Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!


To VPS Providers in LET: What's a fair cost for a better solution?
New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.

All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.

To VPS Providers in LET: What's a fair cost for a better solution?

DETioDETio Member
edited February 2016 in General

I'm just interested to know, would you pay a revenue share which can scale from 10% -> 2% as you grow for a cloud platform that makes SolusVM look like legacy.

Still haven't seen a panel that offers cloud servers without costing an arm and a leg (looking at you OnApp...) If there was a panel on the market similar to OnApp's functionality (High Availability, Auto-Scaling, Hour Billing, Load Balancers, KVM, Integrated with WHMCS) and it's ease of implementation (Installing & Scaling with no effort, just a script) but at 10-2% of revenue share instead - Would you use it? Revenue share allows you to stay in the LowEnd market without trouble..

What if it also supports additional features such as Platform as a Service (Building apps, and binding them with services such as databases etc..), H/A without expensive SAN that OnApp don't currently support?

Thanked by 1joereid
DET.io
  1. Are you interested in such a solution? Yeah man, looks decent. Only interested if you change prici62 votes
    1. Yeah, looks decent.
      12.90%
    2. Only interested if you change pricing model from revenue share!
      32.26%
    3. Only interested if the software offers: Migration from SolusVM.
        8.06%
    4. Who needs a new panel? SolusVM is just fine..
      14.52%
    5. Lol I don't even sell servers what am I doing here...
      32.26%
«134

Comments

  • Jesus christ, 10% revenue share!? Someone could pay to have their own panel developed if they were making any type of money at that rate.

  • DETioDETio Member
    edited February 2016

    Corey said: Jesus christ, 10% revenue share!? Someone could pay to have their own panel developed if they were making any type of money at that rate.

    Who said that number doesn't scale down the more you scale up? Also this is just a number to see reactions, it isn't set or anything :P (VirtKick is looking to charge 15%, for a DigitalOcean like panel! - No H/A, No Auto Scaling, Only Hour billing)

  • This is not a jab at you but an observation in general: there have been so many attempts at this and most of them fail. So, instead of creating something new, why don't people improve on something that's already there? There's Feathur (Open Source), Cloudmin (Open Source), and probably even others that are already functioning. Rather than reinvent the wheel, why not spend time on improving existing ones?

  • DETioDETio Member
    edited February 2016

    mpkossen said: This is not a jab at you but an observation in general: there have been so many attempts at this and most of them fail. So, instead of creating something new, why don't people improve on something that's already there? There's Feathur (Open Source), Cloudmin (Open Source), and probably even others that are already functioning. Rather than reinvent the wheel, why not spend time on improving existing ones?

    We aren't reinventing the wheel, we are using Open Source as a backend so that customers do not get locked in! Unlike SolusVM, which locks you in.

    OpenNebula is the back end, thus if companies get big enough that they would like to develop their own panel, they can using Open Nebula's API.. And they won't have trouble migrating. (We will even help migrating databases!)

    Oh and the product is near completion (three week ETA, been under development for 1.5 years). Is sophisticated and tested.

  • VirMachVirMach Member, Patron Provider
    edited February 2016

    Corey said: Jesus christ, 10% revenue share!? Someone could pay to have their own panel developed if they were making any type of money at that rate.

    That's honestly not too absurd when you look at SolusVM licensing rates.

    There was a point early on in our business, when we used smaller servers, where SolusVM was about 15% of the cost on the entire server. And with the number of servers we have now on SolusVM, we could already pay to have our own panel developed.

    For us, OP's panel would still be 4-5x more expensive than SolusVM. Maybe it would work better if it was profit share instead of revenue share.

    And it would have to be a hell of a lot better.

  • Awmusic12635Awmusic12635 Member, Host Rep

    DETio said: I'm just interested to know, would you pay 10% revenue share for a cloud platform that makes SolusVM look like legacy.

    No. If your product is expensive I'd rather just pay up front or get my own developed, but not sharing revenue

  • DETioDETio Member
    edited February 2016

    VirMach said: That's honestly not too absurd when you look at SolusVM licensing rates.

    There was a point early on in our business, when we used smaller servers, where SolusVM was about 15% of the cost on the entire server. And with the number of servers we have now on SolusVM, we could pay to have our own panel developed.

    For us, OP's panel would still be 4-5x more expensive than SolusVM. Maybe it would work better if it was profit share instead of revenue share.

    We are looking at 10% at a starting point, for anything less than $500/mo revenue! This number starts to drop the higher your revenue increases as mentioned earlier.. So if we do some calculations, it might scale better than SolusVM. Oh and the added value you can offer to your clients is priceless. I can see us charging around 2.5% mark for much much larger deployments.

    It's hard to charge profit share, where would we be able to get accurate data of each of our clients profit share without signing agreements?

  • $50 out of $500 is not a viable option for many emerging hosts; SolusVM will remain as one of the most used panels.

    Simple as that, none of us are willing to "share" even just 5%. A fixed cost is always better, as the host can make an accurate prediction of the current months' expenses.

  • exception0x876exception0x876 Member, Host Rep, LIR
    edited February 2016

    you should add new option in your poll: 10% of revenue is too much

  • @DETio said:
    It's hard to charge profit share, where would we be able to get accurate data of each of our clients profit share without signing agreements?

    how about this don't even try to make people pay in revenue try the model of Freeware
    as to even bother starting something like this when there is other people already established in this business you have to make it where people want to use your software as I release some of my software for free just so I benefit everyone else and also so I get a little recognition as well because to be honest if you tried this and launched now you would be a "nobody" in this industry compared to the established panel providers that are already available so to start with just start with your panel for free. as you won't get anyone if they don't even know your panel/company or even heard of you.
    that is why onapp/virtualizor/solusvm is popular because it is well known and is already an established product. and even if you started something like this you got to make it easy to migrate between the other products without doing anything as if you are already invested in one product like solusvm/virtualizor/onapp you aren't not going to take likely to a "newbie/nobody" panel that makes you have to do more work to switch to them then staying with your current investment.

  • DETioDETio Member
    edited February 2016

    FlamesRunner said: $50 out of $500 is not a viable option for many emerging hosts; SolusVM will remain as one of the most used panels.

    Simple as that, none of us are willing to "share" even just 5%. A fixed cost is always better, as the host can make an accurate prediction of the current months' expenses.

    But the $50.00 is only charged after the customer makes $500.00 in sales, Let's see the costs in a different perspective where a customer may use SolusVM + WHMCS instead.

    To generate $500.00, you will need around two hypervisors (Say 32GB ram each)

    $20.00/mo goes to SolusVM

    $15.00/mo goes to WHMCS

    $35.00/mo total.

    You have to charge clients monthly.
    You can't charge clients a lot because VPS's are literally sold for dirt cheap whereas cloud servers have a higher profit margin (less providers, more demand).

    I'm also not saying that 10% is the perfect price, that's why the title states what a fair cost is.

  • @DETio said:

    I agree with FlamesRunner you are forgetting the underlying server costs as it just doesn't cost for solusvm/whmcs alone.

  • DETio said: We aren't reinventing the wheel, we are using Open Source as a backend so that customers do not get locked in! Unlike SolusVM, which locks you in.

    Are you saying that because you use an Open Source backend you're not locking people in?

  • KuJoeKuJoe Member, Host Rep
    edited February 2016

    I would never buy any software that required revenue sharing. Especially if all you're doing is putting a pretty bow on free software anybody can download.

  • DETioDETio Member
    edited February 2016

    KuJoe said: I would never buy any software that did revenue sharing. Especially if all you're doing is putting a pretty bow on free software anybody can download.

    I'm pretty sure this is more than a bow tie - There is a lot of logic implemented to automate the applications (PaaS), a lot of more logic to manage the H/A for Containers & KVM. OpenNebula does not directly support high availability.

    Applications also automatically get updated when you commit to github repositories. These are all features that make the life of a developer a little bit better, and I'm pretty sure no one else is taking any steps to enhance the users experience further than what 'SolusVM' has to offer.

    Binding and automatically scalling services (Mind again, open nebula does not automate scaling)

  • timnboys said: I agree with FlamesRunner you are forgetting the underlying server costs as it just doesn't cost for solusvm/whmcs alone.

    I didn't take into account the servers costs because using either solution doesn't change that.

  • DETioDETio Member
    edited February 2016

    mpkossen said: Are you saying that because you use an Open Source backend you're not locking people in?

    Yes, being based on Open Nebula - each individual user has their own account. If the client doesn't like our solution they can always stop paying, find a new way to bill Open Nebula customers and forward their users to the OpenNebula panel. I'm not sure how anyone gets locked in.

  • @DETio said:

    you sure I think your wrong. as it costs more per server each month plus the cost of the panel and other costs that makes your plan wrong and not worth it and way more costly.

  • exception0x876exception0x876 Member, Host Rep, LIR

    @DETio said:
    Applications also automatically get updated when you commit to github repositories

    ehh.. exactly what applications are updated?

  • timnboystimnboys Member
    edited February 2016

    @DETio said:

    no your wrong there as they don't need a fancy bowtie for billing opennebula users I have already made a opennebula billing module for blesta soon will make it for whmcs since the codebase is already there and all I have to do is port it over to use whmcs's functions instead of blesta's.

    and furthermore opennebula is fine as it is as I use it by itself with blesta for my vps "cloud" services.

  • VirMachVirMach Member, Patron Provider

    DETio said: It's hard to charge profit share, where would we be able to get accurate data of each of our clients profit share without signing agreements?

    I suppose, but where would you get accurate data on revenue? A lot of times, revenue on WHMCS doesn't represent just cloud servers sold or services sold under your software. What if a customer deposits $100 in WHMCS, and then the provider removes the $100 credits and generates a $100 service with $0 price override, etc?

  • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

    DETio said: I'm just interested to know, would you pay 10% revenue share for a cloud platform that makes SolusVM look like legacy.

    No. That's insane.

    As info: how many LET hosts do you see running on send-us-some-of-your-revenue VirtKick?

    Even if it was reasonable, how exactly are you going to enforce it? Are you saying that to run your panel the host has to allow you to access his WHMCS? Because otherwise, how would you know actual revenue? Good luck with that. And of course, the fun everyone will have when you have a breach...

    Or is this one of those "we handle panel and billing for you in the cloud as a Saas" in which case you end up with 1000 cookie-cutter hosts. Maybe you could throw in a template with a rocket.

    BTW, the last LET host I remember using OpenNebula (@GoodHosting) folded, so...

    DETio said: We aren't reinventing the wheel, we are using Open Source as a backend so that customers do not get locked in! Unlike SolusVM, which locks you in.

    Meaningless marketing speak. What's the license?

    cPanel is open source, truly and genuinely, but cPanel is not FOSS. Are you FOSS?

    If not, GTFO with your advertisement and your ridiculous slanted poll.

  • exception0x876 said: ehh.. exactly what applications are updated?

    When you create an application, you chose the stack (Java/Node.JS/PHP/Etc.) - And you have access to link it to GitLab or GitHub. If the GitHub code gets updated the application will refresh automatically.

  • DETioDETio Member
    edited February 2016

    VirMach said: I suppose, but where would you get accurate data on revenue? A lot of times, revenue on WHMCS doesn't represent just cloud servers sold or services sold under your software. What if a customer deposits $100 in WHMCS, and then the provider removes the $100 credits and generates a $100 service with $0 price override, etc?

    Alright so, you can customize your costs etc directly through our application. Then link it with Paypal/WHMCS (Both will be supported in v1.0, more coming later!)

    The application allows customers to add credit directly from our application, similar to DigitalOcean style.

    We charge clients based on the credit added here, all credit added here is already accessible by the hosting client.

    We charge customers on the amount of revenue earned by the end of the month, if charge-backs arise - They will obviously be reduced from the billable amount.

  • DETioDETio Member
    edited February 2016

    raindog308 said: No. That's insane.

    As info: how many LET hosts do you see running on send-us-some-of-your-revenue VirtKick?

    I see a lot of companies running towards Jelastic - Which is similar to what we offer. They charge revenue share too by the way.

    Even if it was reasonable, how exactly are you going to enforce it? Are you saying that to run your panel the host has to allow you to access his WHMCS? Because otherwise, how would you know actual revenue? Good luck with that. And of course, the fun everyone will have when you have a breach...

    Or is this one of those "we handle panel and billing for you in the cloud as a Saas" in which case you end up with 1000 cookie-cutter hosts. Maybe you could throw in a template with a rocket.

    Explained in the other response.

    BTW, the last LET host I remember using OpenNebula (@GoodHosting) folded, so...

    Good hosting handled it horribly, OpenNebula is stable - GoodHosting simply had no idea what they were doing. The guys didn't even know how to integrate it with automated deployments. Just because OpenNebula failed before doesn't mean it is not a better solution over SolusVM which was acquired by OnApp so they don't offer cloud features that kills OnApp!

    DETio said: We aren't reinventing the wheel, we are using Open Source as a backend so that customers do not get locked in! Unlike SolusVM, which locks you in.

    Meaningless marketing speak. What's the license?

    cPanel is open source, truly and genuinely, but cPanel is not FOSS. Are you FOSS?

    We are not FOSS, Our application is not directly open source. Our backend is, OpenNebula.
    Where does it state that cPanel is open source all there plans are licensed - You can't license open source like this. This is news to me if it is! but it's not?

    If not, GTFO with your advertisement and your ridiculous slanted poll.

    I am not offering a service, other than gathering opinions and your's seems a bit on the negative arena.

  • LeeLee Veteran

    DETio said: but at 10% of revenue share instead - Would you use it? Revenue share allows you to stay in the LowEnd market without trouble..

    In the LET market I would give you that providing you handle the billing and take the direct hit on chargeback and disputes.

  • Awmusic12635Awmusic12635 Member, Host Rep

    DETio said: We charge customers on the amount of revenue earned by the end of the month, if charge-backs arise - They will obviously be reduced from the billable amount.

    That didn't answer the question, where are you getting the data? Does the software report back to you or are you hosting it?

  • Awmusic12635 said: That didn't answer the question, where are you getting the data? Does the software report back to you or are you hosting it?

    SaaS or On-Premise is available, SaaS for wholesale clouds (around $5.00/gb ram) and On-Premise reports back to us.

  • DETioDETio Member
    edited February 2016

    Lee said: In the LET market I would give you that providing you handle the billing and take the direct hit on chargeback and disputes.

    Charge clients through Stripe if you want less disputes. Have maxmind on highest detection settings to reduce chargebacks.. Solved?

  • @DETio said:

    Nope you don't get the sarcasm did you?
    He was being sarcastic
    He like everyone else here is saying not going to happen we will not give you any revenue we would rather pay a flat fee instead.

Sign In or Register to comment.