Hello Tony, I've posted on here once before and have let everyone else do the questioning and answering, but this thread sparked my interest, for a negative reason. First, it's great Tucows/OpenSRS is expanding into services of low-competition and high market demand, where RSP's can gain an upper hand. I love the OpenSRS system and the ability of the OpenSRS team to pump out new releases with new functionality, and still be as responsive as they are. But, and this is a big BUT, the way I see it, these new Tucow's Secure Web Certificates will cost RSP's $99 USD, and this is a point of contention. I realize(and probably don't see the grand picture) the cost of starting up, funding, supporting and maintaining a new initiative like certs, but I just have to say, $99 is $50 more than what I would have liked(And yes, I'm probably insane for thinking anyone could get it that low). One of the main reasons I joined Opensrs for domains, was so that I could get in on the bottom floor, to be my own registrar, and to have permanent, relatively low-priced domains. With the certs initiative, the low-cost factor is blown to smithereens[sic]. I've been wanting OpenSRS to get into the cert business since I started selling domains through them and I'm glad they're finally in the business, but I now find myself questioning whether I will even use the service. What I'd like to know is, how can OpenSRS have a wholesale cost which is higher than the current cheapest competitors(equifaxsecure.com, at least the last time I checked) resale cost? What we're looking at here, is not an initiative to break the monopoly of Verisign, but rather a land grab for a piece of the certificate pie. The OpenSRS Domain Reselling program helped the industry significantly, increasing competition ten-fold and allowing for the proliferation of many, many more inexpensive locations to purchase domains. I feel the Certificate Program, now being launched, is not at all helping the cert industry come down to a non-monopolistic level, rather it's playing into the cert markets wishes, still with no inexpensive alternative available. As an aside, during one of Equifax's discount specials, I believe I purchased my current cert for approx. $50 USD. I was hoping for something in that price range. --- Remember to QUOTE the entire message you are replying to. --- Best regards, I-Dotter.com mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------------- Wednesday, January 10, 2001, 11:28:10 PM, you wrote: T> Excellent. Here's a few questions: T> What is the suggested retail price? T> How will the Tucows certs compare to the Equifax offering technology-wise? T> Will there be a volumne discount? T> Equifax certs retail for less than $99 but they don't seem to have a T> streamlined system T> for ordering or a private-label program which would make the Tucows $99 T> wholesale price more T> attractive to us even if it is higher. T> Tony T> -----Original Message----- T> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Darryl Green T> Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2001 9:05 PM T> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T> Subject: RE: Tucows Certs (and mea Culpa from Tucows Certificates T> Product Management) T> Ladies and Gentlemen: T> By the last week of January/first week of February we will have 128-bit ssl T> web certificates available for resale. The wholesale price of the T> certificates will be $99 (as per the ad in the ISP Buyer's Guide). We will T> be following the same basic distribution principles as exist for domain T> names. You will be able to private label the sale of the web certificates if T> you so desire and you will own the relationship with the customer. The T> certificates themselves will be supplied be Entrust Technologies and have T> 99% browser recognition. The Web Certificate purchase functionality will be T> built into the client code and the Reseller Web Interface. T> You have been telling us for a while (in no small measure from this T> discuss-list) that you would like us to offer a web-certificate product. We T> have continually been monitoring these discussions and take to heart the T> opinions you express. I actually hope that this e-mail is the beginning of T> an ongoing dialogue between myself, Product Manager for Security Services, T> and all of our resellers. Personally, I would like to use this forum to T> dialogue on strategies, upgrades and enhancements but for competitive T> reasons (i.e. you never know who's listening) I am likely to do more T> listening than talking. None the less -- please keep letting me know what T> you think about this offering and let me know what else you would like to T> see in terms of new products and/or upgrades to our existing offering and, T> to the extent prudent, I will keep letting you know we are up to T> (-promise-). T> Mea Culpa: T> I am rather embarrassed by the fact that our reseller community is learning T> of our plans through the media as opposed to from us directly. Our marketing T> efforts got out in front of our internal sales and development efforts and T> much like Jimmy Buffet after a few Tequila Slammers I have to own up to the T> fact that "it's my own damn fault". We are working non-stop to rectify the T> situation. T> Our sales staff have been trained and are ready to start answering your T> questions about our web certificates. The web site should be up tomorrow T> (Thursday Jan 11 -- late in the day) and will contain greater detail about T> the offering. T> So -- my apologies. T> Keep letting me know what you think and let me know if you have any other T> questions. T> Darryl Green T> Product Manager, Security Services T> Tucows Inc. >> -----Original Message----- >> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Tony >> Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2001 5:34 PM >> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> Subject: Tucows Certs >> >> >> http://certs.tucows.com/ >> >> I got the impression from the full page ad in Boardwatch's ISP >> Buyers guide >> that >> this service was available now. >> >> Any idea of when the rollout will be and what the RSP discount will be? >> >> >> >> >> >>
