Solus.io decides to burn the market down with new pricing

Francisco

https://solus.io/prices/

At $6.00/month per core you're talking $48.00/month for a 8c/16t processor.

For comparison, OnApp is $12.00/month per core and normal SolusVM is $10.00/month per node no matter the configuration.

While there's no mention of what their plans are for SolusVM v1, common opinion is they get to feature parity (basically supporting OpenVZ) and then sunsetting it.

Francisco

Neoon

They likely force you to migrate after some time and drop the support.

Francisco

@Neoon said:
They likely force you to migrate after some time and drop the support.

I figure that or just a cross the board ramp on SVM1 licenses.

I just don't see that many providers moving to a product like Solus.IO, especially anyone in this market.

Francisco

Lee

So, get everyone in, sunset SolusVM, increase to $10+ per month, per core?

But again, depends on the final feature set as to whether it has a value at that price point. But ultimately what are you going to do, if there is no other real option.

Francisco

@Lee said:
So, get everyone in, sunset SolusVM, increase to $10+ per month, per core?

But again, depends on the final feature set as to whether it has a value at that price point. But ultimately what are you going to do, if there is no other real option.

I suspect they'll leave SVM1 alone but 2x-3x the price on all licenses.

Francisco

Lee

@Francisco said: I suspect they'll leave SVM1 alone but 2x-3x the price on all licenses.

Will be interesting to see how it plays out, I can't see them making it that easy even if SVM1 remains, more like near parity so it leaves no option but to convert, it's all about the money now after all.

seriesn

Somewhere at Oakley's office,

qps

WHMCS is next.

Neoon

@qps said:
WHMCS is next.

Wait for it, they gonna charge for each account + service.

willie

Why does anyone use this stuff? Do the existing alternatives have significant deficiencies? I understand how cpanel has a crapton of features, but whmcs and solus don't seem that complicated.

Lee

@willie said: whmcs and solus don't seem that complicated

Indeed, that is why there are so many alternatives out there.

seriesn

@willie said:
Why does anyone use this stuff? Do the existing alternatives have significant deficiencies? I understand how cpanel has a crapton of features, but whmcs and solus don't seem that complicated.

Whmcs is pretty solid when it comes to most of the required functionalities and custom mod.

No one uses ClientExec. Blesta is still a baby.

Solus, idk why anyone would not switch to virtualizor....

WSS

The only reason any of the shit exists because it's so easy for clients to move between them - same as cPanel. Plesk is a much better product, but it's not as easy for clients to use after used to cPanel.

Nick_A

Yikes

SMARTHOST

That would be like a 8x-12x price increase for decent dual cpu nodes.
Too high of an increase for most low end providers to absorb, so they will hemorrhage clients if they force it.
No different outcome than CPanel situation was though...they loose a lot of clients, but the ones that stay and pay the hefty price increase will end up raising their revenue overall, and they will have less support load on top of that to handle.
That screws over alot of the clients that got Solus where it is today, but the new owners of course don't give a damn about that.

I'm still hoping they keep SolusVM going, at much lower/reasonable pricing, and just let it die a slow death, instead of forcing an upgrade. That might go a long way to building/retaining clients, making things a bit less painful. We won't pay the 8x-12x increase ourselves, not gonna happen, as it is cheaper just for us to hire our own full programmer at that point. Obviously there are other solutions on the market, but who's to say they aren't the next acquisition target... ;-(

~ SMARTHOST

jarland

Not as bad as I was expecting. If you're licensing software and don't have significant margins to be able to eat it, hopefully you've already been working toward Independence for some time now. We've all known these products were only going up.

Proxmox licensing looking a little closer to sane for the low end?

Francisco

@SMARTHOST said: I'm still hoping they keep SolusVM going, at much lower/reasonable pricing, and just let it die a slow death, instead of forcing an upgrade.

I'm assuming they've spent a lot of time and money to get Solus.IO going.

I suspect SVM1 will go up 2x+ in cost for the legacy stuff.

Francisco

AK_KWH

Next virtualizor wait for it also

Harambe

@jarland said: Proxmox licensing looking a little closer to sane for the low end?

Free version is basically as-good as the paid, but it's not very end user-friendly. Licensing just gets you the 'enterprise' stable repo, but you can get the same result by holding back on the free updates a bit.

Apparently all of the WHMCS integrations, etc are garbage though.

WSS

ModulesGarden is basically paying to shit in your own face, and that's when it actually fucking works.

Francisco

@AK_KWH said:
Next virtualizor wait for it also

There's no reason for them not to increase to similar pricing to SVM1. Again, their team is fairly small and I don't think they want to have to hire a massive support team to take all of the SVM1 refugees.

@Harambe said:

@jarland said: Proxmox licensing looking a little closer to sane for the low end?

Free version is basically as-good as the paid, but it's not very end user-friendly. Licensing just gets you the 'enterprise' stable repo, but you can get the same result by holding back on the free updates a bit.

Apparently all of the WHMCS integrations, etc are garbage though.

There's only 2 public modules and they're...ugh. I've helped a few friends with both and they're just terrible.

I helped one friend try to get the Modulegardens one to work and it simply refused.

Francisco

Nyr

Fleio seems like an interesting alternative, although of course it is not a drop-in replacement. Owned by a private company with very low chances of being acquired (the IntoVPS guys). Haven't checked it out, but should be a decent piece of software.

In other slightly interesting news... Oakley Capital seems to be using fake reviews in Google to counteract their very negative reputation after the cPanel fiasco.

jarland

@Nyr said:
Fleio seems like an interesting alternative, although of course it is not a drop-in replacement. Owned by a private company with very low chances of being acquired (the IntoVPS guys). Haven't checked it out, but should be a decent piece of software.

In other slightly interesting news... Oakley Capital seems to be using fake reviews in Google to counteract their very negative reputation after the cPanel fiasco.

I think Fleio is what @Nick_A is using. It's good stuff.

The perfect panel is sitting right over at lunanode, almost feels a shame the hardware is mediocre and prices low. Like a diamond in the rough. Prep that bad boy for licensing and watch people throw money at it.

ionswitch_stan

Came for the news... stayed for the premium commentary..

ModulesGarden is basically paying to shit in your own face

aveline

LOL.

Time to move on.

InceptionHosting

If $6 p/month per core is what gets me to a Vultr/hetzner cloud style end user experience I am ok with that.

If $6 per core is a rewritten v1 then no thanks, I already know that this is not the plan/case but you never know what the end product will actually look like.

I don’t think they will touch v1 pricing and I don’t think they will even bother with a v1 migration path, it will be 2 separate offerings, one for budget and one for enhanced.

seanho

As an end user, I find lobster (LunaNode's panel) a beauty to use. I don't know about WHMCS integration or monthly/annual billing, though. https://github.com/LunaNode/lobster

willie

Does anyone really have to run solus on more than a single core? Is it that slow, and have they found a way to cash in on it being slow?

SMARTHOST

@willie said:
Does anyone really have to run solus on more than a single core? Is it that slow, and have they found a way to cash in on it being slow?

The licensing cost refers to the VPS nodes, not the management interface server.
.

Jord

We all know they will touch SolusVM 1.x pricing, it's just what they do. Time for the investors to get their money back.

willie

@SMARTHOST said: The licensing cost refers to the VPS nodes, not the management interface server.

Wait what? You want to host VM's on an 8 core box which is maybe $50/month these days and they want another $48 for solus? Yeah ok, not gonna work. People complain about Virtualizor but there have to be more alternatives out there.

debaser

So, basically this would mean a $1-$1.50 price hike per user. High but not so insane that the vast majority of providers wouldn’t do it. And that’s how they get you.

Lee

@AnthonySmith said: If $6 p/month per core is what gets me to a Vultr/hetzner cloud style end user experience I am ok with that.

This, whilst everyone is complaining about the price, the opportunities are overlooked. The segment that providers (like you) who predominantly operate in the lower end of the market are missing out on due to control panel functionality is a significant one.

Those that want backups, snapshots, SSH key integration, install Worpdress instantly and so on. All that Vultr/DO/Hetzner type functionality. It's a huge opportunity if the software lives up to the promises.

Ympker

@seanho said:
As an end user, I find lobster (LunaNode's panel) a beauty to use. I don't know about WHMCS integration or monthly/annual billing, though. https://github.com/LunaNode/lobster

LunaNode's panel is superb imho.

debaser

The only thing that I’m afraid of as an end user is that overselling will increase. More users per core could become the new revenue model due to this pricing.

willie

@Lee said: Those that want backups, snapshots, SSH key integration, install Worpdress instantly and so on. All that Vultr/DO/Hetzner type functionality. It's a huge opportunity if the software lives up to the promises.

Solus is more for starting and stopping VM's and that sort of thing. You're thinking of cpanel. There are some reasnable alternatives to cpanel, like DirectAdmin (proprietary) and VestaCP (free).

joepie91

Well, this was inevitable.

Unfortunately CVM is nowhere near done either, considering the lack of funding (-> time) over the years...

Lee

@willie said: You're thinking of cpanel.

No, I'm not.

InceptionHosting

@Lee said:

@AnthonySmith said: If $6 p/month per core is what gets me to a Vultr/hetzner cloud style end user experience I am ok with that.

This, whilst everyone is complaining about the price, the opportunities are overlooked. The segment that providers (like you) who predominantly operate in the lower end of the market are missing out on due to control panel functionality is a significant one.

Those that want backups, snapshots, SSH key integration, install Worpdress instantly and so on. All that Vultr/DO/Hetzner type functionality. It's a huge opportunity if the software lives up to the promises.

Indeed, I am excited to see what plesk ultimately include in .io that adds value to customers, I just hope as it expands it becomes a modular licensing module like $6 p/core baseline, $10 for SAN/cluster features etc , extra €2 p/core for their admittedly market leader in wordpress automation, if they add in things like the cloudflare api for automation of railgun for VM's then it will make the competition seem in the dark ages.

It really does have to be about added value for me though, I am genuinely excited to see what it ultimately looks like.

I think it is very important that people do not just see this as a solusvm price hike, its a new product, maybe even keeping the "solus" name was a mistake to keep the differentiation but i am no marketing pro.

I would look at it more like a new opportunity and an optional one, if they do decide to dump v1 which I seriously doubt, then it will create a HUGE gap that will be filled because the money will suddenly be there with a ready made customer base for someone else and they must know that, even if that did not happen, as much as many of us dont like virtualizor, it is a viable option with a solusvm importer and again, plesk know this so why would they just decide not to keep v1 going, it must pay well after all

'still lengthy' tl;dr

If you use v1 now, don't worry that is unlikely to go anywhere and will always be the better product for the lowend market, if you have been waiting with baited breath for the last 6 years for the fabled v2 (io) you need to now consider it as an enterprize product that you can ALSO offer and only if you want too, with the price it will cost overall anyone using it will not be competing in the same market space as you anyway so it will not impact you if you decide not to use it.

I cant sell services at the same price as I do now if I use solus.io my E5 nodes ill increase from $120 p/year to $1440 p/year in license fee's, that has to be made up in the pricing.

seriesn

Virtualizor offers many of those above mentioned features (software installer, snapshot etc.)

Just saying.

Lee

@seriesn said: Virtualizor offers many of those above mentioned features (software installer, snapshot etc.)

Why isn't everyone ditching SVM1 for that then?

MichaelCee

@Lee said:

@seriesn said: Virtualizor offers many of those above mentioned features (software installer, snapshot etc.)

Why isn't everyone ditching SVM1 for that then?

The only response I can give to that is a big old sigh.

Lee

@SmallWeb said: The only response I can give to that is a big old sigh.

The answer is that providers know it is there, have looked at it and said, no.

MichaelCee

@Lee said:

@SmallWeb said: The only response I can give to that is a big old sigh.

The answer is that providers know it is there, have looked at it and said, no.

In my eyes it's an example of a product built to fit gaps in the market with so much potential that's just sorta "meh" after all these years.

It's never hurt me bad enough that I'd pick Solus instead though.

MikeA

@Lee said:

@SmallWeb said: The only response I can give to that is a big old sigh.

The answer is that providers know it is there, have looked at it and said, no.

I just don't want to deal with the hassle of migrating really. But eventually it will have to happen to something.

Lee

I have had a quick play about with it, it is not a LE* product at $5 per core that is for sure (I think it's worth more than that and I am sure the price will go up) so I suspect as @Francisco said earlier SVM1 will remain although you will likely see a 2 or 3 times increase to the price.

They know they have the budget end covered with SVM1, no point removing that and allowing another panel to muscle in, although we may see some development of SVM1 now just to keep people focused on it.

I still see a real opportunity for some providers to carve out a new spot for themselves whilst remaining competitive against the usual actors already there (DO/Vultr/Linode/OVH/Hetzner). No, it won't be at LE* prices but then it shouldn't be.

kentweb

Hi.

I found this while searching for info, can we install it yet or will it just be a set of screenshots or demo?

Using virtualizor now but it is too basic and often fails in many areas, OnApp is to much money and it looked a bit dated still running on 2.32 which they told me was for stable but still 2.32!

I hope this is the in between product we need.

Lee

@kentweb said: can we install it yet or will it just be a set of screenshots or demo?

https://www.solus.io/public-technical-preview/

kentweb

Thank you.

I just ordered a few SoYouStart dedicated servers to test it on.

vpsgeek

While I do respect Phill because of his skills & talents but still wouldn't have touched it even if it was $ 2.00 unlimited cores because the venture capitalists who own their parent company Plesk have proven again & again that they are outright ***holes & love to shit on the face of paying customers.

Lee

Having played with it all a bit more in the last hour, actually quite impressed with what they have done. Looking forward to seeing it out there once released.