About WHMCS new prices and end of Owned Licenses

[zitu4life]

Hello there

Most of us like WHMCS software and I can not believe that we just change our minds because latest announcement and this peace of software deserve noting.

1. Regarding owned licenses...
Personally I think a lot of providers and developers continues to make mistakes offering owned licenses for a range of price that after 2 years customer's will feel so lucky. WHMCS realized that having customer's with owned licenses is not ideal...on the beginning WHMCS was Math-CEO, so decision on that time was based on emotion and getting money quickly, and also promoting new software WHMCS, so lot of owned licenses sold out. What happens now is just that they are trying to fix what should not happen in the past.
Example: I have a module owned license that I saw potential on that and bought it for price A, after 1 year I saw a developer increases prices almost double, the mistakes is that usually when company is young prices are not make like it should be, and when we decide to fix it most of time will hurt costumer expectation. Owned licenses should never exists for a business model like WHMCS, of course who have owned licenses will not think like this, personally if I had a chance to buy owned license when was possible  until if get closed, I would buy perhaps more that one, but for my perspective it is great deal, but for WHMCS not a fantastic deal, if I was wrong they would not finish owned licensed with no talk to find 50% deal.

2.  New prices...
WHMCS know all it is competitors better than us (hostbill, blesta, clientEx, etc, etc)...WHMCS already knows that his software is more complete than all others. We know that too. So What we do not know is what is exactly the reason for that decision. WHMCS before this have made an full analysis on all their database and see TOP WHMCS client by number of active clients.

TOP 10 clients  by active clients (examples)

1. HOST_DEVILLL  total active client 365.000
2.  PRO-SERVICES total active client 259.000
3.  WEB-MASTER total active client 156.000
etc
etc

ZITU4LIFE-HOSTING total active client 253

WHMCS has detected that there is a business out there with an absurd number of active clients, that profit more than even WHMCS, and some of those business sometimes are offshore business that profit millions euros. So a price update was needed. 

For who are stating suing WHMCS for first time, now there is no STARTER LICENSE, so the increase is just about 3 USD
For who have up to 500 clients there is an increase, but not something for other planet
Over 500 clients ok, I understood that was a hurt because before was up 1.000 clients and them UNLIMETED, here is the point.

customer's with more than 150.000 clients before pays same like customers with 1001 clients, so this new tier gave more justice.

Usually the more active client with recurring subscription service we have means more PROFIT we go, in my case every time I own new client I goo to income forecast to see how much forecast increases.

I have 253 active clients, but If I simulate having 1500 active clients now or 2000 clients, I would be very happy that my profit would be so great that paying WHMCS at that tier 99 USD still have great deal for me.

If I got 5000 active clients I would never remember the prices that I pay for WHMCS.

I do not know what final prices everyone applies on their services, but guys we have to think on the benefits WHMCS bring to us. I do not intend to defend WHMCS, I do not have any advantages with that, I am paying for monthly license for over 4 years, and this powerful software automation helps my company a lot, just it.

For all of you that already are on tier above 1000 clients, means paying more instantly, but if someone has 60.000 active clients and pays same value for who have 1020 clients, WHMCS is loosing money there, because who have 60.000 active is paying just a Pennie.
EX: internet service provider uses WHMCS to hold entire city and host 160.000 active clients and pays WHMCS just 44 USD/month. Does this company with all these clients can not pay more.

Lets analyze with care our business, and see what we could do to save money, if at the end the decision is to cancel license, OK, it is all our decision. I had to take that decision last month when I reach 250 clients, I feel that prices duplicated, and was afraid if this software will continue in our company, but after saw all the benefits. I decide should continue, and happy with 235 active clients, if I got 1000 clients in future, I would still happy. So you have more than 1000 clients, be happy, you have done a great job.

 

[steven99]

5 hours ago, zitu4life said:

For all of you that already are on tier above 1000 clients, means paying more instantly, but if someone has 60.000 active clients and pays same value for who have 1020 clients, WHMCS is loosing money there, because who have 60.000 active is paying just a Pennie.

Not sure about you, but I did not agree to profit sharing.    Someone having 10, 100, 5000, or a million clients does not mean WHMCS loses money because their costs do not go up when mine do.   The only potential for costs on their side going up is support and if that is the case then they can simply limit the number of tickets per month or per year.  Plenty of businesses that do software limit the number of tickets and I would prefer that over seat pricing any day.  Seat pricing is needed in some cases, like where the demand is low for a product. 

[jacksony]

In a way, billing by number of customers you have, is the best way for them to get revenue.

[bear]

10 hours ago, steven99 said:

Not sure about you, but I did not agree to profit sharing.    Someone having 10, 100, 5000, or a million clients does not mean WHMCS loses money because their costs do not go up when mine do.   The only potential for costs on their side going up is support and if that is the case then they can simply limit the number of tickets per month or per year.  Plenty of businesses that do software limit the number of tickets

Agreed on all points. The number of clients in the system hosted on my own hardware doesn't affect the WHMCS company in any way. It's just their way of saying "you're making money with all those clients, give us more of it. You can afford it.". Just not right. 

Limiting tickets? Good idea. Problem is, there's a VC behind WHMCS now, and that doesn't generate any money. We are to be siphoned.

[malfunction]

On 4/8/2021 at 5:34 PM, steven99 said:

Not sure about you, but I did not agree to profit sharing...

Me neither 😐.  They don't  make much out of us, just occasional updates but equally we don't cost them anything either; we don't use WHMCS support because it's utterly worthless.  With our owned license we have several choices now:

* keep with the current version and stay running  PHP 7.2 for ever.  Obviously not sustainable, but little alternative for now as our access to updates has been removed without notice.  Our install is old enough to not even qualify for security patches.

* throw away our owned license and start renting the product we already paid for lifetime access to, cost increase from $0 to $$$$.  Except for fixing security shortcomings in their product it doesn't offer anything much for the money, just the aforementioned useless support and some useless features designed to generate more affiliate income for WHMCS.  There's nothing in there that reduces our costs or increases our sales.

* go somewhere else after ten years.  That's a lot of work, but looks like the most likely eventual outcome.  

I don't know who they think their customers are, but with an economic downturn and this global virus nonsense we're struggling here.  Our clients are small businesses that are downsizing, quitting, retiring, going bankrupt.  Constant downward price pressure from predatory VC-funded big box hosts, upward pressure on everything else, power, cooling, hardware, labor etc., and apparently billing software.  

 Our prices are lower now than they were 15 years ago when we started and we're still the high-priced player in our space.  Show me some other products that cost less now than they did in 2006.  Prices to long-term  clients stay the same of course, as is customary in this industry, that's one reason we prefer owned licenses  as we have little room for 2021 costs when we are charging 2006 prices. 

I expect we could find more money for WHMCS if they insist, but it's not coming from a big money pile, it's going to come from chopping something else here or at the expense of my kids.    And WHMCS doesn't deserve it.  We're not going to make sacrifices for a company that actively wants to bleed us of every dollar we have, and then some more.  I don't expect a partnership, but I at least want to work with companies that are somewhat on our side, support our cause and treat us with a little care and respect.  WHMCS is not such a company.

 

 

[yggdrasil]

On 4/8/2021 at 3:06 PM, zitu4life said:

Hello there

Most of us like WHMCS software and I can not believe that we just change our minds because latest announcement and this peace of software deserve noting.

1. Regarding owned licenses...
Personally I think a lot of providers and developers continues to make mistakes offering owned licenses for a range of price that after 2 years customer's will feel so lucky. WHMCS realized that having customer's with owned licenses is not ideal...on the beginning WHMCS was Math-CEO, so decision on that time was based on emotion and getting money quickly, and also promoting new software WHMCS, so lot of owned licenses sold out. What happens now is just that they are trying to fix what should not happen in the past.
Example: I have a module owned license that I saw potential on that and bought it for price A, after 1 year I saw a developer increases prices almost double, the mistakes is that usually when company is young prices are not make like it should be, and when we decide to fix it most of time will hurt costumer expectation. Owned licenses should never exists for a business model like WHMCS, of course who have owned licenses will not think like this, personally if I had a chance to buy owned license when was possible  until if get closed, I would buy perhaps more that one, but for my perspective it is great deal, but for WHMCS not a fantastic deal, if I was wrong they would not finish owned licensed with no talk to find 50% deal.

2.  New prices...
WHMCS know all it is competitors better than us (hostbill, blesta, clientEx, etc, etc)...WHMCS already knows that his software is more complete than all others. We know that too. So What we do not know is what is exactly the reason for that decision. WHMCS before this have made an full analysis on all their database and see TOP WHMCS client by number of active clients.

TOP 10 clients  by active clients (examples)

1. HOST_DEVILLL  total active client 365.000
2.  PRO-SERVICES total active client 259.000
3.  WEB-MASTER total active client 156.000
etc
etc

ZITU4LIFE-HOSTING total active client 253

WHMCS has detected that there is a business out there with an absurd number of active clients, that profit more than even WHMCS, and some of those business sometimes are offshore business that profit millions euros. So a price update was needed. 

For who are stating suing WHMCS for first time, now there is no STARTER LICENSE, so the increase is just about 3 USD
For who have up to 500 clients there is an increase, but not something for other planet
Over 500 clients ok, I understood that was a hurt because before was up 1.000 clients and them UNLIMETED, here is the point.

customer's with more than 150.000 clients before pays same like customers with 1001 clients, so this new tier gave more justice.

Usually the more active client with recurring subscription service we have means more PROFIT we go, in my case every time I own new client I goo to income forecast to see how much forecast increases.

I have 253 active clients, but If I simulate having 1500 active clients now or 2000 clients, I would be very happy that my profit would be so great that paying WHMCS at that tier 99 USD still have great deal for me.

If I got 5000 active clients I would never remember the prices that I pay for WHMCS.

I do not know what final prices everyone applies on their services, but guys we have to think on the benefits WHMCS bring to us. I do not intend to defend WHMCS, I do not have any advantages with that, I am paying for monthly license for over 4 years, and this powerful software automation helps my company a lot, just it.

For all of you that already are on tier above 1000 clients, means paying more instantly, but if someone has 60.000 active clients and pays same value for who have 1020 clients, WHMCS is loosing money there, because who have 60.000 active is paying just a Pennie.
EX: internet service provider uses WHMCS to hold entire city and host 160.000 active clients and pays WHMCS just 44 USD/month. Does this company with all these clients can not pay more.

Lets analyze with care our business, and see what we could do to save money, if at the end the decision is to cancel license, OK, it is all our decision. I had to take that decision last month when I reach 250 clients, I feel that prices duplicated, and was afraid if this software will continue in our company, but after saw all the benefits. I decide should continue, and happy with 235 active clients, if I got 1000 clients in future, I would still happy. So you have more than 1000 clients, be happy, you have done a great job.

 

If I have 1 customer or one million why should that have any influence on what I pay to run WHMCS?

You seem to forget that WHMCS is a local software. It runs in your computer. A server, or a cloud server, is still a local computer. And you are the one paying for it, not WHMCS. It costs WHMCS the same if you have one active customer or a hundred thousands.

Is WHMCS paying the support costs for my customers? How about the support? Or my electricity bills? If I have one million customers, is WHMCS going to pay my staff? You see, the bigger you are, the bigger your costs are. And WHMCS now wants more money based on nothing but thin air.

You might say, but....Adobe....That is still a fixed subscription. Adobe is not charging you more per picture you edit, and they are certainly not charging you more based on profit. Even so, their model is mixed now, as they now bundled extra services with their local software because they realized people are not stupid enough to pay a subscription for only local software. And even, so their competitors have eaten into their market exponentially. Example, Affinity, I paid once, and still receive free updates since years now....and they are doing more than enough money.

The justification to charge per customers for a local software is just insulting. And now going away with the owned licenses is related that those licenses having unlimited accounts.

Let me say this again. Why does WHMCS care about my active clients? Its none of their business. Those are MY CLIENTS, not theirs.

Would you be ok with paying Windows based on the amount of hours your computer is on?

We are doing all the marketing, all the support, and all the hard work to keep every customer active (which is already very hard in such a competitive market) and yet WHMCS takes your profit per customer? The model is based on greed. I will not give them more money the more successful I'm if they are not providing me extra value in return. And they are not, the software is the same and does the same stuff regardless of the amount of active customers. In fact, it costs you more to run the software the more customers you have. You seem to completely forget this. If you have 1000 active customers per second on your WHMCS installation it will cost you a nice server with a huge database every month. And guess who will pay for that? Not WHMCS. And what is worse, at that size you probably want to run in a cluster (which WHMCS does not even support, which means it not even designed for bigger business) because you want to spread the load between servers or at least still stay online if one server fails. And guess what? And that point you will MORE Than one WHMCS license, because WHMCS will make you buy 2 licenses.

I hope you see the problem here. The bigger you are, WHMCS already costs you more to run and this is not even related to licenses. Running any software at specific sizes is more costly and what does the company behind the software do? Instead of making it easier and more cost affordable, they make it even more expensive.

[Evolve Web Hosting]

A random thought / question. If you have 1,000+ clients, maybe it's time to consider a custom solution unique to your own company? I know it costs a lot of money up front but maybe it's something to consider.

[UnwilfulExpenditure]

We're certainly considering it - at least 2 will be custom solutions! The rest will probably be one of the other pieces of software out there! I wouldn't trust WHMCS to screw me again once the community anger subsides! 

[bear]

16 hours ago, yggdrasil said:

You might say, but....Adobe....That is still a fixed subscription. Adobe is not charging you more per picture you edit, and they are certainly not charging you more based on profit. Even so, their model is mixed now, as they now bundled extra services with their local software because they realized people are not stupid enough to pay a subscription for only local software. And even, so their competitors have eaten into their market exponentially. Example, Affinity, I paid once, and still receive free updates since years now....and they are doing more than enough money.

The subscription allows access to all the titles they sell. That makes it valuable to me, at least. I've looked at Affinity, and it's got some great titles, at a really good price, but I'm still using Adobe because Dreamweaver is proving to have no real rival with other web editors. If Affinity came up with something to compete there, I'd certainly be interested. 

[malfunction]

Adobe might be an object lesson for WHMCS.

We used to run the full suite of Dreamweaver/Fireworks/Freehand/Flash/etc right back to the early 2000s.  Would buy the discounted version upgrade every few years to stay somewhat current.  But when Adobe  came along they soon decided that wasn't enough for them, they wanted us to update every year and soon came their subscription model to make sure even light users like us were paying all the time.

The outcome?  We immediately ditched all Adobe products and never paid a dime in subscriptions.  I have an old Creative Suite CS4 edition on an old computer if I absolutely must use it (once a year?), but otherwise everything has been easily replaced by a handful of capable and inexpensive Mac apps.  I like them better and have never looked back, don't miss any of the Adobe bloatware.  They are dead to us.

Adobe don't appear to gone out of business as a result of this mistreatment of their long standing, but low-paying, owned license holders but I don't doubt that it has cost them a lot of those users, damaged their reputation for potential new users and greatly fortified the competition.  

[malfunction]

You can find more satisfied Adobe clients here, together with a handy dandy graphic showing how it all works:  

This is currently trending because evidently Adobe are now charging fat cancelation fees for people to extricate themselves from their software rental scheme.   Much talk of piracy in the face of morally bankrupt organizations such as these  https://twitter.com/search?q=adobe   I suppose I should be happy WHMCS haven't charged me yet, for the privilege of having our owned license made unusable.

Edited April 13, 2021 by malfunction

[bear]

1 hour ago, malfunction said:

evidently Adobe are now charging fat cancelation fees for people to extricate themselves from their software rental

Cite your source, please.

[yggdrasil]

26 minutes ago, bear said:

Cite your source, please.

Maybe this?

https://www.newsweek.com/adobe-cancelation-fee-twitter-users-argue-morally-correct-pirate-software-1583146

[malfunction]

2 hours ago, bear said:

Cite your source, please.

 

1 hour ago, yggdrasil said:

Maybe this?

https://www.newsweek.com/adobe-cancelation-fee-twitter-users-argue-morally-correct-pirate-software-1583146

Correct, although if you take the advice of one of the embedded tweets and just search "adobe cancel fee" in your favorite browser you'll find people talking about this all over the place.   I don't mean to make this thread about Adobe, just observing that WHMCS seem to be emulating them.  "Plunderstorm" indeed 😂

[bear]

Thanks, first I'm seeing those (having just been posted on Twitter, which I don't use). 
Looks like the trick is to coincide with the end of your yearly term, if leaving, or raise a big stink. 

[ChrisTERiS]

The one, and only one, reason that can make this decision fair is that, if WHMCS offers Support to your clients and host the software on thrir servers. But as long as, you (the Hosting Provider), is the one who offers support to the clients and host the software in your server, WHMCS has no reason to price their software per client.

Anything else is just "Let it him to shut the door, let him shout, finally he'll accept it and he'll stay here".