Hi Don, Well, hard to argue that we have not been responsive in the past 1-2 years and we're feeling it now. That's something we are working to change throughout our entire company (PM, Tech Supp, Dev, etc.).
ISP's are a serious market for us. Our current ISP/EDU offering is our single most popular offer but there's still plenty of room for improvement. The market has asked for ISP/EDU at user tiers other than UNL and that is coming in a month - of course with lower prices. We've also heard lots of request for our ISP/EDU product to be able to setup per domain settings for AV, AS and other things and those make perfect sense and should start working their way into the product next year. I do want to reiterate that we're listening. We're reintroducing IMail standalone, breaking down the ISP sku to user levels (which means lower pricing for all but one tier) and lowering the pricing for the 250 and up for 3 of the product lines (ICS Prem, ICS Stan and IMail Secure). We expect the lower pricing to be okay (no surprise) but fully understand that there will be pushback on the price increases for the highest user tier - that seems to be the main pain point that I'm hearing. We're not trying to mislead anyone in sharing some of the direction we are heading with the product or alternate ways to purchase the product. Expect us to be honest and direct with our pricng and packaging, regardless of what transpired over the past year. Bye for now, kg -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Don Brown Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2005 10:24 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [IMail Forum] Web Messaging... Coming Soon, Real Soon... I recommend that you revisit the pricing now, before y'all go about shooting yourself in the foot with a howitzer again, as you did with the ICS price gouge. You've already ran off number of ISPs, who continued to support IPswitch in spite of their non-responsiveness when it came to keeping Imail reasonably current with competition. Soon, it won't matter what you charge, since you will have already alienated the ISP market beyond repair. You may not be able to charge enough to offset that, either. So, best think long and hard about it, in my opinion, anyway. Nice try with all the "projected" enhancements, but most of what you said is already available to us with utilities that other people have written over the years because IPswitch wasn't responsive. The rest is cake dressing or of limited value, if any, to most ISP's. Nice try also with the suggestion to buy a "bargain basement" SA, to beat the increase. That just puts a band aid on a skull fracture. Our SA expires in October 2006 and we'll have moved to a more affordable and feature rich platform long before that, if this proves to be another price gouge. That, you can take to the bank. Thanks, Tuesday, November 1, 2005, 8:30:32 AM, Kevin Gillis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: KG> Hi Don and William, KG> Fair comments and can understand the concern. KG> The pricing is going to be lower in some cases, higher in other, than the KG> current $695. KG> As before, Ipswitch-direct can not do discounts beyond the 10% for KG> Education. However, our resellers will usually offer the best price as they KG> have latitude to discount by 10, 20 even 30%. My direct sales folks may not KG> like this but, for example, online today an IMail Professional SA can be KG> purchased for under $500... KG> http://ostg.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=1246664/ KG> So hunting around, the new "street/actual" pricing for the bottom 3 tiers KG> will be a lower than today's $695 and higher for the top 2 tiers. And it's KG> quite alright to purchase the current IMail Pro SA for $695 (or see link KG> above for better pricing) and you will receive all updates for 12 months at KG> which time you would pay the new UNL price. KG> We have a lot of new features coming in the IMail 2006 roadmap (not final KG> but includes an overhauled web calendaring and scheduling, password rules KG> including auto expiring passwords, graphical/statistical reporting (e.g. top KG> senders/receivers by domain, reports/analysis on mailboxes, etc), archiving, KG> etc.) and for those who are willing to give us a shot, the best approach, KG> for those in the higher tiers, is to purchase an IMail Pro SA today for $695 KG> and then you'll get the new updates coming next year. Again, not final, but KG> we currently have at least 2 updates scheduled for 2006. >>From the product manager perspective, if the market can't bear the new KG> pricing, it makes perfect business sense for us to revisit! KG> bye for now, KG> kg KG> -----Original Message----- KG> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] KG> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Don Brown KG> Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2005 9:09 AM KG> To: [email protected] KG> Subject: Re: [IMail Forum] Web Messaging... Coming Soon, Real Soon... KG> I smell a price increase for current "Unlimited" Imail customers in KG> Kevin's post, quoted below. We just had an price increase as a result KG> of the ICS fiasco which ran off several Imail customers. I sure hope KG> they don't step in it again and run more of us off to other KG> alternatives. KG> "Monday, October 31, 2005, 8:13:02 PM, Kevin Gillis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> KG> wrote: KG> Also note that IMail Secure will be offered at 5 user levels, KG> whereas today, it's only offered as Unlimited. KG> Price points will be announced in a month (can't really disclose KG> publicly until resellers have been notified) but the basic KG> philosophy is to allow customers to more accurately pay for what KG> they are using versus having all customer paying for unlimited KG> users and domains." KG> Tuesday, November 1, 2005, 7:24:38 AM, Matrosity Hosting KG> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: MH>> I may have overlooked an email but if we have an active service MH>> agreement then we should be entitled to whatever version of the software MH>> we are licensed for. MH>> Bill MH>> Bruce Barnes wrote: >>>Bill, >>> >>>I hope you are going to consider those of us who paid for, and have kept KG> up >>>our service agreements for, unlimited licenses when you create your new >>>pricing structure! >>> >>>If Ipswitch causes those of us who have been long-time customers, with >>>unlimited licensed versions, to fork over significantly more money to keep >>>the unlimited licensing, that will cause a whole new set of problems for KG> us >>>and cause us to start re-thinking all of those other companies who's >>>products we downloaded evaluation versions of and have continued to KG> monitor >>>during the last year and a half. >>> >>>Bruce Barnes >>>ChicagoNetTech Inc >>>Chicago IL >>> >>> >>>To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html >>>List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ >>>Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/ >>> >>> >>> >>> MH>> To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html MH>> List Archive: MH>> http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ MH>> Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/ KG> ---- KG> Don Brown - Dallas, Texas USA Internet Concepts, Inc. KG> [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.inetconcepts.net KG> (972) 788-2364 Fax: (972) 788-5049 KG> ---- KG> To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html KG> List Archive: KG> http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ KG> Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/ KG> To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html KG> List Archive: KG> http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ KG> Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/ ---- Don Brown - Dallas, Texas USA Internet Concepts, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.inetconcepts.net (972) 788-2364 Fax: (972) 788-5049 ---- To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/ To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/
