Price Increases
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I used XCP-NG about a year ago in a test environment when it was still 8.2. I couldn’t run some of my larger VMs on it because of your 2TB storage limit because SMACI v3 hadn’t been incorporated at that time but was coming in version 8.3.
Fast forward a year later - I am ready to leave VMWare but after visiting your site alomost a year later, Isee the prices have increased dramatically. I was all on onboard with moving to XCP-NG and buying a subscription for XO only and not the actual hypervisors. I’m a small MSP running only 70 VMs so my budget is limited. I need to be able to do full and incremental backups of all my VMs to network storage. Anyway, I could afford to use you under your old pricing plan but not the new.
If your Pro suite were half the cost then you would be closer to what I would be paying if I went the Native KVM route using virt manager and Cockpit with a BDR Suite for backups that covers up to 75 VMs. Basically you did exactly what VMWare did, you priced yourself out of being my next solution. I just thought I would let you know why you were going to get our business until the price hikes. I was really looking forward to your turn key solution. I guess I will just develop out my own web based KVM solution with VCenters like capabilities using a PHP front end and backend that runs prepared virsh commands for snap shotting, starting and stoping VMs, and moving them from host to host. It is going to be a lot more work but I will donate it to source forge when I’m done and offer a more cost effective way of doing things for the really small MSPs out there. -
@ddbolt You are paying for the support not the product! Nobody is hindering you from installing XO from sources and be done with it, having "support" from the community forums, where Vates staff is all the time.
So your choice. Comparing Vates to Vmware is certainly not the way....
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@manilx
I certainly see your point.
I just wish there were something in middle where they keep me patched and my XO updated and maybe ai just pay for support on an “as needed” basis.
I compiled it from source one a year ago and it did work but it would just be nice to have them keep my software up to date for a smaller fee and I just pay for additional support as needed. Like $300 per host per year but I would pay additional to speak with someone at Vates.
That I could do. -
@ddbolt Don't see that coming, to be honest....
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@manilx
I would even do $400 per host per year for what I described earlier but not a penny more.
Looks like it’s going to be KVM with BDR Backup Suite.
Only $250 per month for 75 VMs and unlimited hosts. -
@ddbolt said in Price Increases:
@manilx
I certainly see your point.
I just wish there were something in middle where they keep me patched and my XO updated and maybe ai just pay for support on an “as needed” basis.
I compiled it from source one a year ago and it did work but it would just be nice to have them keep my software up to date for a smaller fee and I just pay for additional support as needed. Like $300 per host per year but I would pay additional to speak with someone at Vates.
That I could do.Vates has said that a per-incident response isn't viable at this time several times because of the ad hoc nature and the potential un-scalability of such a model.
The community here offers a lot of help, and as others have said you can deploy XO from source and not pay a dime for it. Helping you to save all of the cost until you can get your customers to start paying for said services.
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@DustinB
All I’m saying is that I wish they would consider an option where they keep my XO updated and patched with all features enabled but as far as support goes, I would turn to the community instead - I’m on my on as far as Vates is concerned. To not have to recompile the source every time there is an update to XO would be worth paying $200 -$400 per host monthly. -
@ddbolt deploying and maintaining XO from source is stupidly simple, and well documented. I even have one of the if not the original deployment script that I helped to write on my github.
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@ddbolt Update is a one-liner!!!!!!
https://forums.lawrencesystems.com/t/how-to-build-xen-orchestra-from-sources-2024/19913
https://github.com/Jarli01/xenorchestra_installer?tab=readme-ov-file
https://github.com/Jarli01/xenorchestra_updaterDon't see your point/problem.
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Hi,
Thank you for sharing your perspective; I appreciate the time you took to explain your concerns. However, there are some misunderstandings in your message that I’d like to address and clarify.
First, regarding pricing: contrary to what you've stated, we haven’t raised prices; in fact, for small infrastructures like yours, costs have decreased with our new bundles. The details are explained in this blog post: https://vates.tech/blog/introducing-vates-virtualization-management-stack/ To summarize, we combined XOA and XCP-ng into a single offer to ensure smaller businesses benefit from a more cost-effective solution. This change was made to support smaller setups, even in the face of inflation and rising operational costs.
Second, it's important to clarify the rationale behind the bundle. XOA on its own was originally designed as a solution to complement XenServer, but the landscape has evolved. Today, the majority of support tickets are related to XCP-ng rather than XOA. This is because the critical infrastructure—your hypervisor and virtualization platform—is where complexity and stability matter most. Bugs or issues in XOA are often tolerable, but a problem in XCP-ng could directly impact production environments. Maintaining and advancing XCP-ng involves significant resources, requiring specialized teams and substantial investment—our efforts are focused on delivering stability and innovation for production environments, and that comes with costs.
Lastly, while we understand that budgets vary, our open-source philosophy remains at the core of what we do. If a paid subscription isn’t feasible, all our software remains fully open-source and freely available, ensuring accessibility to those who cannot afford to pay for a subscription. This project costs over €5M annually to maintain, yet we continue to prioritize the community by keeping everything open and transparent.
Comparing us to VMware feels unfair given our dedication to an open-source approach, a stark contrast to closed, proprietary systems. We’ve always strived to support smaller organizations while advancing open-source innovation in virtualization.
I hope this clears up some of the confusion, and I encourage you to revisit the new pricing model and consider the long-term value we aim to deliver.
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@olivierlambert said in Price Increases:
Comparing us to VMware feels unfair given our dedication to an open-source approach, a stark contrast to closed, proprietary systems. We’ve always strived to support smaller organizations while advancing open-source innovation in virtualization.
Actually it's more than just unfair
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I always strive to carefully choose my words to focus on the content and avoid triggering emotions when discussing facts. This approach makes it easier to address incorrect statements while keeping the dialogue open and constructive—something we prioritize here.
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@manilx said in Price Increases:
@olivierlambert said in Price Increases:
Comparing us to VMware feels unfair given our dedication to an open-source approach, a stark contrast to closed, proprietary systems. We’ve always strived to support smaller organizations while advancing open-source innovation in virtualization.
Actually it's more than just unfair
Only because VMWare's lowest tier so much worse than any edition of XO with XCP-ng, and it (VMware) doesn't (or didn't include any support) and that all pricing models going forwards are way more expensive for the bare basic hypervisors. If you require some additional feature of ESXi at different tiers, you wouldn't even be considering any other hypervisor platforms, because ESXi does this specific thing and nothing else does.
Even using XCP-ng and XO(CE) with community support gets you more for literally free.
So yeah, I guess it's really unfair, free and open source with the option for paid support, or Forced subscription at the lowest tier and no official support.....
