Control panels dont come cheap.. The pricing scheme I hate the most for control panels is a monthly fee. I think it is crazy to pay a monthly fee to use a peice of software such as a control panel. Now Microsoft makes Windows, they dont charge a monthly fee to use Windows 2000 Advanced Server. I just wanted to know how much others would be willing to pay for a simple control panel similar to Cobalt. Personally, I think a one time fee of $100 per server seems reasonable.

I dont mind paying for my control panel and paying well. A one time fee of $600 for 300 licenses is just fine by me although I'd actually prefer smaller licenses (say 100 for $300 or so).

Asking for anything less means asking for trouble. Control panels are complex scripts (if done right) that need to be secure & reliable. I dont expect a company to give theirs out for $100, thats not enough to pay for costs & growth unless you see a ton of copies.

monthly fees are fine I guess.. not ceiling high monthly fees...

think about how much the people behind Cpanel is earning...
but i seriously think... maybe such a fee structure...

Minimum of 5 licenses - $50 each (so every month guaranteed income of $250 regardless if the owner only has 2 or 5 servers)
and increment along that lines... seems more worth investing... and bigger amount leads to neg. fee structures... :)

I guess the monthly 'rental' fee for a control panel is acceptable if the company keeps up to date with security patches and you are allowed to upgrade to the latest version for free. Is this how it's done already ? I'm unfamilar with this as I don't currently rent a control panel program but if I were to this is what I'd *expect* for my good money.

You see, these control panel makers charge a monthly fee because a control panel is not a thing which sells like 'hot cakes'. So they need recurring profit from goin out of business ;)

I think yearly fee's and a setup fee would be much better. Something like $99/year :)

Originally posted by vselvara
Personally, I think a one time fee of $100 per server seems reasonable.

Of course you think that's reasonable because you want to profit from it and don't want to pay out a lot of money. But would u feel the same way if you had a year in development... thousands of dollars in costs plus what else to bring a GOOD platform to market? No... because if you had the skills to create one and realized how much time and effort is involved then you wouldn't be thinking a one time fee of $100 is enough... especially if you were selling it to someone who would PROFIT from your control panel for the following years for FREE.

Actually i think some control panel's are way too over priced :(
I have some free time comming up, in that i will be creating a win2k control panel with all possible features. It will support 50 clients for free, any additional clients will be $50 / set of 50 clients / year. how's that for pricing? :)

I am having a commercial cp developed that I will be offering on the WHT around 3 months later - beta out in 2 months.

I can tell you personally, that such pricing will drive EVERY SINGLE cp developer out of business.

I mean, come on - you want great support time (of under 4 hours if possible), fast bug fixing, free updates, patches out every other day - all for just $100 one-off?

GET REAL! No one, and I mean no one - can give you a great cp, or even an average one at that price - it's just making no business sense at all! :rolleyes:

Hope I'm not breaking the rules here by saying this, but when my cp comes out, it'll be on a monthly fee basis so I can give you guys free updates, patches and great support. If you want a one-off fee like Ensim and Plesk, you've got to pay for the support fees - which is the real cost of developing a cp. So when you want to complain about the pricing, just go for a free cp like freevsd.org - it's free, and you can do whatever you want with it - the support that you get is reasonable from them, or so I've heard.

Hope I clear some things up. It's not a flame, and definitely not directed at anyone in partiular.:)

Like I said before, I dont mind paying and paying well for my panel, its a core part of the site and shouldnt be free, the server isnt and neither is the other applicaitons I install to make money.

However, I for one dispise the monthly system. When I buy a product, I buy the product with its current features and assume the bugs will be fixed, minor tweaks will be made but little more. The idea of paying every month for as long as I do hosting and the idea of accepting price rvisions or loosing my entire hosting solution simply does not seem logical. A cp development site could easily change their prices at any time and drag me along for the ride (or i'd have to convert all the users away which is even worse).... no thanks

Well, like I said - if all cp developers were to go with the one-off fee structure, the real cost is the support for the users, so that's why you see Ensim and Plesk charging for support.

A monthly fee allows the support to be offered to everyone without any limits and makes updated versions faster to produce. I mean, even the best cp in the world must undergo changes from time to time in order to keep in pace with the ever-growing Internet, right?

Just my 2cents. ;)

Yes and no. When you sell a single-sale item the developer is certainly going to have far less recurring revenue, which is what they want (i develop too so I know why you’d want this). The user on the other hand normally gets a better product.

For example, take plesk, ensim and cpanel. While cpanel is by far the most gui/ user friendly/eye candy, it has numerous bugs; parts of it are rather complicated and limited. However, since users pay far less upfront, they are still likely to buy it. Plesk and ensim however must prove themselves to be solid products as they are one-shot buys that only make more money if their users really like them and buy more.

When you offer something for a single fee it has to sell it self, its got to be complete and feature rich. If it is, sales are made, if not, no one shows interest. With a monthly-free script, the developer makes more money by releasing a buggy product, by leaving features out and changing this as they go. After all, if it was a complete script, people would object to the monthly fee and argue that they weren’t getting anything more.

Of course form the developer side its a lot easier to make a profit if you have a constant flow of monthly revenue and hits (should) encourage you to code and develop the product more. Still... in the end, 100 a month x 12 months is far more than the 300 - 900 plesk and ensim charge for their various licenses. Still, for many people, upfront payment simply isn’t an option, especially if they’re just starting out or expanding at minimum cost.


(just a thought...)

Hee, okay Ted - I get your point. :D

Nope no buggy products from my end - I'm going to release it to a few beta testers and get as many bugs fixed as possible before it goes live.

Think of it this way - buying a $300-$1000 cp for a startup is a large bit to have to let go of. For them, they are actually able to do better in their first year with monthly-fee billing. Besides, the eye-candy that comes with the Cpanel tends to attract more end users than the clean, but powerful Plesk - people go for colours!

I should know - I did Art and Craft for my 'O' levels.

Man, if I've got the photo of my batik painting piece and my other friend's, you'll get a good idea of why colours tend to be more appealing, and also, why we both got our 'A's for the batik pieces ;)