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Question Massive price increase for reseller licenses?

Whelp I'm coming up on my license renewal and wanted to see if anyone else has migrated yet? I simply can't afford this anymore. It was only for my own websites, not reselling or anything.

Looks for opensource or cheaper options if any has any luck with alternatives!
 
IgorG said:
Believe me, we are not the first and not the only ones on the market who raise the price. Our business analysts and financiers very meticulously calculated all the risks and possible problems. I can assure you that the analysis of sales for the time elapsed since the price increase demonstrates that all our calculations were accurate.
Click to expand...

I hope it's wrong now. Shame if people actually continued to do business on this basis. A price increase is not the issue here. The issue is two things:

1. Doubling of the price at least. That's unreasonable. I don't care if it's been 18 years since the last major increase - that's not an excuse to all of sudden double it.
2. Communication. It was abrupt and I was told it wasn't going to increase for the loyal customers already on it, but new. That was a lie.
 
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@Laughing Steam

The prices have been increased in (a not so recent) past - as can be figured out by the age and content of this topic thread, which essentially notifies and warns Plesk users.

In essence, it could have been known to you.

In addition, Plesk (formerly Parallels) offered a perpetual license allowing you to renew at (relatively) low renewal rate - and that renewal scheme still exists now.

In short, when having bought the perpetual license in the past, the current price increase would not have been that painful.

Nevertheless, I do agree to some extent that prices have gone up in a way that is not entirely proper : it harms the Plesk community as a whole and it will sooner or later harm Plesk as a company, since the extra revenue of increased prices will not balance with a (future) decrease in revenue due to "lost customers".

But it is not our job to evaluate Plesk as a company or it's policies (!).

It should be our focus to (still) see the merits of Plesk as a hosting panel : in essence, you can go with cheaper alternatives - this choice will not benefit you in the long run.

In my humble opinion, the discussion should not be about prices : we all have the freedom of choice to stop using Plesk (!).

And if we decide to continue with Plesk : we should be fair and not discuss the pricing, since it is actually "part of the deal" and the result of our (own) choice.

Again, I personally want to emphasize the value of Plesk as a hosting panel - as opposed to the discussion about Plesk licensing costs.

A small tip : just do not buy the licenses from the Plesk store - there are cheaper (discounted) alternatives around.

Regards.........
 
HHawk said:
They are increasing pricing *again*
Click to expand...
The new pricing is to come into effect once with the publication date in the online store, on January 1st, 2021.
We have prepared a special FAQ with answers to possible questions on this topic.
There you can also ask a question if you have not found an answer to it.
Thanks.
 
IgorG said:
The new pricing is to come into effect once with the publication date in the online store, on January 1st, 2021.
We have prepared a special FAQ with answers to possible questions on this topic.
There you can also ask a question if you have not found an answer to it.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Not a good news... In FAQ plesk say that no increase in last 3 years... but the increase of 3 years was 100%!
Just hope that plesk try to put an real and include support for client (and not just an forum with form for sometime big bugs) with the new price.
 
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IgorG said:
The new pricing is to come into effect once with the publication date in the online store, on January 1st, 2021.
We have prepared a special FAQ with answers to possible questions on this topic.
There you can also ask a question if you have not found an answer to it.
Thanks.
Click to expand...

Hi Igor,

"For most cases, the overall increase is below 10%"

Will it be only an increase or also a change in the price model?
 
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@ip00 It seems to me that the above-mentioned FAQ explains quite accurately why we are forced to raise prices. You can always show this to your clients.
Also, it's weird to hear that you are not getting new functionality. You just have to look at the Plesk changelog to see how many new features we add with each new release of our products.
 
sebgonzes said:
In FAQ plesk say that no increase in last 3 years... but the increase of 3 years was 100%!
Click to expand...
Please let me clarify how long ago we had our last price increase:
  • the last one was announced to partner and customers in the middle of October 2017, coming into effect Dec 1st, 2017. The retail customers were addressed in April 2018, therefore a slight delay.
  • The new price increase comes into effect Jan 1st 2021, with the notifications going out in Oct 2020.
  • Between the two time moments, there are (except for some retail customers) 3 years.
 
You can tell customers what you wish, but noone of them will understand these price increases every time. Before the previous price increase Plesk didn't increase their pricing for ages (10+ years or so).

Every since Plesk (and cPanel) were acquired by an investment company, price increases are happening. Less than 3 years ago it was mentioned there wouldn't be new price increases, however less than 3 years later... Prices are being increased again.

We already send out a mailing to our customers with Plesk licensed servers where we are offering them a free migration to DirectAdmin servers and also that they have to pay only 50% of the DirectAdmin license fee for their server. So far a majority is seriously interested in migrating. For most of them it will save about 180 Euro a year. For Plesk it might not seem much, but for our customers (and especially during this very tough period with Covid-19, which hurts their businesses) it's more than sufficient to make the switch.

Luckily we already did forsee this and discussed this internally about ~2 years ago and our technicians started working on a script which migrates Plesk servers (and even individual accounts) to DirectAdmin servers. This was tested a very long time and the results are great! The migration script works without issues, it's fast and secure. So we were quite happy we forsee another price increase by Plesk (and this will not be the last one either; mark my words!).

Also you state you are paying for "new functionality", like what exactly? CentOS 8.x support? PHP 7.4 support? MariaDB 10.4 support? We should not have to pay for this. It should be supported by default and straight away. Not months afterwards.

Or do you mean the Wordpress Toolkit? Imho it's rubbish. Customers (hosting) hardly use this. Maybe 1 or 2 out of the 10 users. Similar stats for server owners. Maybe 3 out of 10. But still. Not worth the hassle. Also it's broken most of the time and scans completely lag the server.

Oh wait; you mean the extra functionality as "autodiscover" for email clients? DirectAdmin support this already ages ago. Same with the new Roundcube version with the Elastic skin. It took hacks and workarounds to get it to work in Plesk, where it was already supported in DirectAdmin long before Plesk finally decided to include it.

And there are a ton of other things, which I don't recall now... Oh wait; one more; the stupid extensions. We don't earn a thing for it and Plesk shoves them down your customer's throat. We don't earn a dime from those (as they can purchase them directly online with Plesk), however customers do expect us to give them support?! Really... Bah. We asked a ton of times on how to use the API, however support is lacking in that department. Though I can understand this, as it will cost Plesk money.

Plesk is becoming a money grabbing company... cPanel has the same issues (both companies are owned by the same investment company ofcourse). Anyways, we will be stopping with all our Plesk licenses and move 95% over to DirectAdmin. For the other licenses we will just buy the licenses from a Tier 5 partner instead. Less hassle and cheaper in the end. Plesk should be ashamed for their price increases all the time!

Also Plesk is becoming more and more slower, cannot handle websites with a lot of traffic and a ton of other bad experiences in all. The only "good" thing with Plesk, is the Plesk support team (well maybe 1 or 2 bad apples in the team). But we do not make much use of it and is it worth the extra money? Nope.

It sickens us that Plesk is venturing this road. In the end more and more customers will get annoyed by this approach and this will result in less and less customers who will be using Plesk. Then the investment company will dump Plesk, cPanel (and SolusVM if I am not mistaken) and go ruin a different company instead.

As stated above; Plesk (or better said; the investment company behind it) is only in it for the money. Make profit, doesn't matter how, but make profit as much and as fast we can! They don't care a ton of companies go bankrupt because of Covid-19. It really sickens me....
 
HHawk said:
You can tell customers what you wish, but noone of them will understand these price increases every time. Before the previous price increase Plesk didn't increase their pricing for ages (10+ years or so).

Every since Plesk (and cPanel) were acquired by an investment company, price increases are happening. Less than 3 years ago it was mentioned there wouldn't be new price increases, however less than 3 years later... Prices are being increased again.

We already send out a mailing to our customers with Plesk licensed servers where we are offering them a free migration to DirectAdmin servers and also that they have to pay only 50% of the DirectAdmin license fee for their server. So far a majority is seriously interested in migrating. For most of them it will save about 180 Euro a year. For Plesk it might not seem much, but for our customers (and especially during this very tough period with Covid-19, which hurts their businesses) it's more than sufficient to make the switch.

Luckily we already did forsee this and discussed this internally about ~2 years ago and our technicians started working on a script which migrates Plesk servers (and even individual accounts) to DirectAdmin servers. This was tested a very long time and the results are great! The migration script works without issues, it's fast and secure. So we were quite happy we forsee another price increase by Plesk (and this will not be the last one either; mark my words!).

Also you state you are paying for "new functionality", like what exactly? CentOS 8.x support? PHP 7.4 support? MariaDB 10.4 support? We should not have to pay for this. It should be supported by default and straight away. Not months afterwards.

Or do you mean the Wordpress Toolkit? Imho it's rubbish. Customers (hosting) hardly use this. Maybe 1 or 2 out of the 10 users. Similar stats for server owners. Maybe 3 out of 10. But still. Not worth the hassle. Also it's broken most of the time and scans completely lag the server.

Oh wait; you mean the extra functionality as "autodiscover" for email clients? DirectAdmin support this already ages ago. Same with the new Roundcube version with the Elastic skin. It took hacks and workarounds to get it to work in Plesk, where it was already supported in DirectAdmin long before Plesk finally decided to include it.

And there are a ton of other things, which I don't recall now... Oh wait; one more; the stupid extensions. We don't earn a thing for it and Plesk shoves them down your customer's throat. We don't earn a dime from those (as they can purchase them directly online with Plesk), however customers do expect us to give them support?! Really... Bah. We asked a ton of times on how to use the API, however support is lacking in that department. Though I can understand this, as it will cost Plesk money.

Plesk is becoming a money grabbing company... cPanel has the same issues (both companies are owned by the same investment company ofcourse). Anyways, we will be stopping with all our Plesk licenses and move 95% over to DirectAdmin. For the other licenses we will just buy the licenses from a Tier 5 partner instead. Less hassle and cheaper in the end. Plesk should be ashamed for their price increases all the time!

Also Plesk is becoming more and more slower, cannot handle websites with a lot of traffic and a ton of other bad experiences in all. The only "good" thing with Plesk, is the Plesk support team (well maybe 1 or 2 bad apples in the team). But we do not make much use of it and is it worth the extra money? Nope.

It sickens us that Plesk is venturing this road. In the end more and more customers will get annoyed by this approach and this will result in less and less customers who will be using Plesk. Then the investment company will dump Plesk, cPanel (and SolusVM if I am not mistaken) and go ruin a different company instead.

As stated above; Plesk (or better said; the investment company behind it) is only in it for the money. Make profit, doesn't matter how, but make profit as much and as fast we can! They don't care a ton of companies go bankrupt because of Covid-19. It really sickens me....
Click to expand...

Ah yes, there is even another thing. A few months back Plesk was advertising very cheap discount prices for end-users on their own website. That discount was even better as we are getting as a Plesk Partner. As a result we received two orders in a short time for two simple plain servers and they installed their own Plesk license.

I contacted Plesk about this and they said that it's normal and couldn't give us a discount. Really? What does a Plesk Partner mean nowadays? Nothing. Just another way to screw over loyal and long standing customers. We have been a customer (and partner) somewhere around when it was still owned by SWsoft. But that really doesn't mean **** anymore with Plesk... I personally think Plesk Partner means; you get a special price and we get a chance to screw you over and if possible; multiple times!

Man I still remember Plesk in the early days; excellent pricing, fast and easy working product. The good old times!
The only way Plesk would become a great succes and the company it once was, is by decreasing their pricing again to a more normal level. Oh well, wishful thinking. I think a another new price increase in 18 months is more of a reality.
 
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Also did some reading on old(er) articles. It's always fun what you can find.
E.g. on website theWHIR (archive link, so slow load) back in 2017 about the acquisition by Oakley Capital.

I will quote a few parts of that review:

While it used to compete in the traditional control panel space, its expanded focus will insulate it from the decline it sees in shared hosting.
Decline in hosting? Well that's for sure, when the pricing are increased every time!

Despite these broad ambitions, Plesk has no plans to abandon its service provider partners.
Well the opposite is true; by raising pricing over and over (and by crazy amounts) you're actually abandoning your "partners".

We still want to [support the] 2,500 service provider partners that we have today…
This was back in July 2017. I am wondering how many "service providers" are left who actually use Plesk / cPanel nowadays.

The challenge for many hosting providers making this transition into solutions sales is the level of understanding they must have of their customers.
This was said by Plesk back in the day. Well we have a great understanding with our customers as they do not want to be charged for price increases which Plesk is charging us.

Oh well. As pointless as my rambling was less than 3 years ago, this is also considered a big waste of time. Plesk does what it wants. Increase prices here, increase prices there. Changing the licenses; remember you had a 100 domain option? We had about 80% of those (where 30 wasn't enough and unlimited was to expensive). Then all those (100 domain licenses) were changed to Web Host Edition for $$$.

Plesk; be honest, be real and don't screw your (long standing) customers over. Just my personal 2 cents.
 
IgorG said:
@ip00 It seems to me that the above-mentioned FAQ explains quite accurately why we are forced to raise prices. You can always show this to your clients.
Also, it's weird to hear that you are not getting new functionality. You just have to look at the Plesk changelog to see how many new features we add with each new release of our products.
Click to expand...

Explanation from your FAQ is boilerplate like. Sure you're constantly upgrading and fixing your product, but that's why we pay monthly/yearly fees. But you are also increasing the price of your legacy products (Plesk 10/11, Confixx, etc.) that you are not upgrading anymore.

@HHawk already wrote most of the issues we also have, so I will just agree with him.

My main concern and issue is that your current pricing model is expensive for us and very likely the new one will not be acceptable for a big part of our clients. We'll have to offer them an alternative option to avoid making them mad at us and leave. If they're mad they should be mad only at you, Plesk.

Also, you are setting a trend that makes our business models uncertain and we don't want to rely exclusively on Plesk/cPanel. Having multiple panels also introduces more complexity to our operations so there's no good news here.
 
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ip00 said:
Explanation from your FAQ is boilerplate like. Sure you're constantly upgrading and fixing your product, but that's why we pay monthly/yearly fees. But you are also increasing the price of your legacy products (Plesk 10/11, Confixx, etc.) that you are not upgrading anymore.

@HHawk already wrote most of the issues we also have, so I will just agree with him.

My main concern and issue is that your current pricing model is expensive for us and very likely the new one will not be acceptable for a big part of our clients. We'll have to offer them an alternative option to avoid making them mad at us and leave. If they're mad they should be mad only at you, Plesk.

Also, you are setting a trend that makes our business models uncertain and we don't want to rely exclusively on Plesk/cPanel. Having multiple panels also introduces more complexity to our operations so there's no good news here.
Click to expand...

I completely agree with what has been said already. IMHO the price increase is mainly about the investment company behind Plesk (it is the same who owns CPanel btw) now being interested in (solely) increasing their profit margin. Otherwise it sounds odd, that "suddenly" both companies advertise a price increase just about the same time.
 
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