RE: [IMail Forum] Cross-grade concerns addressed (NEW SVC AGREEMENT PRICES)

[Bryan E. Martin]

Title: Getting facts on this straight before speaking to boss

Jill & Bill,       I agree.  I am willing to pay $495 for upgrades as well.  I have also only called support three or four times in 4 years.  And as I told Renee, I had to fix my problem by editing the registry - the support team wasn't even willing to look at my log files or log on remotely to fix the problem, as your website says.  I know that's not your fault, Jill, I'm just saying - considering the only thing I have been getting out of the $495/year is the product updates, I am content with that type of agreement.       I obviously don't know what Ipswitch needs to do in the way of pricing to remain a profitable business, but let me say this.  I have been happy with IMail for over three years.  It does everything I need it to do.  I think the shared calendaring & outlook integration would be a great add-on - because that's what you guys said you were going to do - make it an add-on. It would benefit my office environment to have that, but not necessarily my customer base.   If you were to sell the collaboration tools as an add-on, and that add-on was going to be in the thousand or several thousand dollar range, I would not be able to justify paying that much just for office use. Perhaps, in that case, you could do like MDaemon and sell the collaboration tools on a different type license - where if we only wanted 25 users on that, we could only activate it on up to 25 users, and that's what we would pay for.  (Kind of like how you can enable/disable Webmail access in a user's account in IMail.)       I like IMail.  I would like to keep using it.  But as I have said, there is no way I can justify the cost to be forced to use your antivirus, when I have my own solution that costs more than 10x less per year.       One more thought, on the lines of bundling vs. modular.  It would make sense to me to offer everything separately, and also offer the ICS bundle. Usually, when you bundle things and buy a package deal, it is cheaper than buying all of the separate components.  It is obviously not going to do anything good if Ipswitch can't make money and therefore goes out of business.  Then there would certainly be no IMail.  What I have found in my experience with running an ISP is that I have the same set of customers that seem to call almost every day, at least every week, and drive us up the wall doing tech support.  I am definitely losing money supporting those customers, if you looked at it on a customer-by-customer profit basis.  We don't actually keep track of those things, but I am guessing that Ipswitch does keep track, or you would at least have some idea.  But if you don't, perhaps it would be beneficial to investigate what percentage of your service agreement paying customers actually take advantage of phone support. You might even find, then, that you need to offer different tiers of support besides just a blanket unlimited phone support option.  We obviously need Ipswitch to turn a profit so we can keep IMail around.   However, instead of charging all of your customers 10x more, it would make more sense (at least to me) to restructure the service agreement prices so that you are actually making a profit on the technical support and development, and we all pay for what we want, need, and use, as opposed to being forced to pay for stuff we don't.     Thank you for your consideration, and thank you for being willing to even discuss this with us.   Bryan E. Martin   Ziggycom Online, Inc.       From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jill Jones Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 2004 1:19 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [IMail Forum] Cross-grade concerns addressed (NEW SVC AGREEMENT PRICES)   Hi Bryan,   The service agreement prices include the AV subscription renewals as well as service on the components in the ICS bundle (which in the case of the ISP/EDU bundle is IMail, KWM and AV).  There is one typo in the list concerning the renewal of the ICS ISP Edition – that number should read $3,995 instead of $4,995.    What I would be curious to know is –   1)       Since that $3,995 number includes subscription for unlimited Symantec AV,  would it be more palatable to have two tiers for the ISP bundles – perhaps a 1,000 user level and an unlimited level?  This would substantially drop the cost of the renewal (I can’t give numbers, as I don’t have them – since at the moment this is hypothetical). 2)       If we were to continue to offer a stand-alone Service Agreement for IMail, what would be a fair price for such an agreement?  Please bear in mind that the current $495 does not cover our Support costs, let alone our Development costs.   I am asking this forum these questions, not to start another flame, but to get some feedback – I would appreciate everyone’s use of correct forum etiquette.  It is difficult for me to post here in good faith while getting personally flamed.   Thanks, Jill