Switching to a paid version.

[dhickman]

I have been using zimbra for a couple of years and I want to PAY to be able to upgrade to be able to sync my mac and push email to my palm 700wx.

Here is the problem.

I have only one domain and I only need mail for my wife and myself, so two accounts. I have been running my own servers for years.

Now that zimbra has mac sync and support wm5 push, I am willing to pay for it.

Here is the problem.

I would prefer to get out of the home hosting businees and pay for a couple of mailboxes. But the existing providers are in the two categories.

1. Good prices but minimum users requires - Like 5 or more...

one provider I check wanted 7.95 a box, full features, So @5 boxes, my mrc is $39.75 totalling $477 year

2. Per user, but ala carte for the features.

Two boxes, one with mac sync the other with wm5 sync. $32 a month, 384 a year.

At those prices, I would rather buy a license and go from there..

The problem is that zimbra is sold only in 25 license blocks.
So the network edition is $700 a year.

Now here is the intersting part. For a small business or prosumer user.

Microsoft Small business server is actually cheaper.

New Egg has a OEM 2003 smb server with 5 cals for $450 no annual maintanace.

Trust me I hate Microsoft, but that is a reasonable price.

I really want to run zimbra and have no problem upgrading from my opensource version to a PAYED version.

No matter what, Even if it is a token amount of money, lets say individual mailbox pricing at $35 or $40 a year is more money than nothing.

dhh

[jholder]

Hi dhh,
We'd love to help you as much as possible. Please contact sales@zimbra.com and they will assist you in your needs.

Thanks
john

[tyco]

hi there i moved over form communigate (stalker) to zimbra.

what i really liked on the stalker is that you could run a server with 5 users for free.

imagine that all those people out there maintaining zimbra installations could have a small private server (Network edition) for free. there is anyway no serious business with less than 5 accounts.

zimbra sales what do you think?

[mcevoys]

Welcome to the club....I already went down the route with Zimbra sales...expect to be disappointed.

[Digi]

I'm in complete agreement with this thread.

I'm a huge zimbra fan and want all the features of a zimbra power user (sync, mobile) but don't have the seats to justify the current pricing model. I'm willing to pay for the missing functionality -- if the model made sense -- but it doesn't.

Zimbra comes very close to delivering on the completely machine/location independent experience I've been looking for. I switch between a linux/mac desktop, a windows laptop, a mobile phone, and many client sites with internet terminals -- and I can almost pull it off.

Keep up the great work.

[jholder]

Guys-

We currently have no plans to change the business model.
We are simply not big enough to either:
1) give away our product
2) support very small businesses

That's what VAR's are for. That's specifically why we have that program! It simply is not profitable for us to sell licenses to smaller individuals/people. Trust us. We know; we've actually done smaller licenses (for those who've been around a while).

It just isn't profitable. We are a company with bills to pay.

To do any of the above, or explicitly hurt them(the VARs), and we simply won't do that.

We don't mind new customers, and although that is enticing, we prefer to leave that up to the VAR's. It's a decision we've made, and one that we're going to be sticking by.

There are things in the pipe-line for future planning, that may help. . but we ask that if you wish to have a smaller quantity licenses than what we can provide you: Please contact one of our VARs.

We deal with larger organizations for a reason. The deployments are often more complex, and the need for support is high. We deal with the VARs and they deal with the cust.

Kevin and I have spoken about this quite a bit., and at legnth. We certainly appreciate the level of interest in this, but here is our official stand:
We have no plans to change our business model. For users who wish to have a smaller level of licenses, we recommend our VARs. Work with them. They're great.

I honestly hope that this puts the issue to rest.

[Digi]

I understand what you are saying. Instead of complaining about it, I'd like to put forward some suggestions for your future thinking.

There are some emerging business models in the open source + paid editions world that might be worth thinking about. It's possible you are leaving money on the table in addition to frustrating a potentially important customer segment.

Zimbra is currently "bundling" enhanced functionality with support. Both are valuable in a production environment where the IT department has an SLA with the COO.

Other leading thinkers in open source solutions (e.g. sugarcrm) are now selling specific enhanced functionality (e.g. outlook integration) on a "onesy-twosy" basis with forum only based support for approx $10/user/month.

Yes, I understand there are very real development costs to enable the packaging, testing and license enforcement of individualized functionality modules (like Zimbra Mobile, MAPI and/or iSync). Maybe this cost is too high to consider at this time...

This model should have minimal impact on your VAR's - as it is providing a solution for a very different client segment -- one who doesn't desire self hosting (due to skills, hassle, risk etc.)

[Dirk]

As I see it, the Network edition offers enhanced functionality and formal support contacts, both essential in many businesses.

The enhanced content is pretty much a one-off development cost for Zimbra, once they have wrote the code, it's sort of 'done'. The support is the real cost to them, and I think it's what the main part of the license pays for.

So here's my take on it: It stands to reason that the less times a customer contacts zimbra for support, the more money they make. Obvious really. Two customers purchase a 200 user license, one customer never calls for support, one is on the phone every week, one of these customers is costing Zimbra money.

The reason the first company never phones for support may be that the local admins know what the are doing, so My suggestion is that when a company purchases a license for the business, a further license is issued so the administrator can run a system at home as well (or a small development server at work) this allows the admin to learn more, to take risks with the home/dev system that they cannot with the production one.

The greater the local knowledge, the less support calls and load on the Zimbra support team.

So while I appreciate that it's not cost effective or desirable for Zimbra to issue licenses for less that 25 users at a time, I think that a second 'development' license, limited to 5 accounts could be something that would actually make money for zimbra in the long run.

We are currently running OSS at work and we are looking into switching to NE, I also run zimbra at home. Guess how much harder I'll push the business to purchase NE if I get a free copy for my home install

Food for thought.

[msentissi]

Hello there

I was browsing through the forum and read this.
How about hosting your domain with a zimbra hosting company ? (caugh ....collaboranet.com)

Cheers !

[Dirk]

Originally Posted by msentissi

Hello there

I was browsing through the forum and read this.
How about hosting your domain with a zimbra hosting company ? (caugh ....collaboranet.com)

Cheers !

I guess some people (myself included) simply prefer to be in control of their data. Hosted services are great, but sometimes it's nice to have physical access to the server holding your own data.