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Higher cost but more storage. I may do a few different plans just to appeal to the different crowds as well.
Can i buy this offer and migrate my data from my old offer (blackfriday 2017)?
You'd have to perform the migration through something like imapsync. This whole month we'll be overwhelmed with requests to manually do it, and won't be able to handle them.
It seems migration is a frequent request and I know you have lot going on but in the name of improving your documentation/knowledge base and reducing your tickets may I suggest you include a tutorial on migration somewhere on your improvements list?
Fair. At the moment I just have this: https://mxroute.helpscoutdocs.com/article/15-can-you-migrate-my-email-from-my-old-provider
Can't the user migrate the accounts using backup/restore on cPanel?
Not reasonably due to the limitations I've had to make to simplify the UX as much as possible, given the limited use case of just email.
MXroute simply follows a pricing strategy that is well-known in the low-end hosting/server market, as you no doubt are aware, so your objection/complaint would apply to any low-end provider that adopts this practice. The advantage of this strategy is very competitive pricing with typically recurring discounts; the disadvantage is that promotional offers are fixed in time and aren't forward-adjusted to future promotional offers.
If you don't like this pricing strategy, then you're free to go the high-end hosting/server market and pay a premium price that will usually be forward-adjusted to future price decreases.
In any case, your objection/complaint has been made by others before. It's not completely without merit, but it arguably fails to take into proper consideration the already very tight margins of the low-end hosting/server market.
Correct.
When a renewed subscription with a recurring discount is more expensive than a new subscriber's cost, that is not called a discount, but rather a premium.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
What do tight margins have to do with fair treatment of older clients?
By all means, factor in your margins. In my view, charging higher margins for loyalty is backwards and ultimately counterproductive.
If I give you $5 out of my pocket can I stop getting notifications for something that is not going to influence any outcome? The business model can’t change in that direction at this stage without shutting down (it’s my job to know this, and you’ll never have all of the facts in hand relevant to my life that are required to objectively examine it), so how anyone else might have done it differently isn’t going to make for any more than boring conversation
I’ll always keep feedback in mind while growing the service, and what limits me today may not limit me tomorrow.
Truly a sad response.
It seems the details of this business model have you backed into a corner. That explains the unwillingness and/or inability to address the issues brought up with it.
One can only hope.
I’ll take that as a no. Truly a sad response.
Well, the original discount is still in place, but -- yes -- with time one may be less inclined to view it as a discount.
Not really a false dilemma in this case: we're not talking of theoretical possibilities but rather of actual practical instantiations, which are more limited in number than theoretical possibilities. (And note that I simply said that "you're free to go [to] the high-end hosting/server market [...]" -- perhaps you have other options.)
Re "loyalty": Personally, I'm all for loyalty in personal relationships, towards one's partner, one's family, one's close friends. But business relationships are regulated by contracts. I don't want to feel that I should/have to/am expected to be "loyal" to a business beyond abiding by any contract that I agree to with them. (This is why I don't have any fidelity cards with any business.) So you and I may differ on "loyalty" towards businesses.
Back to MXroute: Just because you signed up for a promotional offer on Cyber Monday 2017, why do you think that that makes you such a "loyal" client?
The false dilemma is in justifying this pricing strategy by presenting it as the only alternative to MXroute going out of business or choosing a premium-priced competitor.
Contracts define obligations. Loyalty can arise from positive sentiments, without obligation, and influences decisions.
Loyalty has significant business value. Continuing revenue, increasing revenue with clients' scaling, up-selling, cross-selling, reducing churn, etc. There's a reason why the "loyalty" business is huge. There are many approaches to gaining customer loyalty. Big companies spend significant resources to give the illusion of personalized relationships with customers. This opportunity is an intrinsic advantage of small businesses, though not always capitalized upon. At the very least, not dis-incentivizing repeat sales and not undervaluing existing customers seem like business no-brainers.
Forget me, and even loyalty. Do you think it makes sense for clients paying the same thing at the same time to get different deals?
[Putting aside the question of loyalty,] it depends on the business model.
Take typical cellphone contracts, at least in the EU and the US. Suppose that, in January, you opt for a deal that includes a new phone and a service plan for $X/m and the contract obligates you for two years. (Ironically, at least in the EU, such contracts are often called "loyalty contracts" or "fidelity contracts".) Nine months later, in October, you see the same phone and service plan for $Y/m (otherwise, the same contract), where Y < X. Naturally, you'd now prefer to pay $Y/m instead of $X/m, but the cellphone service provider won't let you change to the lower monthly price.
Does this practice make sense? Outside the perspective of a business model, it would be hard to say. But inside the perspective of the business model practiced by the cellphone service provider, it does make sense, and as long as the state doesn't declare this business model illegal, it will likely continue to be practiced.
The business model of the low-end hosting/server market is pretty close to that of cellphone service providers. In general, there aren't such two-year "loyalty contracts" in the low-end hosting/server market, but sometimes, one may decide to pay for a year or two (or even three) in advance to secure a lower average monthly price. But the main similarity is that if a better deal appears after you decide on an earlier deal, the provider doesn't adjust your earlier deal to fit the later deal.
Another business model would be one according to which everyone pays exactly the same price for the same service. If the price goes up, it goes up for everyone; if it goes down, it goes down for everyone. This is the traditional business model of (e.g.) electricity providers (at least in the case of private clients). But this business model effectively rules out any recurring promotional prices/discounts, or if there are any promotional prices/discounts, they'll be relatively short and non-recurring.
I'm not really trying to justify the business model of the low-end hosting/server market, but at the same time, since we all like recurring promotional prices/discounts, part of the fun is in trying to get/find them, and it would be less fun if there were no recurring promotional prices/discounts. And since no one prevents us from signing up for a newer deal, we can always migrate our servers/hosting if we want to (but yes, since this implies time and effort, we have to decide just how much we prefer the newer deal over the older deal).
So, yes, in general, the business model of the low-end hosting/server market doesn't reward loyalty per se, but one might venture to say that this is because this business model doesn't really assume much loyalty on the part of clients to begin with. Rather, the assumption seems to be that clients will come or go depending on where the most attractive promotional prices/discounts are offered.
I think that the only respect in which MXroute is special in the low-end hosting/server market is that there are not many mail hosting providers in the low-end market, whereas there are many general hosting/server providers in this market, which means that in practice, it's easier to switch to another general hosting/server provider in this market than to switch to another mail hosting provider.
I don't have an issue with anything in your last post. The example you gave shows we're talking about different things:
Although it would be very welcomed and generate quite a bit of goodwill if a company added benefits mid-contract, the issue here is about when the contract expires and is automatically renewed at price X, while a new subscriber at that same time either pays Y < X, or pays X and gets more benefits. Some sneaky companies might try to pull that off, but I haven't heard of a case where they would not adjust the price or benefits if confronted.
It's more like the promotional contract/service is renewable on a yearly basis under the same conditions. If you don't renew the promotional contract/service, then it's canceled. There's no upgrading to another promotional contract/service. After all, the whole point of the promotions is to attract new clients and/or new contracts/services.
No injustice is committed. One gets what one signs up for.
It's a straightforward business model, and easy to manage. Perhaps it doesn't reward client loyalty as such, but (as I said) it probably also doesn't assume much client loyalty to begin with (which -- excuse me for saying this -- is somewhat confirmed by your objections, after your having used a promotional service for less than a year).
I think that I'll stop here. It's clear what you want, but in order to give you what you want, one (but who?) would have to change the business model of the low-end hosting/server market. One (but who?) could do that, but then the low-end hosting/server market would no longer operate in the same way. Perhaps that would be desirable, but perhaps it wouldn't be.
I quite disagree with your last post. I've already presented arguments as to why.
In summary, the issue is:
Each point is arguably worse than the last, getting perhaps to the root of the problem. Working backwards would almost certainly produce multiple viable solutions... if there is a will. But that's enough free strategy consulting.
Not sure what more there is add, so this sounds good:
By the way, not really sure what you disagree with, other than that you'd prefer a different business model.
Also, according to the logic of your preferred business model, eventually, most if not all clients would be on a promotional offer.
I guess that you missed the -50% MXroute coupon offered earlier this year, which was valid for any offer, promotional or not.
I don't have a preferred business model, as long as it makes sense.
I know this is the internet and all, but I think this topic can be put to rest for now... unless jar pays me to continue
Yeah, didn't see that.
Man, you should have accepted jar's offer of $5 and run.
@depricated dude are you for real? How can one argue this long about the insane pricing of MXroute is beyond me.
It's partly my fault -- I shouldn't have engaged him! And he tired me out!
@angstrom You should have brought some crayons to restore mana
It's fairly easy to migrate to a new plan, if you have many accounts you probably want to do a script to move the mail from a server to another, but if you don't have too many mailboxes, it's quick to manually add two accounts (same address - old server/new server) in your mail client and copy your messages from the old account to the new one (thunderbird does that pretty well).
Regarding the pricing strategy and @depricated's comments, if I remember well, back in the days the message was like "pricing will go up each year, that's the business model, get in the boat as soon as you can to get the better pricing". If some people bought in believing that this was true to then see better deals as time went by, we can understand that they don't feel very good. But again, changing a business model is no big deal (and the product did change quite a lot in the meantime: no mailchannels anymore, US -> DE..) and if you want a more recent deal, ordering the new package and moving one's data before cancelling the old one is far from impossible...
@jar are all services going to be in DE on the long run or will some servers stay in Dallas? When some services are using both locations (like login on mxlogin in DE to an account with data stored in the US) are all the connections between the two locations encrypted/secure?
Great service by the way, keep up the good work!
Sorry to bring this up again. I may have missed the information.
Does this mean you will have another deal for Black-Friday since this is pre? Thanks.
Correct
Some servers will stay in Dallas. In fact, a new one is being spun up soon in addition to Eagle being migrated to better hardware (all SSD) in Dallas. All webmail connections to the backend are done securely.
Can you reveal when this Black-Friday deal will be active? I need to purchase an account for family use but the current offer (20 GB) seems to be low for my big family
Not until Friday. Could be midnight (US/Central) but hard to say what hour for sure.