Hi David, In regards to the concern raised by many, and you're response that you need time to turn everything around...
The problem many of us are having is that all we have seen so far, even in the recent announcements, is demand for more money with none of the increased functionality we've been asking for for two years now. It would have settled much better with most of us if announcements had been made of new functionality so we feel better about the money we've already spent with you and gotten no benefit from, rather than a communication about increased costs with no discernable added functionality (for the many of us who already have Message Sniffer). I'm sure you would have gotten a much better reception if you had started with relaying increased functionality that many have been asking for for a couple of years, and how customers with existing service agreements would be extended due to the previous lack of added features and support. In short, lead with an offer to make existing customers feel better, not a demand for more money from those who are already frustrated. The latter tactic just serves to drive customers away, and is the same tactic Ipswitch used unsuccessfully. Oh and prices were increased from $132 to $295 before they were dropped back to $132 for legacy customers, so there was no price cut except in the sense of department stores raising prices to have a sale. We all know IT costs are among the first cuts in any business, so market share and increased product/service lines are a much better way to increase revenue than increasing prices for the same product/service. The latter is usually a sign of a struggling business that is trying to keep from going under. I don't mean to beat the pulpy mess that used to be a horse, been trying to stay silent through all of this to let you come through on your own, but the above perspective seems to have been missed. Bottom line is consider your customer's concerns before you make announcements, address them in the announcement, and you'll be more successful. All the best, Darin. ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Barker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <declude.junkmail@declude.com> Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2006 1:23 PM Subject: RE: [Declude.JunkMail] Declude 4.3 Matt, 1. With regards to no new functionality, we have been over this I agreed and made a commitment to address this. I think to say that Declude has become more buggy over time is not entirely true as I have posted before, much of the problems were not seen under the single application declude.exe, many of these things became more obvious with the decludeproc service. Again this is not a new point of contention but we cannot keep going over and over it again and again, I am asking that you give me some time to turn this around. 2. As far as the licensing mechanism is concerned we talked about this less than a week ago, and again I committed to coming up with a solution. I do understand the problem. I will tackle each issue one at a time everything cannot be all done at once. 3. "It is not however in any way quantifiable to revenue generation." I disagree for many of the same reasons that Goran suggested. 4. To compare Declude to IMail is not a good comparison especially when the cost of our Service Agreements have been what they are and not increased, if fact we lowered the cost of our Service Agreements. They used to be $295 per product and we changed that to $132 for our legacy customers. How quickly we forget how much it is for an IMail renewal these days ? To summarize, lets stop the bitching and start working together as a community again. I am totally aware of everything that is posted on the list and I have a long list of action items, one day at time is my approach. I am reaching out to those on the list who want to do this, and work with Declude to create a better product, service and happy customers because at the end of the day that's what it is all about. For us to be successful you need to be successful, that is our goal. David B www.declude.com ________________________________ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Matt Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2006 12:53 PM To: declude.junkmail@declude.com Subject: Re: [Declude.JunkMail] Declude 4.3 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 --- This E-mail came from the Declude.JunkMail mailing list. To unsubscribe, just send an E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], and type "unsubscribe Declude.JunkMail". The archives can be found at http://www.mail-archive.com. --- This E-mail came from the Declude.JunkMail mailing list. To unsubscribe, just send an E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], and type "unsubscribe Declude.JunkMail". The archives can be found at http://www.mail-archive.com. --- This E-mail came from the Declude.JunkMail mailing list. To unsubscribe, just send an E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], and type "unsubscribe Declude.JunkMail". The archives can be found at http://www.mail-archive.com. --- This E-mail came from the Declude.JunkMail mailing list. To unsubscribe, just send an E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], and type "unsubscribe Declude.JunkMail". The archives can be found at http://www.mail-archive.com. --- This E-mail came from the Declude.JunkMail mailing list. To unsubscribe, just send an E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], and type "unsubscribe Declude.JunkMail". The archives can be found at http://www.mail-archive.com. --- This E-mail came from the Declude.JunkMail mailing list. To unsubscribe, just send an E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], and type "unsubscribe Declude.JunkMail". The archives can be found at http://www.mail-archive.com.
