Recent Pricing Changes

[Bobbie Jr]

I don't usually post on forums but I thought I should add my thoughts to the discussion.

I like everyone else have received emails with information pertaining to the upcoming price changes for both my Owned license and my Business tier license.

From what I can tell, I can continue to utilise my Owned license for running my 5.3.14. WHMCS Installation indefinitely. I haven't wanted to update my installation as it is running fine. Why change something if it is not broken, right? So the decision to discontinue Support and Updates doesn't really affect my Owned license at this time. However, if I did want to update to the latest version I would need to purchase a new monthly license. As my active client count is currently around the 16k mark this means that I would require a Business 50K license priced at $850 a month. This is a price increase, for myself, from paying nothing a year to paying a hell of a lot over the year.

I have checked my invoices and I purchased my Owned license back in 2010 for $325. In the 11 years I have used this license I have also purchased Support and Updates around 7 times. 5 of those times was at the original price of $45 and the last 2 were simply so I could contact Support and were priced at $100. In total over 11 years my WHMCS Owned license has cost me a total of  $750.  This equates to a very low price of $5.68 a month. Or even $0.04-$0.05 per client within my system.

The new Business 50K license for this particular installation will cost me $850 a month. This equates to $10,200 a year that I would be paying for a WHMCS license to manage my 16k active clients. This means that over the year, each client in my system is costing me $0.64. The more clients I gain, the less a client costs me to manage through WHMCS.

The products I offer range from $2 to $50.  Lets say that over the 16k clients the average price they pay me a month is $5. This means my income from my clients is $80k. I know what my profit margin is for this amount of clients and know that I can pay the $850 a month without it affecting my small business too much.

While this means that my profits take a hit, and future projections for my company are slightly lower than expected. I am happy to pay this. I have always thought that WHMCS was a bargain for what it allows me to achieve. I took over my company from a friend, they were using excel sheets to manage clients and word documents for invoices. Everything was done manually. WHMCS has allowed me to automate this.

Thank you WHMCS for finally realising your true value to your loyal customers. This pricing has been a long time coming in my opinion.

With regards to the 'lifetime' wording used for the sale of WHMCS Owned licenses, nobody knows what WHMCS would consider a 'lifetime'. For some a 'lifetime' covers 25 years, for others it covers until death. For others it could be the amount of time the product is functional. For me I saw the 'lifetime' wording, as there was no actual definition, as meaning that I could use the Owned license for as long as I wish for my business. IIRC WHMCS does not actually state any pricing or length of time commitments within their Terms of Service or EULA. As with any business WHMCS has a right to change their pricing as and when they wish. This is the risk you take when purchasing any software.

I would just like to point out that WHMCS prices have not changed much over the past 10 years and Owned licenses were discontinued around October 2016 IIRC. As with all businesses price changes happen, so changes to the Owned licenses, and WHMCS monthly pricing, were bound to happen sooner or later.

[bear]

4 hours ago, Bobbie Jr said:

I can continue to utilise my Owned license for running my 5.3.14. WHMCS Installation indefinitely

Not to question you but that version had some serious security issues, and won't run on newer versions of PHP/mySQL, so those would also have issues of their own. If it's public facing, it's amazing it's still not been compromised.

Quote

Thank you WHMCS for finally realising your true value to your loyal customers. This pricing has been a long time coming in my opinion.

That I will question. 

Quote

I would just like to point out that WHMCS prices have not changed much over the past 10 years 

I first purchased owned in 2006, and it was $169 (plus the branding free cost). Later it went to $250 (plus the branding free cost). Reasonable pricing. Support/update costs went from a low $44.95/y to $99/y. Still reasonable. Then to $59.95 for 6 months, still not bad. Increases happen. Monthly versions have also seen increases, which is also expected. 
I get increases. They happen. This move to kill off owned licenses is not ok. They're asking us to pay for a leased license while we have owned, basically surrendering our owned licenses. Kayako did this, and users left in droves.

[yggdrasil]

4 hours ago, Bobbie Jr said:

I don't usually post on forums but I thought I should add my thoughts to the discussion.

I like everyone else have received emails with information pertaining to the upcoming price changes for both my Owned license and my Business tier license.

From what I can tell, I can continue to utilise my Owned license for running my 5.3.14. WHMCS Installation indefinitely. I haven't wanted to update my installation as it is running fine. Why change something if it is not broken, right? So the decision to discontinue Support and Updates doesn't really affect my Owned license at this time. However, if I did want to update to the latest version I would need to purchase a new monthly license. As my active client count is currently around the 16k mark this means that I would require a Business 50K license priced at $850 a month. This is a price increase, for myself, from paying nothing a year to paying a hell of a lot over the year.

I have checked my invoices and I purchased my Owned license back in 2010 for $325. In the 11 years I have used this license I have also purchased Support and Updates around 7 times. 5 of those times was at the original price of $45 and the last 2 were simply so I could contact Support and were priced at $100. In total over 11 years my WHMCS Owned license has cost me a total of  $750.  This equates to a very low price of $5.68 a month. Or even $0.04-$0.05 per client within my system.

The new Business 50K license for this particular installation will cost me $850 a month. This equates to $10,200 a year that I would be paying for a WHMCS license to manage my 16k active clients. This means that over the year, each client in my system is costing me $0.64. The more clients I gain, the less a client costs me to manage through WHMCS.

The products I offer range from $2 to $50.  Lets say that over the 16k clients the average price they pay me a month is $5. This means my income from my clients is $80k. I know what my profit margin is for this amount of clients and know that I can pay the $850 a month without it affecting my small business too much.

While this means that my profits take a hit, and future projections for my company are slightly lower than expected. I am happy to pay this. I have always thought that WHMCS was a bargain for what it allows me to achieve. I took over my company from a friend, they were using excel sheets to manage clients and word documents for invoices. Everything was done manually. WHMCS has allowed me to automate this.

Thank you WHMCS for finally realising your true value to your loyal customers. This pricing has been a long time coming in my opinion.

With regards to the 'lifetime' wording used for the sale of WHMCS Owned licenses, nobody knows what WHMCS would consider a 'lifetime'. For some a 'lifetime' covers 25 years, for others it covers until death. For others it could be the amount of time the product is functional. For me I saw the 'lifetime' wording, as there was no actual definition, as meaning that I could use the Owned license for as long as I wish for my business. IIRC WHMCS does not actually state any pricing or length of time commitments within their Terms of Service or EULA. As with any business WHMCS has a right to change their pricing as and when they wish. This is the risk you take when purchasing any software.

I would just like to point out that WHMCS prices have not changed much over the past 10 years and Owned licenses were discontinued around October 2016 IIRC. As with all businesses price changes happen, so changes to the Owned licenses, and WHMCS monthly pricing, were bound to happen sooner or later.

That is not how software works. What will you do when your servers operating system can only run PHP 10, or 11 or 12 in the future?

In fact, WHMCS 5 has huge compatibility issues with PHP7, not to even mention all the security holes. It's not realistic to expect you to update a software you cannot update, because WHMCS is encoded. Even if it was open, this is a huge task, to keep the software updated. For the existing price it was not worth, for the new $1000 per month, it might.

Most people just want to run their business, not code all day. There is at least one or two security patches a year. And something tells me the next security patch will come right around when support has expired for most people forcing them to upgrade. My advice to everyone. Plan your migration as soon as possible.

[Bobbie Jr]

I would like to thank you both for your comments. I am well aware that eventually my installation will fail, and the server it is on will need updating. I know I am pushing my luck with my current server setup (WHMCS 5.3. and PHP5 both of which are unsupported versions). We already had a date planned for updating this prior to the recent announcement. So at some point, in the not so distant future, I will be happy to pay for a monthly license and the upgrade service they offer to ensure everything remains in tact.

While others may not feel the same as I do towards WHMCS, I feel like the WHMCS Owned license has been an invaluable tool for my business. Again, I understand that others may not feel this way. With WHMCS I can just leave it to run the business, to an extent. I have a handful of support techs that answer any tickets during office hours but other that that the majority of the business is automated. I am certainly not a coder and I am happy to pay for any coding or addons that I require.