Today Netenberg send an email out to their customers they are going to raise their prices for their Fantastico product.

As we are already are not very much impressed with their update policy for years, and other (in our eyes better products) are on the market; it makes me wonder if they want to stop with this product all together. Is this an Exit strategy or are planning a comeback with a better product ?

I am truly wondering what others do think of this change in pricing considering their update strategy and not providing any new ideas in their products for the past years, and other products on the market?

Here is part of the announcement;


1) New Fantastico De Luxe pricing:

Our prices have remained stable for the past 4 years, but as the
world changes currencies lose value and operating costs go up. So we
are forced to restructure our pricing. Starting immediately, we no
longer offer any "additional license" discounts. Instead, we are
offering attractive multiple licenses packs.

Fantastico De Luxe is now offered at the following prices:

Fantastico De Luxe

- annual single-server license for the first year: $90, annual
renewal fee $30

- 4 annual licenses pack for the first year: $240, annual renewal fee
$120 ($30 per license)

- 10 annual licenses pack for the first year: $420, annual renewal
fee $300 ($30 per license)

- 20 annual licenses pack: $600, annual renewal fee $500 ($25 per
license)

- Fantastico Eternal License: $299, no renewal fees, free life-long
updates and support

Fantastico De Luxe for VPS servers

- annual single VPS license for the first year: 45$, annual renewal
fee $25

- 4 VPS annual licenses pack for the first year: $120, annual renewal
fee $100 ($25 per license)

- 10 VPS annual licenses pack for the first year: $240, annual
renewal fee $250 ($20 per license)

- 20 VPS annual licenses pack: $420, annual renewal fee $400 ($20 per
license)

For pricing on quantities of 200 licenses or more, please contact
<snipped>.

All current licenses will have one more renewal at the current rate.
The new renewal prices will be effective for renewals on September 2,
2010 or later (which is 1 year from now).

We moved onto Installatron, so far it was a good move.

We moved onto Installatron, so far it was a good move.

We did as well; but having Fantastico still there for older customers, however this may change our thoughts on this.

Personally the lack of updates and new scripts in fantastico and the promised new version (for over 2 years already) made us switch to Installatron already for our new servers.

I may understand why someone needs to raise prices if they deliver something new and better, or do this for new customers, but don't put your existing customers for a choice even if this is not before 2010; it just gives the current clientele time to switch over to a competitor with enough time to prepare.

As Installatron can import any fantastico installed scripts, this is probably what we are going to advise our older fantastico users.

Well, if our DC will increase it for us, we will then cancel it and move to much cheaper....

Clients do not always use fantastico anyway, so it is not that significant :-)

Fantastico should rethink when they have competitors like Installatron and few others.

I have been planning to move to Installatron or Softaculous, seems time for action.

They may believe they are justified in making this move because they are the most popular, most recognized, and most requested script installer, but if they truly were gaging their competition, they would be marrying this increase in price with a new and improved product. That way people would think they were getting value for their money. However, as fantastico has been static for the past few years, I see no reason to continue to use such software when there a much better alternatives out there. We currently have a few servers with Installatron and we will just convert the remainder to Installatron, too.

Fantastico should find some other ways may be by adding some new features, increasing price because of low currency value or recession etc does not justify :(

That's to bad, these prices are unfortunately above the equilibrium price that hosting providers are willing pay, especially when there are other products out there.

***RIP*** Fantastico ***RIP***

This doesn't seem like the best of ideas considering the other products out there and the fact that it takes Fantastico an age to release software updates. We had already started switching over to Installatron, looks like we might have to rethink keeping Fantastico for the older customers too :(

I don't think it was a very good decision for them to do this. We moved away from them ages ago and I am glad that we chose to, especially when reading things like this.

I was never particularly impressed with Fantastico because their scripts were never kept up to date. As a result of the outdated scripts I never offered it to my clients... I instead offered to install certain scripts myself because they can be updated more easily in the future.

Installatron is looking tempting though as time goes on..

We moved onto Installatron, so far it was a good move.

same here, moved onto installatron about 9 months ago (it's been longer than it seems)

and I agree that this wasn't a good move by fantastico - they already have people leaving them, and now they are just providing another reason for people to move away :( I've used them for years, don't want to see them going down though.

We stopped offering Fantastico months ago due to their seemingly inability to properly update the scripts.

Installatron is a much better option :)

We are in the process of switching from Fantastico to Softaculous.

We did as well; but having Fantastico still there for older customers, however this may change our thoughts on this.

Personally the lack of updates and new scripts in fantastico and the promised new version (for over 2 years already) made us switch to Installatron already for our new servers.

I may understand why someone needs to raise prices if they deliver something new and better, or do this for new customers, but don't put your existing customers for a choice even if this is not before 2010; it just gives the current clientele time to switch over to a competitor with enough time to prepare.

As Installatron can import any fantastico installed scripts, this is probably what we are going to advise our older fantastico users.

Just send them out some advanced warning ahead of time (if you can do it specifically to those using fantastico that'd be good).Then by the time you actually pull the plug on it they'll not feel too upset. I (and most customers) don't like finding out the day of the switch. :)

Just send them out some advanced warning ahead of time (if you can do it specifically to those using fantastico that'd be good).Then by the time you actually pull the plug on it they'll not feel too upset. I (and most customers) don't like finding out the day of the switch. :)

Thank you for the advise, but that is how we do things over here anyways :)

Fantastico is used by only a subset of users and its easy to spot which ones are (or at least did use it to install a script).

If it would upset any customer they may have a choice to move to a server with fantastico and we keep 1 license just for that. Although we will try to avoid the last; it is not like the licenses are that expensive, just missing the added value to pay more for the same product.