I was talking to a friend this week about SWsoft’s recent move to buy up a few of the competing automation products in Ensim Pro, H-Sphere and Sphera, and he pointed me to an interesting note in SWsoft’s FAQ regarding H-Shere:
During the course of the transition, existing H-Sphere prices posted at http://www.psoft.net/price_list.html will be changed.
- H-Sphere prices will become consistent with HSPcomplete
- SiteStudio prices will become consistent with Sitebuilder
- CP+ prices will become consistent with HSPcomplete
- Support prices will become consistent with SWsoft support pricing
It seems at least a few people are wondering why and how SWsoft intends to change prices for H-Sphere products, and to what extent the company intends to continue its support for H-Sphere.
I happened to have SWsoft’s senior product manager Doug Johnson on the phone yesterday, so I raised the question with him. He said it was important to SWsoft that it not make any big changes to the business models of hosts using H-Sphere and any pricing changes would have more to do with normalizing support costs, eliminating excess SKUs and other similar fine-tuning type adjustments.
“We’re not going to do any widespread pricing changes. What it means is if there are things that are inconsistent about the pricing models, we’re going to make them consistent. So, for example, if support is priced one way on one product and a different way on a different product, we’re going to try to do some rationalization there. If licenses come in a package of five on one product and a package of 10 on another, we’re going to try to eliminate some SKUs and things along those lines.
“In the short term we’re going to maintain two separate pricing lists so we don’t interfere with anybody’s existing business. And then I’m getting a lot of questions from forums and things along those lines about what’s going to happen five years from now, and I certainly can’t predict that. So we’ll just have to see how that goes.”
SWsoft has, a few times, pointed to Confixx as an example of how the company treats acquired technology with existing customers. The company bought Confixx in 2003, and has continued to support (and develop) the product since then, even issuing several new updated versions.
It sounds like H-Sphere users are quite safe. At the very least, they have a few years before they’ll need to consider migrating to another product.
About Liam Eagle
Liam Eagle has worked as a contributor to the Web Host Industry Review since its inception in 2000, and as editor since 2003. He has been editor of the WHIR's print magazine since its launch. His daily involvement in the gathering and reporting of Web hosting news and his regular interaction with Web hosting leaders gives him an uncommonly broad appreciation of the issues and tends facing the business. Through his WHIR blog, Liam spots Web hosting trends and offers opinions on the industry-wide impacts of major developments and the motivation behind big announcements. Follow him on Twitter @liameagle
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