Just noticed that Cloud 2.0 is now available for purchase. I have noticed that the costs for this are around £37 per user/month with a minimum of 5 licences.
I have so many of my smaller customers who I could develop solutions for, who would need one or two users, that this pricing is just so disappointing. Why is a cloud product a minimum of 5 users? Why can you not pay this monthly?
Seriously if I could sell solutions to to my customers and they would only need to pay £40 a month per user I would sell many, many licences. Instead I am spending my time developing web based solutions that take me 5 times as long to develop and frustrate the hell out of me.
This pricing structure frustrates me and just seems like a missed opportunity.
I agree that is disappointing. From a technical/financial standpoint, it may be the cost to setup and handle the AWS hosting side of it, along with any other costs or licensing are involved for Claris, may not be profitable with only 1 or 2 users. But that is a total guess based on my experience with other SAAS like services.
I’m fairly sure you are correct but other companies seem to manage this ok - SalesForce for example allow you to purchase single user licences (although still annually based). I guess buying a group of 5 and using it for multiple customers is a no-no?
I don’t know how the EULA plays out in that scenario. They can’t be on the same server, the exception being if it is part of the SBA ( which I believe comes with a discount on the FMS/FMPA side, no idea if that applies to Cloud ).
I agree other companies have figured that part out. But every business is different, the tech stack is different, and the overall costs are different. The reality is, I hope they do get it figured out. There are many businesses that could benefit from it.
Huge opportunity for us developers to deliver solutions to smaller customers - continuous revenue streams to Claris, could then finally remove the runtime etc.
for us here in Switzerland is the Cloud 2.0 (should it be available here) no option for customers with sensitive data (health system, etc)
Filemaker representants didn’t even seem to realize that Frankfurt is not an option - it’s in Germany, not Switzerland…
Also the fact that developers with an own license can only access a customer’s cloud if there are not all clients in use - another restriction for some customers
Further on, cloud is never as fast as a local server, availability is sometimes unsure, etc.
We are hoping that essential stuff will find its way into the non-cloud version quickly…
nobody forces you to do the cloud (yet) - within our client base we have only one client on FMCloud1.0 and they are not super happy even based in the US. Some weird latency and refresh issues…
All clients with their own dedicated non-AWS servers are happy. Never down and complete control. And maintenance little.
Problem is, that FMI asked a question ‘what does replace the deprecated peer2peer networking’ with that cloud - and they claimed that ‘cloud first’ means that some new features are brought to the cloud (first)
See this is part of the issue. You may have customers using peer to peer - 2 or 3 users etc. Going forward the only options are - 5 user server licence or 5 user cloud licence at double the price of the on premise. Madness.
Purchasing 2 licenses of FMPA is $1040 USD. A 5 user license is $900/yr, and they get a ton more with it. I am in the camp that if the data is important, don’t use Peer-to-Peer networking. This coming from the standpoint of having used Peer-to-Peer networking for several years personally. My move to FMS was enlightening and freeing.
Yes I know this but if you want Cloud it is twice that cost. What I’m saying is that to replace a peer to peer configuration is expensive. Plus those are annual costs not perpetual.
A tech company like FileMaker, or SalesForce, can’t survive on clients that pay $500 every 5-10 years.
I would argue that yes it’s more expensive from a cash perspective. However, they get better backups, better security, and some managed IT services that, honestly, they probably needed already. In fact, I would say smaller businesses are even more prone to data breaches than some other medium to large businesses, and often would have no idea that a breach even happened at all.
Our H M Customs & Revenue sent an email out yesterday that exposed nearly 500 developers’ emails (including mine) working on Making Tax Digital products. Another Government data blunder and definitely not a small company😆. One bright spark replied advertising a job to all recipients.
The IT industry has changed and the days of purchasing software and using it untouched for years have gone thanks to the OS annual updates, so subscription or maintenance is the only way to go.
If the target for FileMaker is larger companies, and why not, then they are going to come up against organisations that have systems that require more control than automated and compulsory updates dictated by the software vendor. Also, if cloud were to become compulsory, then there is a risk of ‘if we have to move to the cloud, let’s see what else is out there, designed from the ground up for this purpose, rather than use something attempting to migrate to it.
If they charged £40 per user for single users or £80 for two users per month then that brings in £2400/£4800 over 5 years? Is this not enough? If I sold 20 copies of my 1-2 user system to the Timber merchants here in the UK ?
I just find it strange when other companies are more than able to support this type of model. 5 user minimum is a real block to this market.
you didn’t get my statement: my point is in other words that a flat rate over a long period can still be profitable depending on how many you sell and how strong your sales grow. Your model can also fail if your install base for the SAAS is to low …