XCP-ng pricing
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What I think is likely the biggest issue is the desire to have a few large customers cover the bills and ignore everyone else (SME rather than SMB customers).
Sadly I think there is are bit to many grandiose wishes and dreams to realize that SMB's need support far more frequently than SMEs do.
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@obsolesce said in XCP-ng pricing:
@scottalanmiller said in XCP-ng pricing:
@dustinb3403 said in XCP-ng pricing:
@obsolesce said in XCP-ng pricing:
I would start thinking about pricing similarly to the competition, then what Jared said makes sense:
@jaredbusch said in XCP-ng pricing:
If the closest competitor is $350 per socket, then that means that you start there and figure out what differentiates your service from the competitor and if that makes it worth more or less.
So, if you want a minimum of $350 per year for a host, you'd do something like:
- $22 / core / host / year (16-core minimum / host)
Yeah, the minimum size that you could purchase support for would be 16 cores, but you could have as few cores as you realistically want.
16 seems high to me. I get why they want a minimum, but SO many customers want something smaller.
For the Devs to bring in $500k a year, they'd need over 2,800 accounts paying for a 8-core minimum @ $22 / core.
I doubt that's enough to cover all overhead, salaries, etc.
Maybe a flat $40 per core, 8 core minimum per host, per year. That ends up being $320 per host per year minimum, which is close to the competition I'm aware of. If XCP-ng privides better supportor offers more, then they can raise or lower price accordingly.
If they like different levels of support, it's easy to say basic support is the same concept, but $30 per core... Or whatever.
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Tbh xcp-ng is direct competitior to xenserver.
Now: either xenserver is considered legacy s**t no one wants and you can reposition in the middle of vmware and hyperv (that is half price of vmware, being hyperv a no-support option) or you just refer to xenserver prices and propose your full featured pack at the price of their mid pack.
Just to start doing a bit of math. Then Oliver has to see if this is affordable for them.As a price I mean the annual cost per socket/core as the market is regulated by per socket prices and you end up being uncomparable if you move too far from the model. Also more sockets/cores lead to more vm so more issues.
I mean XOA has a good reputation but still xcp-ng is a new thing. I would not disalign from market here.
My 2cents.
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@dustinb3403 said in XCP-ng pricing:
@danp said in XCP-ng pricing:
Looks like Olivier is still wanting to go with per host pricing.
Just means it's not supported in the SMB market, is all.
That survey makes no sense and basically tells me they aren't even going to talk to customers, let alone listen. The decision is made and they are using the survey to pretend to have looked into it.
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I think the bottom line is... with per host licensing, no one is going to take them seriously. The SMB market will not be willing to get screwed to supplement the big boys. The big boys will realize that their support will be shit because they don't make any money on them. It's a big statement that you don't want to buy support here. The lack of customer empathy is a major issue. It feels like they are totally disconnected and not thinking about their customers.
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@scottalanmiller said in XCP-ng pricing:
@dustinb3403 said in XCP-ng pricing:
@danp said in XCP-ng pricing:
Looks like Olivier is still wanting to go with per host pricing.
Just means it's not supported in the SMB market, is all.
That survey makes no sense and basically tells me they aren't even going to talk to customers, let alone listen. The decision is made and they are using the survey to pretend to have looked into it.
Which literally means the community version is the only real option, albeit with community support.
I specifically spoke (via chat message) and told him how simple core licensing is and makes sense. The fact that he posted the same questions as a survey is just damning for the project of XCP-ng and XO.
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@dustinb3403 said in XCP-ng pricing:
@scottalanmiller said in XCP-ng pricing:
@dustinb3403 said in XCP-ng pricing:
@danp said in XCP-ng pricing:
Looks like Olivier is still wanting to go with per host pricing.
Just means it's not supported in the SMB market, is all.
That survey makes no sense and basically tells me they aren't even going to talk to customers, let alone listen. The decision is made and they are using the survey to pretend to have looked into it.
Which literally means the community version is the only real option, albeit with community support.
Yes, absolutely. The product will have to be absurdly expensive for the SMB market to have any hopes of making money in the SME market. The only way for that model to work is to price for companies that fit into a middle ground and are not in a position to skew their support purchases to game the pricing model.
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Would something like this be a reasonable way of pricing XCP-ng?
Screenshot from Proxmox Subscription Pricing website.
Proxmox subscriptions are licensed per physical server and CPU socket.
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@black3dynamite said in XCP-ng pricing:
Would something like this be a reasonable way of pricing XCP-ng?
Screenshot from Proxmox Subscription Pricing website.
Proxmox subscriptions are licensed per physical server and CPU socket.Is there a link that shows what support they are planning to provide, what it includes, and if there are any different levels of support?
It's really hard to imagine pricing of some support service I don't know anything about.
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Is the pricing by CPU or socket or populated socket? Those are three different metrics.
A socket may or may not have a chip in it. A chip may have one or more CPUs on it. Rare to do that, but calling something a CPU socket is very confusing as chip carriers go in sockets, not chips themselves.
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@obsolesce said in XCP-ng pricing:
@black3dynamite said in XCP-ng pricing:
Would something like this be a reasonable way of pricing XCP-ng?
Screenshot from Proxmox Subscription Pricing website.
Proxmox subscriptions are licensed per physical server and CPU socket.Is there a link that shows what support they are planning to provide, what it includes, and if there are any different levels of support?
It's really hard to imagine pricing of some support service I don't know anything about.
I haven't found any detailed info on their site or forums.
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@black3dynamite That appears to charge based on the amount of available CPU's that could go into a host.
That approach is similar to what many businesses do. Microsoft obviously has dumped this idea though and gone with core counting and a minimum number of cores.
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@dustinb3403 said in XCP-ng pricing:
@black3dynamite That appears to charge based on the amount of available CPU's that could go into a host.
Microsoft obviously has dumped this idea though and gone with core counting and a minimum number of cores.
And this is the best way to do it. Any other way doesn't make sense.
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@obsolesce This is what I found so far from their subscription agreement.
https://www.proxmox.com/en/downloads/item/proxmox-ve-subscription-agreement
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@dustinb3403 So you think only your opinion matters on what the pricing should be? You dont pay for their backup software, you dont pay for XS license, you arent their target audience for their support product either.
This project wouldnt even exist without Citrix essentially abandoning XS(or whatever they started calling it this week) and charging people for things like the ability to do live storage migrations.
This is meant for people who want to keep using something like XS but not pay for standard hypervisor features, just support. If youre comfortable supporting this hypervisor yourself you can just skip out on buying support from them, or get it when you need it.
Far as pricing goes, as long as it is cheaper than an Enterprise License XS per socket, and the support is competent, it is worth it for their intended audience, ie people willing to spend money for support.
They are essentially selling what XS licensing was up until 2018. Full featured for free, pay for support. -
@momurda said in XCP-ng pricing:
@dustinb3403 So you think only your opinion matters on what the pricing should be? You dont pay for their backup software, you dont pay for XS license, you arent their target audience for their support product either.
The target audience is SME space, which I currently work in. Just because I support and recommend the community edition of different projects, doesn't justify your stance of "only your opinion matters".
Pricing globally for any major software or OS or even hypervisor vendor is based on core counting to appropriately license a client entirely.
This project wouldnt even exist without Citrix essentially abandoning XS(or whatever they started calling it this week) and charging people for things like the ability to do live storage migrations.
Doesn't matter with the point of this conversation. . .
This is meant for people who want to keep using something like XS but not pay for standard hypervisor features, just support. If youre comfortable supporting this hypervisor yourself you can just skip out on buying support from them, or get it when you need it.
XS is still priced at $345/socket on xenserver.org (Socket pricing, which is still a better approach for Olivier not getting hosed on a customer who would abuse the Per Host rate)
https://xenserver.org/discuss-virtualization/get-support.html
Far as pricing goes, as long as it is cheaper than an Enterprise License XS per socket, and the support is competent, it is worth it for their intended audience, ie people willing to spend money for support.
They are essentially selling what XS licensing was up until 2018. Full featured for free, pay for support.You hope, have you ever looked at the support costs for xenserver?
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@dustinb3403 said in XCP-ng pricing:
@black3dynamite That appears to charge based on the amount of available CPU's that could go into a host.
Sounds that way, but seems unlikely.
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@dustinb3403 said in XCP-ng pricing:
That approach is similar to what many businesses do. Microsoft obviously has dumped this idea though and gone with core counting and a minimum number of cores.
MS always did it on the number that did go in, not the number that could.
