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Might work for freelancers or web developers. definitely not going to work for normal web hosting providers.
It would have been interesting if it wasn't SaaS (I'm not a fan of) and honestly I disagree with the pay per client model.
Signed up lets see what it's about.
Talked to them on live chat and hopefully it will have some use. People disagreed with VirtKick and still providers use it on here but their pricing plans is aimed more at the >$7 range
I love that people here go from hating WHMCS to loving it the moment that a more expensive option is proposed.
To the OP, the name Nukern rings a bell - not sure if you posted here before. My company developed a SaaS billing app similar to yours and, after a lot of investment, decided that it would need very very deep pockets to do properly and give people a good reason to move away from WHMCS. Remember that members are generally very thrifty and unlikely to be your target market - so I wouldn't waste time promoting it or getting advice here.
To the SaaS haters, I believe Xero has overtaken Sage as the most widely used accounting package. It has far more data about your business than WHMCS - and is far more important that it is problem-free too. They are doing remarkably well. It can be done - but you need very deep pockets.
Honestly I find that very hard to believe, if it is true then I would suggest your beta testers are being easily lead, not informed enough about alternatives or you are not representing the feedback correctly.
They did, it makes more sense, especially from a their own perspective, still not the best way from your potential customer base's perspective I assure you, Virtkick have made literally no effort to offer a migration path from any other platform while claiming to be targeting the 'current' market, that is a terrible business decision and shows very poor judgement, it looks like you may be going down the same path.
No one 'really' cares about the WHMCS branding, a VPS at cost on your own infrastructure is about $2 at cost, it takes 20 minutes to install, configuration is a 1 time task, patching takes 5 minutes.
That really is not a solid argument for going saas, it is fairly naive to think people would ever compare the 2 and let having to install some software put them off vs having no control or direct access to the back end.
So I take it by these comparisons you already have a full, documented and supported migration path from WHMCS to Nukern?
What will Nukern cost at 8000 clients please?
I really hope I am wrong, nothing lights a fire under the industry more than competition, but it has to be real competition, that means a similar price point, a real choice, i.e. your offering people currently using your competitions software the opportunity to move over to yours.
When Virtualizor added a documented and supported migration path from solusvm and at a slightly lower price point, that created a genuine spark, solusvm started actually releasing updates again and being active, sadly virtualizor turned out to be a vastly inferior product under the hood, once people realized this they went back to solusvm, and solusvm went quiet again.
So in your heart, do you really believe WHMCS are worried about Nukern, or rather, do you really believe they should be?
Since Nukern INC is a relatively new startup (3 Years). I can understand why they went with the pay per client model. Since cloud hosting (Google) and software development isn't cheap at all.
I'm sure eventually, @Nukern will have 3 models in the future, One being a SaaS model (which is already in placed), another being a non SaaS model - without pay per client feature, and the last one a buyout model.
Since @Nukern already stated that the company isn't going with the common Niche market. I see the pay per client model as valid. Seeing that it is the same Niche market as pay per click ads.
I am going to sign up and test it.
I have just gone over the website again which essentially contains NO information of any depth, and then I watched the 'still not convinced' video presentation which gave no information of any depth and I am still not convinced.
I will feed back on my findings.
Awesome! Thanks
Paying $40/month for having 100 customers? Nah... I'm happy with WHMCS' pricing at $15/month.
@Nukern what's to prevent you from doubling the price next month?
And then I can't get my data out...or I have to go through a painful conversion/import process, if it's even possible. Or worse, explain to my customers that I'm switching billing systems and they have to go through some rigamarole.
I'm not saying SaaS is wrong in all cases, but there are some big gotchas. And you're dealing here on LET with a market where people are charging ion some cases $15 per year for services...there is no room for any added expense.
But that's LET...the hosting field is huge, so I'm sure you'll find customers. Good luck!
@nukern What happens if there's a vulnerability that leaks customer information? Can we claim the money from you?
What happens when your storage + backups crashes/are gone? Are we able to download a backup from you?
Some people here are missing the point. Nukern might work for the freelancing o small agency that doesn't have the time or mind to worry about security of their billing. Having WHMCS requieres a strong mind and willingness to not sleep at nights and be worried all the time about crappy coding, plus the maintenance of the server.
@cassa same thing that happens when you use any SaaS. Nothing.
Don't act like if this was the first SaaS in the world.
Hey @everyone, thank you so much for all of your questions and feedback. I'm always taking the time to read everything. Most of you are making very valid points. Let me just clear one thing, though;
Nukern is not currently aimed at LET users.
I noticed a thread was started and I wanted to make myself available for questions. I think that that's just best practice when someone mentions your company.
I've been a long time reader and follower on LET, and love the community (even with all the flame throwers out there), but Nukern's aim is currently at web dev shops and marketing agencies dealing with web hosting for their clients.
If you guys love WHMCS, their pricing, and their customer support, by all means, use them! As a business owner, you should use the tools you are most comfortable with.
The same thing that prevents all other SaaS or non-SaaS company from doubling their price next month. You've heard about HostBill, right? I'll just leave it at that.
The same thing that happened with WHMCS in the past. But instead of having to patch the software yourself, we can instantly push a patch on all accounts, instantly, to fix the problem. That being said, we're taking all the necessary steps (mentioned in a post above) to protect our users from such a disaster.
To answer a couple more questions from a couple different posts, we will have an import tool from different competing software. You will also have an export tool available to backup your things or move away. Our goal is not to keep you a prisoner. We want to make your life easier. If it's not, you're free to use whatever makes your life easy. We're all about having choices!
I hope this clears the air a little. I wouldn't want this thread to derail. At Nukern, we simply want to provide users with an alternative to the current automated billing and account provisioning software offers.
Cheers!
So which software do you feel you are providing an alternative too then?
Nukern may not be aimed at 'LET users' but 95% of the hosts on WHT use WHMCS as well, and I would suggest a LARGE portion of the hosting market has a presence there.
So I really don't get this, your website and video tells us essentially nothing about capabilities or features, you come here making a weak case for your brand over WHMCS, when asked to back it up you just back away instead.
I suspect this whole thing is just a play for venture capital money and nothing more, sorry if I am wrong.
You heard about Virtkick right, the method/model you think is smart, to date they have failed to convert a single solusvm/onapp/virtualizor client, I will just leave it at that.
edit: You did not answer the question either, how much will Nukern cost for 8000 clients?
This cute girl is intended to make up for the roasting you are experiencing. It's the LET way.
@Nukern seems like a straight shooter to me - his product isn't intended for the typical LET host - fair enough. You don't see IBM reps on here hawking mainframes either.
It's pre-order so vaporware at this point, but assuming the money back guarantee isn't BS and they're preparing for launch, viva diversity I say.
Just like I said, we're in a niche and underserved market of web dev shops and marketing agencies for now. They don't like WHMCS because it's too hard to install, maintain, backup, etc. They want something beautiful and easy to work with. We believe we found the right way to bring them exactly that.
I'd love to say: don't judge a book by its cover, but I guess it's too late for that now. In any case, the fact that you agree with us or not doesn't matter. You're obviously not the target market we're after, and that is totally fine.
Again, what you think you know and what is actually happening are 2 different things. I've seen and met happy Virtkick clients.
$679 / month or ~$0.08 per client per month.
Hey @raindog308, you obviously know how to speak to a geek like me. We've had a little over 30 pre-orders so far, which gives them access to the current beta. Only 1 request for a refund, which we honored, of course. Integrity is one of our core value, and you'll experience it even more if you stop by our website and chat with one of our team members.
Thanks again for all the love/hate guys
If you believe you can do it better, than do it.
Don't bother with the hate. LET is always like that. Albeit you have interested people here asking you many questions. Should you do your work properly, and develop your project nicely, you may be able to get some clients here.
Do note that a SaaS option will get you less clients here. Close to none.
Those you mention, "devs", might signup with you though.
I can respect a person like Mr Rivard that runs a corporation. that is also willing to speak about their products in early stages to the little people. I can stand by a corporation like that. And i don't like corporations to say the less.
Well .... haha
Anyway, please do not get me wrong, I am not trying to judge a book by its cover here, that would be impossible as your website really gives almost nothing but basic surface information so I am only reacting to what you yourself have said.
I have paid for the beta, now you have made it clear you are in no way shape or form targeting the web hosting market or in fact any existing market I will base any feed back on that.
I do get a bit more passionate than I should about these things because the reality is WHMCS is shit, the alternatives are worse, the same can be said for all the control panels I use actually, but they are the best of a bad bunch so when I see something like this come along I get very excited, then usually incredibly disappointed.
If your opening line had been we are not competing or even trying to compete with WHMCS and our prices are around 3000% higher I probably never would have made a single comment.
Hey @AnthonySmith,
Well thanks for sharing with me and everyone else. Also, do not get me wrong, I enjoy reading both, haters and lovers... though I particularly love haters because they push us to be better. If you have any constructive feedback from trying the beta, please do share.
We're in the very early stage of our startup and we want to get out there and get feedback from all sides of the market. That way, we can better target our customers.
It's also totally fine if you don't like Nukern. We never expected to cater to LET, hence the reason why we haven't really been in here in a long time. But I like to make myself available for questions. It's a good way to meet people and get to know them + their business.
Have an awesome day, Antony. Cheers!
Piracy
@Nukern yep I have gained access now, it runs well, very responsive, but as you say it is at the very early stages so it does not seem right to post any sort of public review now I can see what stage you are at.
Please don't count me as a hater though, I obviously just got the wrong end of the stick and approached it as a WHMCS competitor which is obviously not the case.
Perhaps instead you would permit me to share a few screenshots, that usually really helps people get a feel for things?
I actually like this model. It's not unlike that of PayPal (and other payment providers - who tend to charge more, by the way) and it scales nicely. It also allows you, as the SaaS provider, to scale the product well for your customers. It's more flexible than plans with 100, 200, 1000, etc. customers but still makes the larger users pay more than the small fish.
That'd be awesome.
>
I never really liked that word, but I removed you from our Haters list (not that we keep a list... not enough time to build one
. I have to agree with everyone though; our
websitelanding page and explainer video don't give much info. We're focused on the product and nukern.com really serves more as the first point of contact to ask for more info via the live chat.Now that phase 2 of our beta is about to be live, we'll be working on a full-featured website and a calculator to help you understand our pricing tiers. Hopefully, that will help everyone better understand our value props and get a better idea of pricing.
Can I ask you to wait for a couple hours before posting screenshots? Phase 2 (new infra, bug fixes, new features) will be live by the end of the day as we're almost done moving the beta to a new infrastructure.
Here a quick teaser in the meantime:
We're not yet supporting all of these providers, but it's on our roadmap (which will soon be public).
Oh, and to save you some time, the DO Token, shown in the video, has been disabled
Cheers!
@Nukern Hopefully you'll consider adding OnApp (and perhaps reselling through OnApp providers).
OnApp's API is pretty well documented and is indeed on our roadmap
Superb!