How much would you pay for support?

[nibb]

Considering you get a reply in a maximum of 24 hours (SLA 24). A next reply would not be again in 24 hours, but I consider here 24 hours more or less to start working on your issue and having a resolution in the following hours or day depending on the complexity of the problem. This does not include bugs, which cannot be solved like that, they have to introduce into the bug system and need development time which can take of course days or weeks.

[Patrick]

No one can justifiably answer this without further context.  What is the cost of the software hypothetically, what are the renewal fee's?  Does the company have a good reputation for support?
These are very important questions to ask along with cost of support.   Also giving an option for "$0 - None" should be there. 

Edit: Support is only worth as much as the reputation and software.  So i don't think this question or poll can be addressed with even the slightest accuracy. 

[nibb]

No one can justifiably answer this without further context.  What is the cost of the software hypothetically, what are the renewal fee's?  Does the company have a good reputation for support?
These are very important questions to ask along with cost of support.

Please see my previous post about updates.

We assume here:

1. Forget Hostbills reputation for this poll
2. Renewal fees are not included here. This are on this poll:
http://www.hostbillforums.com/index.php/topic,114.0.html
3. Reputation for support is what Hostbill is offering now with Paid tickets, (in case you used it)

[Patrick]

Please see my previous post about updates.

We assume here:

1. Forget Hostbills reputation for this poll
2. Renewal fees are not included here. This are on this poll:
http://www.hostbillforums.com/index.php/topic,114.0.html
3. Reputation for support is what Hostbill is offering now with Paid tickets, (in case you used it)

Actually renewal fee's if offered to play a part on a fairness value to paid support.  In all fairness, if using Hostbill as an example, bugs also play a part.  As advertised features that do not function cause concern for paid support.  Paid support is an irrelevant topic when a software is still not being released with all advertised features.  A reputable company or in better terms, a company that has proven their worth. 

If you give us examples of companies who sell the software.

1. Ubersmith
2. Hostbill
3. WHMCS
4. Blesta

And compare what we'd pay for support based on their models, is one thing, but we can't just come up with a random #.  It's not possible.

[nibb]

This is not a topic on how support should work or not in Hostbill. Its just a poll to know how much current customers would be willing to pay right now and what they consider fair. Nothing more and less. We know nothing what you or I say can change how Hostbill runs their business model and I do not discuss here if its right or wrong. Its just to know how much would be considered a fair price for this for what is offered today or right now in terms of support.

I did not put the option of 0$ or nothing, because I consider that not voting is nothing.

[Patrick]

This is not a topic to how support should work or not in Hostbill. Its just a poll to know how much current customers would be willing to pay right now and what they consider fair. Nothing more and less. We know nothing what you or I say can change how Hostbill runs their business model and I do not discuss here if its right or wrong. Its just to know how much would be considered a fair price for this.

I don't think you're understanding.  No one can justifiably come up with a random number without context.  It depends on the model.  Some companies i believe support should be free, others that play the market fairly i believe should be paid support.  I'd base my opinion on cost of support based on cost of software, cost of renewal fee's and successful support history.  Otherwise we could start up polls and just ask "How much would you charge for hosting?".  Without context you have no idea what's included.  No one can say $3 or $9.  Does it included x y & z ?

I understand what you're trying to establish with your 3 polls but it's too open ended to fairly vote on any price.  It's a blanket statement.

[nibb]

I don't think you're understanding.  No one can justifiably come up with a random number without context.  It depends on the model.  Some companies i believe support should be free, others that play the market fairly i believe should be paid support.  I'd base my opinion on cost of support based on cost of software, cost of renewal fee's and successful support history.  Otherwise we could start up polls and just ask "How much would you charge for hosting?".  Without context you have no idea what's included.  No one can say $3 or $9.  Does it included x y & z ?

I understand what you're trying to establish with your 3 polls but it's too open ended to fairly vote on any price.  It's a blanket statement.

Patrick I don´t think you understand the point of a poll do you?

This is not about how much a company should charge. Its about how much "hostbill" should charge.

And your reasoning about nobody can come up with a number is flawed. Hostbill charges now 75$ per support ticket, so guess what? They did come up with a price. Again this is not discuss if this is wrong or right. Its about how much a current customer would be willing to pay for this.

This is not a discussion on a support model, or what they should do because they are doing it right now. Go to their website and try to open a ticket.

[thetrusteeco]

Well, I voted, and I get what you're asking Nibb, but my vote is skewed by HostBill's history of:

Find Bug: Open Ticket
Wait 24 hours: Login?
Wait 24 hours: Okay, we'll fix at some point
Wait 24 months: Scratch head...

My answer would be a lot higher if I didn't have to pay to report bugs, and if there was some kind of a refund if there was no resolution.

[Patrick]

Well, I voted, and I get what you're asking Nibb, but my vote is skewed by HostBill's history of:

Find Bug: Open Ticket
Wait 24 hours: Login?
Wait 24 hours: Okay, we'll fix at some point
Wait 24 months: Scratch head...

My answer would be a lot higher if I didn't have to pay to report bugs, and if there was some kind of a refund if there was no resolution.

If i was voting based on Hostbills history i'd also say $15 too but like you said, it's also about refunds if no resolution is found.  Sure we could answer a basic question but i find this would give hostbill too many ideas based on community response and i don't want to fuel their need for more money.  I did vote nevertheless, but i still think a lot stands behind the software to accurately answer something as complex as this.

[tallship]

Wow this must be a hot topic. No sooner did I finish reading and clicked on post a reply when the system gave me an alert saying there's been at least another post in the meantime.

Okay, I didn't see a 0$ option there. without that I couldn't consider choosing from amongst the choices, and even then, $10 or $15 per ticket would be the max I've ever considered with any software - especially with free software.

Let's dissect a few notions here.

First, there are no kbkp community forums - Therefore, there is no official community support. Right there, that makes their tickets worth ZERO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Would that there were a vibrant kbkp community support forum, then $10 to $15 per ticket is reasonable, for a reasonable company that has already charged me for an owned license. Anything more is a ripoff.... Read on.

I support a lot of expensive software apps out there for customers, and support tickets for almost all of those those software systems costs nothing, nor should it. Neither does most instances of basic phone support with those companies. Priority support, or support that involves the company actually teaching you how to use the software does cost money, billable on a per minute or hourly basis - with plans for monthly block hours too.

Those rates are typically in the range of $50 to $150 per hour, where they will hold your hand, while you share your screen and they talk you through whatever configs that you're just too lazy to look up in the manual or wiki.

Software problems, initial installation support, breakages other than bricked databases, etc., are all Free ticket support services. Other commonly asked questions are already in a FAQ, or when someone opens a free trouble ticket, the operator is able to run a macro for a canned response for an answer or an URL is provided to a knowledge base article. FREE FREE FREE fREe FrEeeee!

ticket support and email support (which often is just an extension of web based tickets anyway) are the same price (FREE).

If the software is free, then $10 or $15 per ticket is reasonable. Users should have a clue so that the tickets don't go on forever, and if they do, or cross the free line into MANAGED SUPPORT SERVICES, then the operator should close the ticket and have the user engage priority phone support for $50 - $150 per hour, where they will let you doodle them as long as you're paying them the hourly rate - this requires either a pre-paid support contract, or a TSA with a signed credit card Authorization form (Technical Services Agreement).

Now that I've said all of that, this is typically the way larger businesses do things - you bought the product, therefore you get free trouble tickets, considering that you're not totally brain dead and can follow the lead or the instructions tech support provided you at level I. If there's an issue that's not your fault, or something weird, then they escalate to level II. If something is bad wrong and takes an actual engineer to help you through no fault of your own, then it is escalated to level III, otherwise, level III priority support costs money at some hourly rate, because you are outside the bounds of standard support which is included for free in most commercial products.

If the software is free, and I wrote it, I'm prolly not  going to help you with anything unless you pay me by opening a trouble ticket for $10 or $15 dollars - and then, to be ethical, if it is a common problem, I should prolly created a knowledge base article or FAQ item.

If the software if Free and you find a bug, by all means, submit a report and someone might get around to it.

If the software is not free and you find a bug, then please do report it as I have a responsibility to fix it ASAP.

Whether the software is free or not, you should have community support forums - VMware is a good example, so is IBM, and other large vendors.

When software is open source, BSD, MIT, or Artistic or GPL licensed, and you want to have support you charge for, and you wrote the software, you have a community edition with community forum support and paid support otherwise, and you also release a so-called enterprise edition, where add enable two or three features in the software that nobody really uses anyway, for those people who feel they want to pay for anything, and charge them for anything other than standard level I support tickets.

When commercial, closed source software is had for a fee, you need to provide some level of rapid response support for free, for non-borked, non-PEBKAC, related support issues. You also need to have some sort of immediate, priority level support that is paid, because some folks just want you to pay you to hold their hands and tell them that you love them.

HostBill is expensive, broken, bug-ridden software without an adequate bug-tracking system, no level of support whatsoever, save for the empty promise that you can have a guaranteed response, which means nothing, within 18hrs, and no guarantee of actual support even if you pay for it (only a *response* within 18hrs, which has proven time and again to be an empty promise).

As far as paid commercial software goes, HostBill really isn't worth even 20 bucks - no support, no way to fix it yourself, no community based support forums, no bug tracking system, and a woefully ineffective bug reporting system.

The software is virtually worthless from the standpoint of anyone considering purchasing it.

[Patrick]

Wow this must be a hot topic. No sooner did I finish reading and clicked on post a reply when the system gave me an alert saying there's been at least another post in the meantime.

Okay, I didn't see a 0$ option there. without that I couldn't consider choosing from amongst the choices, and even then, $10 or $15 per ticket would be the max I've ever considered with any software - especially with free software.

Let's dissect a few notions here. [snipped]

+1.  Well said and a lot of time went in to writing that one lol

[UCG_Keith]

I concur Bradley, Patrick. Very well said.

[electric]

My opinion is that basic hostbill support should be free.  That means the "free" support would be included in the yearly renew fee.  (So it's not really "free".)  Free support should be limited to 10 tickets per year, (NOT including anything that turns out to be a bug), and then it should be paid.  Anyone who needs more than 10 tickets per year is not bothering to read the documentation or other basic "help yourself" actions.

I also think Hostbill should offer a monthly support option, which would be $99 and $299.  The first option ($99) would give you guaranteed response time of 24 hours and resolution of 72 hours.  Second option would give you guaranteed response time of 6 hours and resolution within 24 hours.

In reality however, as things are right now... I don't think the owner of Hostbill has a clue what "support" actually means.  Initially responding to a ticket within promised time frame and then ignoring the ticket thereafter forever is NOT hat support means. 

These polls are pointless unless our definition of "support" is the same as the Hostbill owner's.  It is not.  This is obvious to anyone who has actually tied to obtain support from Hostbill and had their ticket left open and unresolved for months...

[nibb]

My opinion is that basic hostbill support should be free.  That means the "free" support would be included in the yearly renew fee.  (So it's not really "free".)  Free support should be limited to 10 tickets per year, (NOT including anything that turns out to be a bug), and then it should be paid.  Anyone who needs more than 10 tickets per year is not bothering to read the documentation or other basic "help yourself" actions.

I also think Hostbill should offer a monthly support option, which would be $99 and $299.  The first option ($99) would give you guaranteed response time of 24 hours and resolution of 72 hours.  Second option would give you guaranteed response time of 6 hours and resolution within 24 hours.

In reality however, as things are right now... I don't think the owner of Hostbill has a clue what "support" actually means.  Initially responding to a ticket within promised time frame and then ignoring the ticket thereafter forever is NOT hat support means. 

These polls are pointless unless our definition of "support" is the same as the Hostbill owner's.  It is not.  This is obvious to anyone who has actually tied to obtain support from Hostbill and had their ticket left open and unresolved for months...

I agree with you, but some users have 0 updates per year and others 45$, that can´t hardly cover the 10 tickets per year.

I would think 99$ to 250$ a year should include:
1. Updates of new features
2. Bug fixes
3. 10 tickets like you mentioned

Then there should be a special monthly support plan for those that need it. Support tickets I don´t mean bugs either. And developers questions, people that need to develop something or integrate something into Hostbill should always be free. Otherwise nobody will be making anything for the software making it pointless to be developer friendly.

Imagine if every company worked like Hostbill towards this? Hostbill would not exist. Because im sure Kris did contacted some companies while developing this modules, cPanel, etc, or read their documentation in order to develop the integration. Imagine if all of them where acting like he was, charging you for accessing or not having documentation? He would never had being able to develop hostbill in the first place. Just like he depends on the API of cPanel, Resellerclub, etc, we also depend on the API of Hostbill.

This is why im shocked when I read he was not allowing third party modules anymore. Imagine if cPanel makes the same, disallow their API and third party integrations, and if Enom makes the same, and if VmWare does the same, and if everyone would be doing what he does, his software would be dead.

I cannot believe that to be honest. He benefits from other softwares being open but tries to close his own.

[electric]

I cannot believe that to be honest. He benefits from other softwares being open but tries to close his own.

Really?  You can't believe it?  The guy has shown himself numerous times now to be the worst business person possible.  Whatever you think is smart, he will do the opposite.  Any common sense decision he will do the opposite.

This is why I can't trust hostbill.  Not because of the bugs, etc.  It's because I can't trust the owner of the company.  Even if Hostbill is the most amazing and awesome software in it's category (which it easily could be!)... if I can't trust the company that makes the software, then it's for nothing. 

I've spent 15 years building my business, and trusting it into the hands of some guy who has zero business skill is simply foolish.  Seriously, it would not surprise me if one day he decided it is a good idea to download all my customer's credit card information and sell it.  Or start charging hostbill license holders $999/year for the ability to encrypt credit cards.  The guy is a fool.