Could Zimbra consider a-la-carte pricing?

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With 50% growth last qtr, and 100% growth in the edu market alone last qtr, the rule is:

If it aint broke, don't fix it.

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It seems like people aren't even suggesting to "change" the current pricing structure, but to "add" to it as if it was a new feature (which Zimbra is doing all of the time) and offer another column on the pricing page for the no-support-Network-Edition.. perhaps only with some of the features rather than all of them (Outlook, leave out domain-level admin, leave out clustering/HA, etc.) at a price higher than free, but cheaper than $24/user/year, with the caveat that there is no support provided.

But really, people have brought this up multiple times in forums.. They are willing/offering/asking to give Zimbra money for the extra features in return for no support.. even at that, it seems that most people just want the Outlook connector. Charging $20/year/user for the Outlook connector with no 25-user-minimums and no support in return, and there would be some extra money in the Zimbra T&E fund.

Just some random mumblings from the Thursday afternoon fingertips.

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Originally Posted by Krishopper

even at that, it seems that most people just want the Outlook connector.

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Actually, the outlook connector, the live backup, and more recently, mobile device support are all features that could generate revenue if offered in this fashion.

On the other hand, maybe I should be looking for an I.T. job with a company that can afford to spend $420/user/year for their email server--they'd have to pay their I.T. people more than I'm making. . . :D

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Originally Posted by dwmtractor

And seriously, sell this as "forum-only support" rather than "no support." First of all Zimbra should get a lot of advertising/attaboy credit for the substantial support provided by its employees on this forum, and second this forum is IMHO the most effective support forum I have ever used for any product. Answers are more complete, more timely, and more generally friendly than I'm used to seeing in support forums, and Zimbra should toot that horn for all it's worth!

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I agree 100%, I get much faster, more thorough help on these forums than the actual support my employer pays for from Zimbra. You guys do a great job at at least giving people SOME answer to their problems. I hope that you guys get the recognition that you deserve from the Zimbra team(even if you're not an employee).

I think this single license option would be really good for people in small businesses that don't want to pay for support or really need it even. Most of the collaboration features in Zimbra your average user won't need, so I think the number of support issues and the complexity of the issues would be minimal.

Anyways, I just read that post and thought I'd say thanks to the forum guys for putting up with all our crap. :D

Not going to bring any hopes up, but i'm going to guess that *if* a feature-a-la-carte system was adopted, it would definitely make the license checking more complex and add, potentially, increasingly strange combinations for the on-phone support team.

however, that being said, i think it would be an interesting proposition (and trying to simply the license authentication system), to have three tiers: adding to the NE structure a "lite" edition including just backup and rebranding (kinda life combining the OSS and "Consumer" (which is really for ASPs) editions for us small business users. It'd be a few additional lines of code, no additional support beyond what's offered for OSS. Perhaps an internal business case could justify the creation of that additional licensing tier offset by the additional licensing revenue.

Right now, it's 625 bucks a year as a minimum (at list price, you may or may not get a break on pricing) to buy into the koolaid. Let's say, for this NE Lite Edition, the minimum seat is 5, for 10 bucks per user per year. 50 a year isn't bad to pay for the software, and i'm guessing there are quite a few of us smaller installs with 10 or 15 users, which would add at least another 100 to 150 per install. Saying that there are 100 installs of this size that are willing to pony up the cash, would mean another 10k to 15k added almost straight to the bottom line - since there are almost no additional costs related to that programme.

but hey, i don't know the internals, so i have no idea if 10k to 15k a year is actually worth the effort.


Updated after the fact: if they do go with that NE lite idea, tell me where i need to send the check.

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Originally Posted by dwmtractor

I'm serious, I would like to pay some $$$ for this product that my company is going to use and like, but we can't afford 25 users x $35/mo = $10,500 per year. So I'm open source and paying nothing at all. . .don't get me wrong, nothing is a nice price, but how many "nothings" could be converted to even $500 or $1000 per year? Dunno about you, but at no incremental cost outlay (remember I said forum-only support) that sounds like free money to me! :D

Dan

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Isn't Zimbra licensing 25 users x $35/yr = $875 per year?

How did you come up with the figure of 25 users x $35/mo = $10,500 per year? Are there Zimbra mobile or Blackberry optional extras included in your pricing?

Rey

Even with zimbra mobile 25+(or 50+) it's not 10k
300 users? (10,500/35)
or some other 250+mobile+blackberry?
(either way then it would then be $28/user)

My company employee base fluctuates between 20-35 users, depending on the number of projects we work on. I wish the licenses were sold in blocks of 10 :)
Buying 50 licenses to cover at most 35 users feels like wasting resources. :(

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Originally Posted by rey

Isn't Zimbra licensing 25 users x $35/yr = $875 per year?

How did you come up with the figure of 25 users x $35/mo = $10,500 per year? Are there Zimbra mobile or Blackberry optional extras included in your pricing?

Rey

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That would be because I misread the pricing table as $35/user/month, not per year! I'm not going to make excuses; it shows big as life on the table where I just went and looked at it; I have no idea how that idea managed to persist in my brain for this long. My apologies to Zimbra. . .

I don't think I can make the case to my management even at a thousand bucks a year right now (maybe in good times, but we haven't had good times in a while), but it's at least not laughable. . .

thanks for correcting me!

Dan