Plesk Pricing - Is this market rate?

[64bithost.com]

So I am a small businessman trying to compete with the large DC's and I really do not know if Parallels.com has really thought out their pricing structure. Last year I was able to buy Plesk for Linux - Unlimited Domains for $199.75 a copy! and Plesk Power Pack for $74.75. That is a total of $274.50. That is not bad. I can absorb that kind of a cost and then turn around and "rent" the license for $5.00 per customer and make my money back over the course of a year.

Now Parallels.com wants $1,399.00 per copy??? Are they crazy? That's $116.58 a month or 24 new clients (116.58 / $5.00 = 23.5). I am lucky if I get 4 or 5 new clients a month. I am not GoDaddy.com and I do not have an advertising budget to get new clients.

Also has Parallels.com thought of the impact they are having on the VPS market? If I have 50 VPS clients and they are taking away the 10/30/100/300 purchasable licenses then I have to have $69,950.00 worth of Unlimited Domains Plesk Plus licenses on hand to satisfy my VPS clients. I cannot afford that. I will end up pursing shared clients only because I can only afford to buy less than 10 Unlimited Domains Plesk Plus licenses for my servers.

Get this, as a provider if my service costs $19.95 I have to charge my client $39.99 for a 100 domains leasing license. That brings the total to $59.94 for a 5 GB VPS. Sure this will cut down on over selling, IN THE PLESK MARKET, but not the rest of the market. No one is going to pay $59.94 for a 5 GB VPS when they can get a 500 GB VPS CPANEL for $100 + dollars.

If Parallels really thinks that this licensing structure is going to work they are waiting for the moon to turn blue. Microsofts products are priced differently (i.e. VISTA has four seperate versions) and four seperate prices. Parallels.com really needs to re-think this or it is going to be the only topic of conversation at Parallels Summit 2008.

- Chris Donnelly
http://www.64bithost.com

 

[janiko]

How to loose clients

Well, I was not sure that I read well, but I guess we are at least two in the same case... Either we both need better glasses, or 1 digit was really added to the price of Plesk Control Panel.

I'm not a professional, and a few years ago I was looking for a good tool to manage a few web sites on a (very) small dedicated server. After a few tests, I saw that Plesk allows me do to that in a comfortable and secure manner. I decided to buy the product, which is not an easy decision when you're not professionnal. But Plesk was the only affordable (and easy and secure) product that fitted my needs. I was very happy with it, it's clean, with all the features I need, so everything was perfect. I was so confident with that product that I buy it again (a Windows version) for a server I manage for a non-profit organisation.

How lucky I was to buy Plesk at this time... Today I will certainly NOT do this again ! In France, the market for dedicated servers is very active, so a lot of people (I mean computers geeks like me) rent a server for hosting their sites or for gaming. A web control panel is very useful to manage any server, even small ones. Buying Plesk was a good investment even for people like me.

And now ?

Now no non-professional can afford buying Plesk. It's completely too expensive, even if you only rent it. I'm still lucky because I can renew services/SUS at low cost ($49 for me). But for how long ?

Parallels wants maybe to focus on serious customers, and maybe they calculate that one $1,399 licence was better (for them) than 7-8 $199 ones. Now Plesk is as much expensive as CPanel. So what's the advantage of Plesk ? What will I get for those additional dollars ? Nothing... Look at my example : I'm not professionnal but because I liked Plesk, I bought 2 licences. At the actual price, I would have buy no licence at all. And if I like this product for my non-professional usage, I'm yet working in the computer services industry. If I know the product, I could recommend it for professional usage. So again it can be an opportunity (for Parallels) to sell licences...

One small customer can bring others potential customers to buy the product. That's what Parallel will loose. I'm not sure it's the better marketing plan. I was really enthusiastic with the SWSoft Plesk. I'm really disappointed with Parallels Plesk.

PS : Sorry for my english...

 

[nibb@]

There is a nice discussion about this here:

http://forum.swsoft.com/showthread.php?t=51375

 

[64bithost.com]

Soo...

So I am totally frustrated with this whole process. The only thing to do with a problem is to solve it rather than to point fingers at the people who created the problem in the first place.

So I challenge Parallels.com to let the consumers come up with a better pricing stucture that Parallels.com will use from this day forward. I say this, and most people will think I am off my rocker but, it will help out the small business person if they do. It is a matter of mathmatics and it needs to be solved. something they did not responsibly do by asking us in the first place.

There was no survey as to if we wanted a new pricing structure or if we could even give our input for that matter. I do remember a survey on SaaS which 30% said that they would not use it and 70% said they would. Not historically good numbers for a software company but then again neither was Microsofts ME.

So come on Parallels.com...let us decide the pricing stucture. Because I know I could solve it.

 

[joeybutterface]

I don't like the new pricing anymore than you do. But you're living among the clouds if you think Parallels are going to let consumers come up with pricing models.

It's simple. If you don't like the pricing, don't "lease" the products. Start making plans to migrate to an alternative solution.

We're already well on the way to abandoning Parallels for good. Whether they change their minds on pricing or not, our decision is now irreversible.

 

[Amin Taheri]

if I remember correct that price is just for the first year, after that you only have to pay for SUS if you want updates, otherwise you pay nothing each year after that. So you may have to take a hit the first year, or lease your own to make enough money to buy your own but once yuo do its yours.