David,
It's the revenue share. Is that not a requirement of the gateway
product? Are people like me not your target for the gateway product?
It's also what one isn't getting for the product that exists now. I
don't wish to see new functionality added at an expense when the lack
of product enhancements it is clearly one of the biggest gripes that
people have. Declude has become progressively more buggy over time and
done so without adding many advantages.
I am now in a position where the new licensing enforcement mechanism
prohibits me from upgrading to a version that fixes bugs even if it was
offered because the licensing enforcement mechanism is not sound and a
huge liability to me. I've been bitching about licensing enforcement
since Declude was purchased and it started phoning home. Then last
Christmas Eve, you guys messed up and the poorly designed license
enforcement mechanism caused many systems to stop processing E-mail for
several days while it was claimed that you had no purposeful
capabilities to disable software in this way. Then the software was
patched and it was promised that Declude would not actively disable
software in this way. Then a few months later you did just that. This
is completely unacceptable and it must be changed in order for me to
continue using the product.
Now as far as CommTouch is concerned, I did address this very fairly
earlier in this thread:
"With that said, as an add-on in the same regard as
things like Sniffer, CommTouch might be a good solution (if it performs
well) for those that can pay the $195/year, however it still irks me
that after two years and lots of promises, these things are being added
at an extra expense and not available to people like me under
reasonable terms."
There is no doubt that CommTouch has potential, just like any other new
test, to make my system easier to operate or slightly more accurate,
and for many these differences could be even larger. It is not however
in any way quantifiable to revenue generation. It is only a cost.
If Declude wants to have any success in courting for-profit spam and
virus blocking services, you will base your licensing on user counts
and functionality, and bear in mind that being successful in this
business is not a matter of using Declude, but instead being good at
one does, so the service providers should have the benefit of increased
margins when volume exceeds that of most. For service providers that
offer these things as an expected and highly commoditized service, you
should understand that they will not by any means jump at the
opportunity to pay any more than they already are. As some have
pointed out, there was a mass exodus from IMail to SmarterMail based on
just two things...increased costs and no attention to adding expected
functionality, instead IMail pretended that they were a groupware
company and that everyone would love them even more for it. Declude
needs to stop copying the Ipswitch of then, and start copying the
Ipswitch of now under Kevin Gillis' direction as they try to pick up
the pieces of past mistakes.
Matt
David Barker wrote:
CT is a feature of the new Declude Gateway product. It was by my request
that we made CT available to Declude Security Suite users as an option and
price that is beyond reasonable. As you have clearly pointed out in your
post that CT is of no real value to you ("CommTouch has zero possibility of
generating revenue for businesses like my own") then you ask me why it is
not available to people like you under reasonable terms.
Am I missing something ?
It comes down to this, it was my descions to include CT for those who could
make use of it and we negotiated a deal where we could include our Service
Providers under a different program. What we are doing is giving you our
customers options, which I do not see as being the wrong way to do things.
David B
www.declude.com
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Matt
Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2006 1:11 AM
To: declude.junkmail@declude.com
Subject: Re: [Declude.JunkMail] Declude 4.3
I agree with this. I was also once a hosting provider which was ancillary
to a business that I used to operate which required me to offer hosting. I
added E-mail because I was sick of dealing with my customer's ISP's for
their E-mail problems (lost passwords, poorly performing services, bad
technical support, etc.). Then after several years of doing E-mail I ran
into a problem where my customers were frequently getting infected by
viruses and their virus infections were preventing them from exploiting the
benefits of their Web presence...so I purchased Declude. Spam wasn't much
of an issue then. Then a year later spam started becoming more of an issue
and I started tweaking my Declude configs to try to block more, and I
started running into the issues of false positives, plus although I was
blocking more, the increase in volume was causing more to leak so my
customers were complaining more and more. I bared down and eventually
became an expert, and I decided then that instead of this being a cost to me
(no one paid me for E-mail, just Web hosting and other services), I decided
to turn it into a business.
My largest source of revenue from this business just so happens to be from
another Declude user who operates a Web hosting company. He was in the same
place as I was, but he didn't have the patience or understanding to fix all
of his issues, and I showed him how we could both profit from upselling the
service and I fixed his false positive issues and made his server more
manageable to boot. He still uses Declude and it is still free for his
customers (who generally don't even know it is there), but many customers do
want more and are willing to pay. Without offering this alternative, he
would lose not just the revenue from MailPure that he shares, but also some
of the customers that were unsatisfied with his standard Declude protection.
I have four hosting providers that I work with now that resell my service,
and two of those are current Declude customers. One tells me that he picks
up customers because other customers tell their friends to come to his
service because they have MailPure. Many of these guys are technically
capable of doing better on their own, but they got into the business to host
and or design Web sites and not to deal with spam and viruses just like me,
and it is not easy to turn a profit from an expensive ancillary service
offering without making a major change in focus (or skipping all of that and
partnering with someone like me).
CommTouch has zero possibility of generating revenue for businesses like my
own even though I profit from offering the service unlike most service
providers. This is why a revenue share with Declude is out of the question.
The suggestions are that CommTouch will make experts out of novices in this
game and allow some to become spam blocking businesses by simply adding
better detection, but spam blocking businesses don't come packaged for
people to plug-n-play. For most, spam and virus blocking will remain a cost
center. Approaching this market with a revenue share licensing for a
software add-on is overwhelming evidence of not understanding the market.
With that said, as an add-on in the same regard as things like Sniffer,
CommTouch might be a good solution (if it performs well) for those that can
pay the $195/year, however it still irks me that after two years and lots of
promises, these things are being added at an extra expense and not available
to people like me under reasonable terms.
Matt
Paul Navarre wrote:
***
Question to thoes that are saying that spam/virus protestion is a lost
leader/not a revenue builder.
If it does not generate revenue then why don't you stop offering
spam/virus protection?
***
Is this a serious question?
If you don't offer spam and virus filtering, you won't have any customers.
In most markets the local competition offers it for free. The national
competition certainly does (yahoo, google, earthlink etc).
Many of us are fighting against low-priced inferior competition. The
problem is that the average customer doesn't know that they are
inferior. They *do* know how much they charge, and if they offer
spam/virus protection and you don't it doesn't matter how poor the
other guy's service is. They will leave. Sure, they will find out later
how much the other guys suck, but how much time/effort/money will it
cost to get them back? Chances are they'll try the next cut rate place
instead of coming back to us anyway.
Paul Navarre
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