Connector Licensing

[nepenthe]

Sorry to be a pain and ask again, but is there any changes to the way Zimbra licensing works?

Currently its a dead heat between Scalix and Zimbra as to what we install here (great article on comparison here: http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/8722/)

At my work though we are going to need about 40 Outlook Connectors and 1000 web-only accounts. That means we would need the Network Edition at $28/user for 1040 users = $28,000 for 40 people to have Outlook Connectors.
This is not a viable solution.

From what I understand I wouln't be able to get the 'Small Business' version as this would only give me 50 Outlook Connectors and NO web accounts.

Scalix on the other hand gives out 25 free licenses on their 'Community Edition' then charges $60/user after this... but it appears that their 'Community Edition' is not as functional...

Its a NIGHTMARE deciding what to do!

If Zimbra could offer their Connector in batches of 10 to the 'free' edition this would be ideal - even if you charge $28 or more and don't give server/incident support.. i'm sure people would pay for it..

Anyways, thanks for the the great product

[MarkSBurgunder]

If Zimbra could offer their Connector in batches of 10 to the 'free' edition this would be ideal - even if you charge $28 or more and don't give server/incident support.. i'm sure people would pay for it..

I for one would certainly be interested and would understand if there was only limited support for the connectors.

I am quite happy with the Open Source Edition and the amount of support included with that. Nevertheless I do have a small number of users that would really benefit from having access to the Outlook connector. Unfortunatley though our budget does not allow purchasing the Network edition.

It would be much easier to sell a sya $300 dollar purchase for 5-10 Outlook connectors to management than it currently is to sell a $1450 purchase of Zimbra small business edition "just" to get access to the outlook connectors.

Cheers
Mark

[KevinH]

First off we have covered this(many times), please search. We do not have plans today to sell the connector stand-alone. In the future we may revisit that decision, and we'll be sure to announce it. So there's no need to post/re-post every couple weeks.

Let me elaborate just a little. The Network Edition is not just about Outlook connectors. It's about supporting the future development of Zimbra. It's about the support here on the community forums. It's about all the magic in the server which handles, tags, folders, conversations and that lightning fast search. It's about the countless hours that were spent in a JavaScript debugger getting all 130,000+ lines of JavaScript aligned for that WOW factor you've all experienced. It's about native HSM, hot backup, single mailbox restore, delegated domain admin, attachment indexing, clustering, and yes it's about Outlook sync. It's also about all the new features folks here are hard at work on. In part that's why it's called a Network. It's more than just support or some additional features, it's about the greater good that being part of a *Network* can achieve.

[robchoi]

nepenthe, one possiblilty I know is to split your users into Network Ed. and OS Ed.

Have a look at the thread.
Single domain spanning both editions

[jomabrown45]

We are comparing Zimbra to some alternatives. It's not clear from the web site whether the Network edition price of $28 per user per year provides a perpetual license that continues after the year expires or whether our right to use Zimbra expires when the year is over (like a subscription service). You'd think it was the former since we are running the software on our server. I tried finding a license agreement that explains this but didn't see one (I do see the open source license agreements but those are separate). Anyone know for sure? Thx.

[KevinH]

We are comparing Zimbra to some alternatives. It's not clear from the web site whether the Network edition price of $28 per user per year provides a perpetual license that continues after the year expires or whether our right to use Zimbra expires when the year is over (like a subscription service). You'd think it was the former since we are running the software on our server. I tried finding a license agreement that explains this but didn't see one (I do see the open source license agreements but those are separate). Anyone know for sure? Thx.

It's the later. The Network Edition is a subscription.

[juanfermin]

First off we have covered this(many times), please search. We do not have plans today to sell the connector stand-alone. In the future we may revisit that decision, and we'll be sure to announce it. So there's no need to post/re-post every couple weeks.

Let me elaborate just a little. The Network Edition is not just about Outlook connectors. It's about supporting the future development of Zimbra. It's about the support here on the community forums. It's about all the magic in the server which handles, tags, folders, conversations and that lightning fast search. It's about the countless hours that were spent in a JavaScript debugger getting all 130,000+ lines of JavaScript aligned for that WOW factor you've all experienced. It's about native HSM, hot backup, single mailbox restore, delegated domain admin, attachment indexing, clustering, and yes it's about Outlook sync. It's also about all the new features folks here are hard at work on. In part that's why it's called a Network. It's more than just support or some additional features, it's about the greater good that being part of a *Network* can achieve.

We understand your need to make cash, but at the same time, you guys are leaving out a HUGE chunk of the market in the cold.

I deal with a lot of small businesses, that I guess you guys would consider "Micro Businesses". Several of my clients have anywhere from 3 to 15 users, and for them, even your "Small Business Edition" sounds like it was made for a big business, they just don't have 25 users. Do you know how hard it is to convince the guy that went from 4 users to 7 users to purchase a 25 user license? They're just not interested, to them, you don't "care" about small businesses, you only want the big guys. To him, he paid less than $1000.00 for his MS SBS with Exchange, and he just wants another 2 licenses for Exchange and he's done. A 5 pack upgrade for this guy is only about $600.00, so when you start talking about getting a 25 user license, he'll shut you down right away.

You guys should definitlly consider coming out with a 5, 10 and 20 pack license for the smaller users, obviously at a slightly higher per user price. I'm fairly certain that a large portion of your community users would definitely purchase some of these packs and bring you a ton of additional revenue.

If you're thinking that the reason you don't want to do it is because of the higher support costs associated with dealing with smaller busineses that don't have a full time onsite tech, then you should at least offer it via a VAR agreement of some sort, or at least as an unsupported version, perhaps limited to shops of no more than 10 or so.