were caught up if allowed to lapse in the first place. That would then deny them the really large price increase of the monthly-based-on-accounts model, however, and that was the real impetus there.  No doubt in anyone's mind, despite the claims to the contrary. Very, abundantly clear.

Even with concurrency, the fees were not high enough compared to the monthly lease, so they found a way to make owned licenses a thing of the past and marched on towards greater income for the VC that owns them. It will continue, they will increase again and again, eventually imploding in some way. VC's do that. Buy a company, monetize to death, sell the bones and move on. 

[yggdrasil]

6 hours ago, bear said:

This is coming in any case, and was already in the planning, I'd suggest. It's not based on how many leave, it's simply a climb to increase until it stops growing enough, to see how far they can push that before it slows sales and retention.

It works as long as you don't have enough competition. But the brand damage can't be easily reverted. Those leaving are not coming back.

[yggdrasil]

6 hours ago, Bigol'tastynuggets said:

I agree, it'll be a few years at least until the dust truly settles! Not everyone has in-house capabilities to make a switch initially IF they want to!

Whmcs/ioncube going out of business should be in everyones DR plans though and people should have mitigation incase their billing software situation went bad/got hacked/major security flaws but the same as you see people complain paypal shut them down and they can no longer operate - you're seeing people saying they're stuck!

We're taking our time as we are in a good position to meet and exceed what whmcs offers us currently with the same amount of cash we'd pay in the 22/23 tax year! Provided we're done by October we'll break even by the same time next year! We could in theory switch today but  we want to fully customise our new home to be a huge improvement! 

For me, the money is irrelevant it's the disrespectful way in which it was done that wildly offends me

I'm happy for you, but that is not my current situation. The pandemic hit hard and every provider has increased pricing while people look for cheaper services to save money, they are cutting subscriptions first. The cPanel + WHMCS is something I can't absorb in my market. I'm not willing to give away a big % per account sold to those companies with a struggling worldwide economy.

At the end of the day, people don't care if you use WHMCS as long as they can pay, or if you use cPanel as long as your servers are running. While some might, pricing is still the biggest factor in this market.

5 hours ago, stormy said:

Exactly. It’s not the amount that matters. I would have liked to switch right away but I’d rather do it right, even it it means sending some terribly undeserved money to WHMCS.

I think we can switch before the next payment probably. We still want to put in more work so it’s not just a change but a clear improvement for our customers.

WHMCS is in for a nasty surprise when all the serious companies make the jump in the next few months. 

Yes, you should plan your migration in phases and slowly.

[yggdrasil]

5 hours ago, stormy said:

Exactly. It’s not the amount that matters. I would have liked to switch right away but I’d rather do it right, even it it means sending some terribly undeserved money to WHMCS.

I think we can switch before the next payment probably. We still want to put in more work so it’s not just a change but a clear improvement for our customers.

WHMCS is in for a nasty surprise when all the serious companies make the jump in the next few months. 

Speculating again, but I think this is true,  migrations take time and while WHMCS might see that most move to the subscription model it's just temporarily, those installations are not staying in that model permanently, they are just gaining time, and eventually they will start leaving.

4 hours ago, Bigol'tastynuggets said:

Yeah, you do what's right for your company I.e your customers! We decided after years of serious errors and messing around (Including whmcs getting hacked twice) and the unwillingness to take ownership of issues it's just far too unstable for production! 

 

Fortunately we started looking elsewhere when they messed up the stripe payments as we have to spend a good hour each morning sorting that! Then the price rise was just the final straw! I can forgive incidents happening! I do understand things aren't always smooth but at least they used to show (feign?) humility about issues - they just don't seem to care anymore and seriously have delusions about value offered! 

It's about staying in business. I'm extremely afraid of the vendor lock in that WHMCS represents today. When they started to close down more and more code behind Ioncube and remove features, I was already in the first migration planning ideas and concepts. I saw this coming years back. The problem is that custom development is very expensive and takes a long time. In terms of working products, Blesta is the only thing I would consider because I will never make the mistake of picking a software I cannot customize again.

It's very dangerous to stay on a platform like this because your whole business relies on it. If WHMCS decides tomorrow they want $10 per account, what will you do? You can't switch overnight. And the security holes will strike you at some point as well, and no patches for us either...

Not sure how WHMCS is going to deal with that, once WHMCS installations are compromised, and they receive awful marketing because of that.

[yggdrasil]

3 hours ago, malfunction said:

No, they didn't forget about you at all, they explicitly identified you as a member of a class that was generating little or no revenue for WHMCS and set out to change that.  They have admitted that officially in remarks like this from the CEO:

You can't just pay occasionally, you have to pay all the time, even if you already bought the product outright.  Heaven forbid you should only pay for what you actually get, they want more and more and more.  This is what being owned by vulture capitalists gets you.

They think they can't lose with that policy, either they continue to receive the same zero dollars per month from you, or you capitulate and pay monthly.  I believe that the actual result is they will make less, with the "intermittent access" payers like me refusing to go monthly on principle, and the reputation damage from a lot of disgruntled customers hurting them more widely.  You don't want the core of your business enmeshed with a company you can't trust, and you can no longer trust WHMCS.

That was a lousy excuse. As I stated in another reply, some software vendors make you pay for all the missing time. I don't agree with that, since it's a hidden lease, but there are models that work like this and some are even more creative, like those from Jet Brains that combine both purchase and subscriptions. You always own the last version.

Nothing stopped WHMCS from making you pay all the missing support months to receive the latest update or patch. This was not the real reason, they increased pricing as well, because if they forced a subscription on owned licenses, you still had unlimited accounts. That license now costs thousands of dollar per month. They wanted to move to a % model based on the amount of profit or accounts you have.

They also miss the point on something. Those owned licenses, while not giving them tons of profit, cost them little to nothing in terms of support. It's the new users that use Marketconnect and are new to WHMCS that constantly require support, not the old established users.

[yggdrasil]

1 hour ago, bear said:

The flaw in this is the "monthly billing" thing. If they really wanted uninterrupted payments for owned license holders, the simple fix would be denying updates unless back payments were caught up if allowed to lapse in the first place. That would then deny them the really large price increase of the monthly-based-on-accounts model, however, and that was the real impetus there.  No doubt in anyone's mind, despite the claims to the contrary. Very, abundantly clear.

Even with concurrency, the fees were not high enough compared to the monthly lease, so they found a way to make owned licenses a thing of the past and marched on towards greater income for the VC that owns them. It will continue, they will increase again and again, eventually imploding in some way. VC's do that. Buy a company, monetize to death, sell the bones and move on. 

Maybe that is on purpose. Keep increasing and pushing until the low-end budget companies are gone. They will either be very profitable with only high paying accounts, or make enough money until it's not a viable business model and just sell the whole company. People seem to forget the same investor group owns several hosting companies, and they also own WHMCS and cPanel which is what most small hosting services use to compete against the companies they own. What is better than controlling the software your competition is using? Increasing pricing forces all those lower end hosting companies to increase their pricing as well to their end users. At least those that stick.

The writing was on the wall when the same group purchased both cPanel and Plesk. Then WHMCS.

Edited August 23, 2021 by yggdrasil

[Bigol'tastynuggets]

I couldn't possibly agree more with you! It's awful but a good wake up call that I don't want to be tied into a locked system that changes on a whim! 

I made the decision to absorb costs, I've even bought multiple leased licenses on the new system for staff so they can play around in designated time to do so instead of usual routines!

Funnily enough, we hired someone just before all this who had just left a company running that software and he gave us a bit of a headstart with his experience! He'd already built some admin tools that he uses for a personal project that we were amazed with and we've been fortunate that he is very laid back and gave us access! 

The multi company is a blessing aswell! We can literally throw all brands into a cluster of servers and over time we should save a lot of money! 

The money we save, we intend to put into releasing modules over there post-migration to help others transition - being able to see what's in the works is a treat aswell! We were making modifications and then realised 5.2 will include it anyway 😝

[lbeachmike]

11 hours ago, malfunction said:

No, they didn't forget about you at all, they explicitly identified you as a member of a class that was generating little or no revenue for WHMCS and set out to change that.  They have admitted that officially in remarks like this from the CEO:

You can't just pay occasionally, you have to pay all the time, even if you already bought the product outright.  Heaven forbid you should only pay for what you actually get, they want more and more and more.  This is what being owned by vulture capitalists gets you.

They think they can't lose with that policy, either they continue to receive the same zero dollars per month from you, or you capitulate and pay monthly.  I believe that the actual result is they will make less, with the "intermittent access" payers like me refusing to go monthly on principle, and the reputation damage from a lot of disgruntled customers hurting them more widely.  You don't want the core of your business enmeshed with a company you can't trust, and you can no longer trust WHMCS.

You raise many excellent points here.

Many bad side effects come out of this.  Some small businesses won't be able to cut it with this pricing and will choose to sell to a larger business, so you'll have consolidation.  Although there are good alternatives like Blesta, some small businesses will simply give up.

Also, cPanel is an investor in WHMCS.  Although cPanel has been a class act for many years, their association to this can't be overlooked.

WHMCS can't set a precedent here that you can violate customers to this extent and raise pricing to this extent, or many other greedy companies will take notice.  It is important not to let this happen.

[lbeachmike]

8 hours ago, yggdrasil said:

This was not the real reason, they increased pricing as well, because if they forced a subscription on owned licenses, you still had unlimited accounts. That license now costs thousands of dollar per month. They wanted to move to a % model based on the amount of profit or accounts you have.

Absolutely.  Per my previous point, you'll see a lot of small businesses get squeezed into consolidation.  This would initially hurt them, but they've tried to insure for themselves that it won't matter since they can migrate to the model you speak of and collect no matter where those customers go.  Unless those customers are being billed by Blesta.

[yggdrasil]

38 minutes ago, lbeachmike said:

You raise many excellent points here.

Many bad side effects come out of this.  Some small businesses won't be able to cut it with this pricing and will choose to sell to a larger business, so you'll have consolidation.  Although there are good alternatives like Blesta, some small businesses will simply give up.

Also, cPanel is an investor in WHMCS.  Although cPanel has been a class act for many years, their association to this can't be overlooked.

WHMCS can't set a precedent here that you can violate customers to this extent and raise pricing to this extent, or many other greedy companies will take notice.  It is important not to let this happen.

It happens all the time. Particularly in technology. We had Modernbill before WHMCS, and before Hsphere, which Parallels purchased to kill and introduce their products like Parallels Billing and Plesk.

And something similar happen to them as well, when they started to heavily advertise in the control panel of their users and go insane with pricing, people migrated in mass back to cPanel.

What is happening with WHMCS and cPanel/Plesk is not new. It's the same story all over again. Someone else will take their place, and they will be irrelevant in some years. WHMCS actually only exists today because what happen to Modernbill in the first place.

Modernbill was way ahead of its time in features, pricing and interface. It had no replacement. WHMCS was certainly no competition to them, and look where we are today. For some time, even AWBS was better than WHMCS.

I'm in this industry long enough to see how this plays out. It's always the same story. Sure, migrations sucks, but there are plenty of alternatives both for WHMCS, cPanel and Plesk. Both free and commercial.

Edited August 24, 2021 by yggdrasil