<snip> > >3. You really have to be reasonable. Imail is nowhere near the >quality or the capability of Exchange. That is a fact that you >cannot refute under any circumstance. Lots of people buy Chevy >Cavaliers too... It is a decent car in that it runs and does >what it is supposed to do, like Imail in some respects. Now, >most Cavalier owners would rather have a BMW 330i. Problem is >it is too costly. There is no doubt it is better than the >Cavalier but it is just too costly for the regular guy. Now if >the Cavalier suddenly became expensive, at say 70% to 80% of >the BMW it would no longer be a viable option as its >cost/benefit would be very negative in comparison. Your >product is in that situation. > >Eric <snip/>
What a great analogy. I'm a corporate customer with about 150 users. ICS's new "target market". I have been using Imail since 2001. I also use Declude A/V, Declude Junkmail, and Sniffer. Works great! Very happy camper. At the beginning of 2004 I began to consider purchasing MS Exchange for the collaboration tools since everyone in our organization has MS Office on their desktop. I would just set up Exchange behind my Imail server and let Declude and Sniffer do their thing and send what's left to the Exchange server. When I heard that Ipswitch was going to offer a MS Outlook "collaboration add-on" (note: add-on) back in March, I thought to myself, "Cool...let's wait and see what their add-on looks like. I'm sure the functionality won't be quite the same as Exchange, but I bet the price will be much more competitive." So, I've been waiting. The first release date in late April was missed because of technical problems, I wasn't upset. Heck, were talking about integrating with MS Outlook. Not an easy task. Well, The waiting is finally over. Since "collaboration" is not an "add-on", I don't want it. I don't need their overpriced and flaky Symantec A/V software. I don't need their IM software. If I wanted that, I would have already purchased it. When I first purchased Imail, Ipswitch didn't have anti-spam or A/V for their product. That is why I started using Declude. Ipswitch's A/V and anti-spam can't touch Declude's reliability and functionality. I my mind, the pricing for ICS is not competitive. ICS's cost is less than Exchange, but not enough for me NOT to go ahead and purchase Exchange. If I'm going to spend thousands of dollars up front and thousands every year for an SA, I would rather have Exchange. Especially when a good chunk of the SA price is for Symantec's A/V licensing. With Exchange, at least I know I will have native integration with Outlook and support - if needed. Plus, I really do not trust Ipswitch's ability to support any of the "third party" pieces of ICS. Ipswitch does not have the best track record of taking care of issues with their own software. Also, the way Ipswitch has abandoned their core customers is appalling. Their apparent "screw the little guy" attitude is very revealing. Take these little snips from Mr. David Karp's (Senior Marketing Manager, Ipswitch, Inc.) post yesterday: <snip> "The people who work at Ipswitch work hard to support their families just like you do. Please restrict your criticism to the company, the products, and the prices, and give the people the respect you would expect for yourselves. The decisions around ICS were taken as a whole company after much research and debate." <snip/> <snip> "If it doesn't meet your needs, I wish you success with a product that does." <snip> Imail's core customer is small to medium sized business' and ISP's. They are *trying* to support their families just as Mr. Karp and Company are taking care of theirs. Ipswitch's decision to originally announce collaboration as an add-on and then switch to an all-or-nothing option (with no notice) is deceptive at best. There obviously is no sign of "respect" for Imail's existing customers which also have families and employees. For the small and mid sized ISP hosting company, e-mail is their business. I really feel for them. Your (Ipswitch) lack of professionalism to timely notify your customers of your impending market switch is inexcusable. I imagine most customers would have just moved on to another mail server with out much fuss if they were just timely informed of your intentions. Oh, but then you couldn't milk your customers (read: suckers) out of one more SA before you abandon them. Got take care of "Number One", you know. Most companies have budgets that are prepared several quarters or a year in advance. Unexpected $4k to $6k expenditures per server are not minor issues to these smaller ISP's. I can see it now for those (few) who switch to ICS: "Sorry everyone, we can't pay any holiday bonuses this year. We have to send Ipswitch $4k before 12/31 or it will cost us $6k later - even though we have a valid SA until June 2005. That's for just one server. What if 2 or 3 servers need to be "cross-graded"? Your offer of special "cross-grade" pricing until Dec. 31st for v7 or above should really be extended to the end of anyone's current SA. Here again, business' need more than 2 months to plan for large expenditures. For me this really isn't a big deal. I will buy MS Exchange for my collaboration. I will use my existing Imail sever for a gateway until Declude releases its gateway product. I will dump Imail and will never recommend, much less purchase *any* product from Ipswitch. In fact, I will go out of my way to discourage anyone from purchasing any Ipswitch product. I don't do business with, or recommend organizations that that treat their customers this way. Good Luck in your new endeavor. ~Patrick By the way. Anyone know of a good FTP server? I have a couple I need to replace. <g> --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses at HGBD by Declude/McAfee] To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/
