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Comments
No one likes a price increase and although I understand why people are complaining, it really has little to do with WHMCS being greedy or not.
Ultimately, $40 /month for a license that does as much as it does is really not much. Anyone struggling to pay $40 /month probably shouldn't be in business at all.
There are a few possible outcomes that I see happening:
1.) WHMCS uses the money to improve their product, support, or both. This is a good thing and probably worth the extra $$$.
2.) WHMCS does not improve at all, and this will spur on Blesta, ClientExec and other competitors to develop alternatives at a lower price. Competition is GOOD! It will encourage WHMCS to be 1 step ahead to make the premium worth paying for.
3.) Worse case scenario is that WHMCS does not improve, they pocket all the profits, and Blesta/ClientExec still don't improve or become competitive and people STILL buy WHMCS. This is a possibility, but if there are no alternatives to WHMCS for the same or less money, then that probably means WHMCS is currently undervalued.
Yes they may still be greedy, but every business wants to get paid as much as clients are willing to pay. In the absence of competition and viable alternatives, that number could be quite large. There are probably thousands of hosts that would pay hundreds of dollars for a WHMCS license since the only better alternatives cost much much more!
I bought about 6 owned licenses and before they hiked up the prices for the updates, I bought another 5 years or so of updates so the price hikes have not really affected my company. Though I'm not happy about the price rise, it's not a crazy hike and it's not unaffordable and with the prospect of improvements and more competition, I am hopeful that there ill be some good to come out of it,.
I do think you misinterpreted what I had said earlier so I'm going to break this down for you.
Just because someone uses an affordable billing system doesn't always mean it's a kid some people out right want to focus most of their money towards the quality of the servers and less on the billing system. I know few big providers who don't use whmcs they actually use lower cost billing system and neither of them are owned by kids.
I just did the switch from whmcs to Ubersmith. I find it much better and it'll be easier to scale
No idea if ubersmith is any good by $250 /month for 75 clients seems like a lot.
$1,500 for 300 clients = $5 per client. Is it worth it? Doesnt seem at all competitive.
You need to compare what features you get more than whmcs as well. The company I work for won't even be able to use that because we have around 1000 active customers :L
I know of several providers that are going the other way (from Ubersmith to WHMCS). Ubersmith gets really expensive when you start getting up there in size.
I agree with this, but I would say that someone just starting out when comparing available products not fully understanding the in's and out's in detail because they have not used either of them is now more likely to chose the cheaper product more often than not.
The net effect will be more revenue for people like blesta over the coming years which may result in them catching up to WHMCS given enough time, this in turn will create a more viable competitor which will drive both products forward faster.
Its a good thing for the industry but I still don't really think it was necessary for WHMCS to do this, I dont think it will do them any favors in the long run.
I think the fact that they keep referring to hosts with 1000 clients as large is a bit of a joke, I would have understood it more if they said under 1000 your price is going up to $25 p/month across the board, between 1000 and 3000 the price is going up to $50, 3000 to 5000 $75 p/month and 5000+ our price is going up to $150 p/month
This sector really needs good competition. I also do agree that $40/mo is not much money for a business. However this should not mean that a product can raise prices whenever it wants.
This is a chance for Blesta and ClientExec. I suppose Hostbill is already way too expensive than all these.
Why not? WHMCS can easily price themselves out of the market, no one is forced to use them.
You are right,
But it's not the whmcs business if you have +200 clients or +10000 clients !
WHMCS do not agree, sadly.
It actually is since they are selling a license and it is up to them how they charge and what limitations they impose.
If you dont like it you dont have to use them. You are free to use an alternative like Blesta. Other software companies even make it easy to migrate.
Are you also going to say that hosts dont have a right to increase their prices? Or change the limits / allowances for given package?
That is a dumb argument. People with that many customers pay thousands of dollars a month consisting almost entirely of little fees like this. So yes they do make a cumulative difference because...math.
That pricing is incorrect, they're much cheaper than that.
Huh? Yes WHMCS will make alot more money if people are paying the higher fees. So?
Is the fact that a 'company' that cannot afford $40 an argument FOR the price hike? No. But the fact that a company has the right to set their own prices IS, and is probably the only relevant reason.
Company is selling a license and they have the right to charge whatever they want, in the same way you may choose whichever billing software you like. Does it make the price hike right? Maybe not, but is $40 /month alot? No. Depending on who you are, the license can be see as both cheap and expensive.
Bugs aside, the software itself is worth much more than $40 /month. It is a bargain actually! The productivity benefits is far greater than CPanel for example, and yet no-one complains about the per server licensing model.
For larger business, WHMCS is cheap. After all, it's barely more than $1 /day, and hardly worth an hours labour for most IT people. It's hard to see who would struggle to afford this. And the smallest companies are likely unaffected anyway.
Their model makes sense from a business perspective. Keep the price for new-comers and small players low, which will encourage them to use the software in the first place. Then charge a proper rate for proper hosts, for those who can easily afford it.
From a marketing perspective, it would probably look better for them to say.. monthly fee $40! 55% discount for small and startup companies with fewer than 250 clients. Something like that. Looks better than a tiered pricing structure.
Do you know whats next? There will be no more reseller licenses. Everyone should buy from whmcs.com. Am sure in some months it will come.
How is client number determined? And by whom?
That's above your pay grade.
Before whmcs there was a company called " moderbill " they did the same and after a while a new baby appeared called " whmcs " : )
Umm, what's wrong with that? They're removing summerhosts for us, we should be thanking them
I had a Modernbill license. It was way more expensive than WHMCS and it was awful in my opinion. Their own price hikes turned out to be good for hosts since it gave rise to WHMCS and other billing systems.
My hope is that the WHMCS price hike will spur on development and competition, and hence I am happy with what is happening!
I wonder if they're still offering the owned license or are they doing away with it.
This is not a proper market and I know it is not WHMCS's fault. I hope in the long term other products can respond to this price hike with decent moves and we see a better competition.
From what I have read, it's any client with active products. People will probably have a lot of dormant client accounts with no active products. As far as I can tell, those don't count.
Looks like the 'reseller' program got bumped some too but it doesn't look like they're tiering it... yet.
Francisco
I'd like to support the colleagues from WHMCS. I'm sure that the saved resources will be invested in project development and eventually it will allow to increase clients' satisfaction. So it will be a win-win situation.
Not merely attempting to drop a link to my billing software here, but I see some people in this thread interested in trying alternatives but no real mention BILLmanager. I would love to hear more feedback on the product from LET members as to whether or not this is something that could meet your needs here. I would also love to answer any questions about it’s features.
GUI might look a trifle old school but I can also say that we have a professional UX team in our office who work hard on releasing a new high-end interface till the end of the year. It's a fact.
Whmcs importer ,cpanel and solusvm modules?
Edit, oh nvm it's ispsystems, so no external server or panel support I assume, yawn.
Do people really demand beautiful UI? Simplicity is all I am after and if it an be customized to my own style/design easily then the default UI can be minimal.
Hire my company and we'll re-design the whole GUI in a month or two...
Holy damn can't get it why you guys take so long to release something that should already been done. I mean, you got a chance here.
So one must be careful about handing out free/promo stuff through WHMCS in future