Ahsay Discussion Forum

Profhawking · Joined: 04 Nov 2009 Posts: 3

I got an email this morning from Ahsay, regarding a "pricing adjustment".

On the face of it, it seems that at least at low numbers, OBM price has doubled and ACB price has tripled!

http://download.ahsay.com/sales/ASC_2010_AhsayOBS-Pricing-OEM.pdf

http://download.ahsay.com/sales/ASC_2010_AhsayOBS-Pricing-Business.pdf

What does everyone think??

w.van.engelen@itebus.nl · Joined: 16 Feb 2009 Posts: 1

I really think it's ridiculous. The main reason they communicate the change is the pricing of competitors, but they what they want is that you move to the meter program (without trading in already bought licenses). You cannot mix the programs on one server.
I cannot understand that prices must be higher. I know everything becomes more expensive when Ahsay is growing. But the installed base already payed for the development.
I will certainly check out the possibilities to start using a different sollution. Ik know a lot of collegue's who think the same about this. This is abusing a loyal customer base.

zp · Joined: 16 Jan 2007 Posts: 9 Location: Zuerich

I agree!

And they terminated the reseller program without inform us........
Now we have to rework all our products Sad

Strange partner policy!

Profhawking · Joined: 04 Nov 2009 Posts: 3

Well we have been using the meter program for a year, its going well, and we were planning to roll out some new backup services soon with a big marketing and investment push.

This news comes a real surprise, and its a big spanner in the works for our plans at the moment. If ahsay make such huge changes to their services, it makes it very difficult to trust them with our business and plan for the future.

Disappointing and ill thought out i think - I hope they reconsider the options before it annoys too many clients.

cashew1970 · Joined: 28 May 2009 Posts: 12

We for one are very disappointed in Ahsays new pricing model.
We have been very careful to base our services on the costs to us.
Everyone expects small increases in costs, but in this case, up to 4 fold increases mean that any pricing models that we have had in place are now un-sustainable.
What has possessed them to make such vigorous increases, and with such little notice.

pnservices · Joined: 23 Oct 2009 Posts: 16 Location: NE PA

It would seem to be impossible for someone wanting to start with this solution to be able to afford the costs they will be seeking. At these costs, how would this solution be any better than a Carbonite or Mozy solution?

I'm just glad we found out about these "new" costs before we invested in it.

ferragi · Joined: 05 Dec 2008 Posts: 1

Indeed the new pricing has come as a surprise and has turned some small backup packages impossible as the prices that the market offers are usually lower than the ACB licensing.

I hope Ahsay rethinks this strategy and put up a real affordable price adjustment.
_________________
Fabio Ferragi
Products Manager
Telium Networks
http://www.telium.com.br

BCSLLC · Joined: 06 Aug 2009 Posts: 1

I agree completely! I hope they reconsider or we may be forced to reconsider. Just invested to get the business started, but cheaper to cut losses now if need be than later...

nibb · Joined: 18 Jun 2008 Posts: 67

Well I can just thanks Ahsay for this. As this will let me at last decide to drop their horrible product. I thought ABC is already expensive for the piece of crap it it, excuse me if this sounds harsh but it is. It looks like a 10 year old software and they dont even put basic features on it. I have customized, branded, spend thousands in advertising to only sell 2 accounts !!! And they where only for existing clients already. Thousands of people used ABC on a trial and they all agreed that is horrible. There is absolutely no way you can sell it and compete against madure products like Norton or Acronis. Both which have a decent amount of features and look.
First, Ahsay only provides the software, nothing else. As client you have to provide the most important thing, which is hardware and network, but they decide to charge prices higher as providers that give you all for one price. I dont understand the logic on their business, every ahsay clients needs to add several costs to the license as well and this of course has to be paid by the client. Ahsay prices where by no way cheap, but now they are ridicolous, and I say ridicolous because im using it for 2 years and they dont even fix basic bugs, like disable email reports per client. In 2 years they released 1 single update which had new stuff on it. And I cannot even call that a big update as other software developers are doing updates every 3 months to their products. Tecnology changes very fast and I have other backup software, and all of them have released tons on features in 24 months. Ok, so Ahsay increases prices, 3 times more, do we have 3 times more features? No. This is what I call to be lazy. If a software developer makes such an increase its because his product is rocking the world with amazing new tecnology nd features. Non of this applies to Ahsay. The features are so basic that are rudimentary. I cannot imagine how a business would rely on this. And specially since WE are provinding the most important for the data which is the hardware it sounds like a bad joke the increase. The forum is full of people asking to add or may I say fix basic things for years. I really cannot believe to decided to put such a price tag to their product. They must be really proud or they did not even bothered to see what the competition is offering for 10 times cheaper. I tested other products which are for the backup sector and their products are rock solid. This is a constructive critic im making and I hope Ahsay takes this serious. Most Ahsay clients fail to sale their solution because clients dont even like the software. Not to mention you have to dickel and dime to death each client like to charge per install and account and for each single feature. The only think I regret is that I spend to much money and time investing in this product, trying with all my guts to make it work and better just to see someone got greedy. Trust me, I 100% a person that doesnt care about price but quality. Normally the cheaper you pay the worst service you get and I know quality costs, but this cannot be said for Ahsay products at all. They dont fit the quality arena remotely, even a very basic security holes where found on it, and its misses so rudimentary things on the interface and features and makes people unistall it the same minute they take a 2 minute look at it. If Ahsay thought they are the only company that sell private label backup services they are wrong. I found at least 3 other companies, from India and the United States, more less similar prices but with allot better software. They are going to be dirty cheap compared to Ahsay next year with their new prices. Technology and hardware prices are dropping every day and they make exactly the other way around.
I was shocked when I saw the email wich did not even come from Ahsay but from their Reseller.
Im glad for others that wanted to start and saw this before me, I was sucked in already. The most funny thing is that i offered the same people that tried Ahsay another similar solution, and I got a 80% sale target, whcih is impressive. Same hardware, same network, the only thing that changed was the user interface, or the end software and the same people that unistalled Ahsay the same day now where really interested on the backup solution. So Ahsay, if you think ABC/OBM is great, its not. Its a terrible product compared to your competitors. That means unless you decide to make a product that looks and feels like a 2010 software, a Win7 agent, and robust enterprise server agent, there is no market for it. The other solution with how it looks now is decreasing prices. I wonder if Ahsay is planning a major release with the prices, since like they work and look now I cannot imagine how they came up with thinking their products are worth more money. The other scenario which is probably the one they are going, is they are completely dropping resellers and private service partners, they are going to offer services direclty and that could explain the heavy price increases, so they kill small clients and competition to profit from direct end client sales. I wonder why nobody gave an explanation on why the price is going to increase.

tbackup · Joined: 04 Sep 2009 Posts: 4

I would like to know some thoughts about the new pricing plans and now the pricing to add the high availablity clustering options. If you have been using ahsay OBS for any amount of time at all you have realized that there are times when the OBS server will just lock up. As you grow the number of users on your system it quickly becomes very dificult to stop the OBS server to fix issues. When a server locks up it does so in a not so friendly manner. Any backup sets running during a lock up get stuck and must be restarted manually. Solution - a great solution -now our problems are solved with the High Availability Option. If a server locks up then another one or two servers are running to keep your backups operating. Anyway sounds like a great solution until I find out you must duplicate all licenses at a 50% discount. So we just had at least a doubling of our software license cost and now we must add to that another 50%. We would be paying $120 per license now where we were just paying $40 up until end of 2010. Can I hear some comments on how crazy this is. I can not imagine anyone has ordered the high availablity option. Let me know your thoughts or if you have purchased High Availablity.

myopp · Joined: 25 May 2008 Posts: 85

If I were Ahsay, I would seriously consider charging for the high availability capability as a module separate from licensing costs. I think it's fine to charge for the option, but to add 50% additional licensing costs for the same number of end users is extreme. Charge a flat fee to cover the costs of development of the module and allow partners to continue using the licenses they've already purchased.

Better yet, with the vastly increased license costs themselves, make high availability a standard part of the product at no additional cost.

racassel · Joined: 25 Nov 2008 Posts: 298

It is my opinion only, but this is how they "stick it to you" the year before they decide to launch retail services like they have done in HongKong. See the new website. It is an insult. How do all the "Loyal" Hong Kong Ahsay "Partners" feel about this, cut-throat out of the business by their supplier. If they will do it in their own back yard, what makes you think they will not do it in the US next year.