Is this Price hike real?

[Fringe]

Hi,

I just got the email telling me that the cost of the WHMCS licence will increase from $39.95+tax per month to $1,750+tax per month.... Is this real? I have asked via support ticket but not got an answer

Is WHMCS really doing a 4280.48% increase (Thats what it works out at) in my monthly costs? If this is true how the hell can they justify this? If I did a 4280.48% increase in my customers monthly costs I would be out of business in days. I would expect a small increase each year but 4280% OMG!!!

[wsa]

Here is the new pricing guide, https://assets.whmcs.com/customer-licensing-guide-2021.pdf

[brian!]

42 minutes ago, Fringe said:

I just got the email telling me that the cost of the WHMCS licence will increase from $39.95+tax per month to $1,750+tax per month.... Is this real?

yep - they first announced it in April.

make yourself a cup of coffee and have a read of the thread below (there are others like it)... ☕

.. and then checkout their Trustpilot reviews.

[Bigol'tastynuggets]

Bad advice, if Fringe is realising a week out... something stronger than a coffee is needed 😌 I think in the next month there will be some oblivious and angry people who haven't had the luxury of 3 months prep. We as nearly ready to move so another 2 months is just something we'll have to pay 

[UnwilfulExpenditure]

My sympathies we all had a lot more planning - Yeah many have moved away, or at least planning to, Users are angry, Devs are angry..... but even some bigger companies made the leap in a 3 month period (Or are nearly there) so there is hope for you, You may just get extorted for a few months 😛 

But yes, to answer your question they didn't fall and forget when april fools day was..... Nor do we have concrete evidence of a glue sniffing problem.... They genuinely believe the product is worth it and tell us all it was done after consulting users 😂 Anyway, we shouldn't complain! In 8.2 they added more options for them to earn commision so that's a bonus! Talk on WHT is that it's also yet ANOTHER update that breaks things so....... Positive signs ahead for whmcs! 

[bear]

23 minutes ago, UnwilfulExpenditure said:

it was done after consulting users

Users of what? I'm thinking crack cocaine. 

[UnwilfulExpenditure]

2 minutes ago, bear said:

Users of what? I'm thinking crack cocaine. 

I won't speculate over which substances were heavily abused in the decision making process It'd be very immature to do so! Although I heard a rumour Matt was shouting he has tiger blood and that he is a warlock, Very sheen-esque rant that left little Johnny hiding under his desk again, Apparently it was the scariest zoom call ever! 😝

[Fringe]

OK, so time to move on to a different platform.

My margines are so tiny that if I was to make the same price increase to my customers the $9 per month I charge would have to increase to $375 per month, and would put me out of business quickly.  I was never consulted, nor do I think any of the updates to WHMCS are worth a 4000% increase. It was nice while it lasted but I can't afford this price increase which is a shame, I feel sorry for all the 3rd party dev's as they make WHMCS usable but with customers facing a huge price increase and moving onto new platform I can't see them surviving much longer either.

[zomex]

1 hour ago, Fringe said:

OK, so time to move on to a different platform.

My margines are so tiny that if I was to make the same price increase to my customers the $9 per month I charge would have to increase to $375 per month, and would put me out of business quickly.  I was never consulted, nor do I think any of the updates to WHMCS are worth a 4000% increase. It was nice while it lasted but I can't afford this price increase which is a shame, I feel sorry for all the 3rd party dev's as they make WHMCS usable but with customers facing a huge price increase and moving onto new platform I can't see them surviving much longer either.

Indeed, a lot of my clients are switching away from WHMCS. The only thing WHMCS's price increase has benefited is Blesta.

[UnwilfulExpenditure]

It's very sad to see it done, Purposefully without enough time for most to be able to migrate fully! A 3 month window means most big companies will struggle! Some are so set on leaving however they're part way through preperation! I think it's one of the worse cases of price gouging I've ever seen - The contempt shown, the lies peddled and the blatent disregard for the users and the end users during a middle of a pandemic! I bet many went nulled, Which has it's own issues! IF the support is behind the new price rise then many will laugh at the thought of the historically provided support! 

We all know, 99% of problems has been solved in here mostly by 1 person and with about 3/4 others doing a more reasonable amount.  The support whmcs actually offer is pathetic, ill-equipped and will likely struggle when people demand "premium support" they're being sold and will probably still quote those same users in ticket responses! I actually screenshotted a ticket years ago of them sending me to a post here of brian!'s to solve an issue, When I pushed for more answers about why an update caused the error they didn't respond! Ever since I've been a student in here 😛 At the old pricing, I could live with that - So could many others... It's very clear however that not everyone is yet aware of the grandiose delusions cursing the whmcs staff. 

Since switching to a product with open code for all but one whmcs instance - I have realised even more bugs and pitfalls exist in wmcs and it's crazy my day consisted of "workarounds" to ensure I can accurately report income, I no longer fear GDPR and everything just works! A billing system that can't bill is pathetic.

[bear]

1 hour ago, zomex said:

The only thing WHMCS's price increase has benefited is Blesta

This will be the second time they've potentially handed over a large share of users. Last time was the security issues back in 2013, where lots jumped ship over the "encoding was hiding flaws" problem. They failed to capitalize, IMHO, as they could have grabbed a lot of customers from it (many put off by lack of needed features; domains still an issue to date). Here's round 2, and if they can't work out how to make that happen this time, that would be remarkable. 
Opportunity rarely knocks twice.

[UnwilfulExpenditure]

Domains can be done with an addon, But a built in one was added to 5.1 (Beta v2) and is due to release in the next month or so I believe! I've got 5.0.4 and a dev 5.1 and both seem flawless! Even the bug reports are visible to people! I just love the openness and it's hard to look back in all honesty! 

[bear]

13 minutes ago, UnwilfulExpenditure said:

a built in one was added to 5.1 (Beta v2) and is due to release in the next month or so

Took well over 5 years, which is a concern. Just sayin'.

[UnwilfulExpenditure]

Absolutely! Not disputing that, But in reality it didn't have the huge customer base! From my current view, They have hired more people, Development is speeding up and I'm yet to find an issue in what I use it for! That, to me speaks volumes! It's great having 3,000,000 options but when only 7 are done right it's just a facade! How many times have we all browsed this place after a broken update 😂 Honstly bear, Hop in the discord and look at the userbase many have the same sentiment as you but see the activity and are satisfied with the roadmap! 

The 5 years thing is applicable to many bugs features in whmcs aswell 😛 

[bear]

14 minutes ago, UnwilfulExpenditure said:

Hop in the discord and look at the userbase

I'm afraid I don't use discord, and won't be getting involved with Blesta in any way. Personal reasons. 

[UnwilfulExpenditure]

Thats a shame, I love your almost soviet sense of humour! Have you pickeda successor for your needs or are you still looking? Wise seems a popular choice! 

[wsa]

3 hours ago, zomex said:

Indeed, a lot of my clients are switching away from WHMCS. The only thing WHMCS's price increase has benefited is Blesta.

Yes that true I get some clients also switching to Blesta or WISECP  but I less i get some work with this 2 also :)

[UnwilfulExpenditure]

7 minutes ago, wsa said:

Yes that true I get some clients also switching to Blesta or WISECP  but I less i get some work with this 2 also 🙂

The coming soon static page on your new page needs to change 😉 

[wsa]

soon they be some module right now am working on custom module of clients only

[UnwilfulExpenditure]

Just now, wsa said:

soon they be some module right now am working on custom module of clients only

Yeah only messing around I keep checking in to see! 🙂

 

[Fringe]

Thanks for the comments folks, its a shame the WHMCS owners don't read their customers comments, lol... Well off I go now, I'm lucky that a switch to a different platform will be a easier for me, I don't sell that much in the way of add-ons etc, its just customer numbers not features that was handy with WHMCS, and the 1hr support will be a joke as I can imagine it will be a responce within 1 hour asking for further information then a 3 day wait like normal to have your issue not solved or palmed off with a knowledgebase link that isn't dealing with the issue raised.

Take care and I wish everyone good luck with their future to which ever platform they move too.

Edited June 26, 2021 by Fringe

[UnwilfulExpenditure]

30 minutes ago, Fringe said:

Thanks for the comments folks, its a shame the WHMCS owners don't read their customers comments, lol... Well off I go now, I'm lucky that a switch to a different platform will be a easier for me, I don't sell that much in the way of add-ons etc, its just customer numbers not features that was handy with WHMCS, and the 1hr support will be a joke as I can imagine it will be a responce within 1 hour asking for further information then a 3 day wait like normal to have your issue not solved or palmed off with a knowledgebase link that isn't dealing with the issue raised.

Take care and I wish everyone good luck with their future to which ever platform they move too.

Say hello in the discord if you make it to my new favourite! During migration I got quite a bit of help from other members with things that differ and will happily pay it forward if I can 🙂 The owner and devs are in there aswell! I still go in daily to help others! I don't have enough experience with the others to offer any insight though 😂

[Evolve Web Hosting]

I'd be curious to see what Blesta really looks like now. Evolve used WHMCS up until Blesta 3.0 (2013), made the switch to Blesta and then moved back to WHMCS in 2016 or 17. It was a painful process but well worth it. Blesta was so basic and/or missing many needed features. I think it's more accurate to say that Blesta has been talking about a domain manager for 5 years and it's been missing since 2013 or longer.

How complete is the domain manager that is coming? Does it sync renewal dates? Does it check transfer in status? Does it send required ICANN renewal notices? Can you manage Whois, Lock, etc without a 3rd party plugin? Can you easily offer promos to registration vs. transfer vs. renewal?

Nearly 5 years later, I still receive emails that feature requests are just now being looked into or implemented that I created or commented on over 4 years ago.

There are so many things I don't think about until I have a live install going but another one is attachments included in email replies to customers. It was a 'security concern' in Blesta's eyes so it caused the customer to have to login to the portal every time they got a ticket reply with an attachment.

This is only my opinion and hopefully it's changed but I felt like WHMCS was more user friendly to the customer (customer portal area) and Blesta was cleaner for the admins. We had so many customers that couldn't really figure out how to navigate through the Blesta client portal or place orders. I know some things have changed including the ability for customers to actually search through their list of services or little arrows or tooltips to better explain that rows could be clicked on and expanded. This wasn't the case between 2013 - 2017 and it was a nightmare for larger clients with a large number of services.

I don't agree with everything WHMCS does either. If I had the money, I'd probably start my own company to develop a competing product but that's not possible at the moment.

[UnwilfulExpenditure]

30 minutes ago, evolve hosting said:

I'd be curious to see what Blesta really looks like now. Evolve used WHMCS up until Blesta 3.0 (2013), made the switch to Blesta and then moved back to WHMCS in 2016 or 17. It was a painful process but well worth it. Blesta was so basic and/or missing many needed features. I think it's more accurate to say that Blesta has been talking about a domain manager for 5 years and it's been missing since 2013 or longer.

How complete is the domain manager that is coming? Does it sync renewal dates? Does it check transfer in status? Does it send required ICANN renewal notices? Can you manage Whois, Lock, etc without a 3rd party plugin? Can you easily offer promos to registration vs. transfer vs. renewal?

Nearly 5 years later, I still receive emails that feature requests are just now being looked into or implemented that I created or commented on over 4 years ago.

There are so many things I don't think about until I have a live install going but another one is attachments included in email replies to customers. It was a 'security concern' in Blesta's eyes so it caused the customer to have to login to the portal every time they got a ticket reply with an attachment.

This is only my opinion and hopefully it's changed but I felt like WHMCS was more user friendly to the customer (customer portal area) and Blesta was cleaner for the admins. We had so many customers that couldn't really figure out how to navigate through the Blesta client portal or place orders. I know some things have changed including the ability for customers to actually search through their list of services or little arrows or tooltips to better explain that rows could be clicked on and expanded. This wasn't the case between 2013 - 2017 and it was a nightmare for larger clients with a large number of services.

I don't agree with everything WHMCS does either. If I had the money, I'd probably start my own company to develop a competing product but that's not possible at the moment.

Absolutely, Everyone has the right to critique a piece of sw! You can read about it on their site or ask in the discord fo more in-depth features! I would let you see my site running the beta but it's a dev license shouldn't really be sharing it around! And yeah, I think it's come a long way in all honesty! I definetly agree with the client/user p.o.v and It's come along loads with that aspect! One thing for sure, I prefer a well made addition to 1000 half baked ideas thrown in! And being able to make it work exactly how we want it was a huge selling point! As you know yourself, as the admin it's wildly attractive  - As a client.... well that depends how good the admin is! 😛

[Evolve Web Hosting]

1 hour ago, UnwilfulExpenditure said:

You can read about it on their site or ask in the discord fo more in-depth features! 

Based on past experience, the features are on the light side and it's best to actually test them vs. read about them. ie. the support manager. They'll tell you they have one and you can handle tickets but they don't tell you that they can't be permanently locked or the client has to login to see attachments. Again, these two examples may have changed now and my examples are based on experiences from a couple of years ago. I sponsored the SupportPal Blesta plugin to get the needed features.