Personal Edition

[Sard]

I have been running Zimbra for several months now having migrated over from Scalix.

One of the main reasons for the migration from Scalix was the web interface. The great looks and performance finaly won me over despite loosing the ability to use Outlook. When I am away from home I enjoy using the Web interface but whilst at home I have to confess that I find a desktop client preferable. Now I think Thunderbird is great and is probably my client of choice however it doesn't support contacts. Evolution is ok but I'm not over enamoured with it so this leaves Outlook. Now I know that the Zimbra policy is different to Scalix in that they don't give the ability to use Outlook with the community version. I fully respect this and am thnkful for what I do get to use for free!

Having read the specification for the Network version I would be more than prepared to pay for it as a private user if there was a personal edition available. This personal edition would contain all the features of the Network version but be limited to say 5 Outlook connectors. I have considered purchasing the 25 user version but really can't justify the cost over the benefits given that I only have 4 users.

A search through the forum did throw up a similar request a couple of years ago however I think the question then was more if a free personal edition was viable. I am happy to pay for a reasonably priced personal edition and was wondering how many others would be willing to do the same?

Sard

[mmorse]

Lol we always seem to be having these discussions -I'll show you a link in a sec.
But ever consider Zimbra Desktop for your at home use?

[mmorse]

There are convos like this all the time-rather than start it all up again, see a few:
/forums/administrators/10986-could-zimbra-consider-la-carte-pricing.html
/forums/administrators/10784-regarding-zimbra-mobile.html
/forums/migration/7520-switching-paid-version.html

[Sard]

Thanks for the response!!

I should have spent a little more time looking through the forums before posting.

With regard to the mail client I have tried Zimbra Desktop and might look again when it's a completed but for now I guess we will stick with Thunderbird and just have localised contacts.

I may even re consider and just go ahead and purchase the lowest entry Network edition as the exchange rate is pretty good at least for this year.

Thanks again

Sard

[mmorse]

You can always fire off an email to sales@zimbra.com, but probably the best explanation that I have seen about the reply that you will probably get:

Guys-

We are simply not big enough to support very small businesses/individual users.

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.

[mmorse]

Of course that brings up the 'no support edition' idea discussed more recently, but it still goes against the old adage that almost any business major will tell you:

Once a customer pays $ at any time for a product, people will complain & gripe when they have issues.
And that only makes for bad PR overall, regardless if the retort is "you specifically on purpose didn't purchase support"

-It's just one of those in 'set in stone' human quirks/reactions; in time of need we look to those who know more about it/provided it to us in the first place to bail us out, regardless of obligations.

In an age of companies selling 3 year support contracts, & then not even being able to provide tech support/or replacement just one year down the line; Zimbra's goal is to bring a new level of customer service for the small end-user into play with the forums.
Being a moderator in 4+ other forums in major industries where employees never visit/help out...I clearly see where other companies have lost sight of what counts.

+ Considering starting at $600-800 (not talking the mobile options/volume discounts/significant discount for non-profit organizations) for a well put together mail server package, something that everyone uses all day long, is nothing compared to Adobe's $1.5k+ for some of the Photoshop CS versions, which are only for one user. Zimbra's choice to open source 80% of their software for the little guys to use is amazing. I know your a linux user but you just don't see a company like Microsoft do that. And guess what? If it was possible to build a windows port (postfix doesn't have a windows version currently) you would still get the source to ZCS!