openerp-community team mailing list archive

[Eva Pinter <epinter@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

It is quite difficult to compare the prices of different systems as every company offers slightly different services especially when it comes to support. Due to the fact that the support is only a community support, then the basic proposal can be considered as hosting only.  In the comparison with other packages, this should also be an indicator. 

The price per user, if you use all modules but manufacturing (because, the standard will not fit most producing companies, so that they will have to go to premise installation), the price changes from 35€ to 120€, that makes a 3.4 times more expensive than it is now. This is a massive price increase. Only the market will tell us, if it is acceptable or not.

I was wondering if you could do anything like Freshbook that allows accountants to be registered by them and so an accountant can work for different customers without the customer having to pay an extra user. This will allow to have more customers sticking with odoo for accounting. At the moment, especially 2 users company will hesitate to integrate accounting as they suddenly jump from 0 to 360€ per month, if they have an accountant working for them in Odoo. The same for external consultants working for customers using oDoo. If a customer needs support, he may jump to a massive bill that will have to be added to his during the time he needs that support.

The functional support per package is also something very strange from my point of view. Per definition, an ERP is integrated so that a problem in finance, for instance may come from logistics. So what happens in this case, if the customer has only signed up for finance support? Will the functional supporter tell the customer he needs to apply for logistics support if he discovers the problem is in one of the logistics module?

There are further aspects of the pricing I do not understand: 
1. How come is billing separate? Can you have billing without sales or project?
2. How can someone create sales order and not bill them in the system? 

In the business package, you have some customisation, training material and requirement analysis. 

1. Let's say a customer wants to have something done, so he may have the business package for one month until it's done or do you have a minimum duration for the business package?
2. How much in advance can a customer resign it's contract. This is unfortunately not stipulated on the pricing website.
3. If my customer wants a partner to make support and training and any changes in his odoo database. Is this possible?
4. Will it be possible in the future to install uncertified packages for the online platform especially in accounting as most countries are not covered yet with the standard packages?
5. If a customer had a business package for a few months, will he after cancelling his business subscription still have access to the training documentation?


Thank you for the answers. 
Eva P.



On 18 May 2014, at 15:47, Fabien Pinckaers <fp@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I just wrote a blog to explain the new pricing:
>    https://www.odoo.com/blog/1/post/158
> 
> Please read it before going further in this email.
> 
> 
> I'll try to answer most questions here:
> 
> 1/ How to compute the price?
> 
> The price is: # total of users X # of apps bundle X 12€
> 
> 2/ Why don't we charge according to real usage? (e.g.: 5 users on CRM, 3
> on accounting, 7 on projects?)
> 
> Because it's impossible to predict for yearly contracts! Quoting would
> become a nightmare and a lot of people would abuse from this unclear
> situation. (a customer would start with a low price but three month
> after we would have to upsell him because of the number of users on some
> apps)
> 
> Lets take the following use case: a company of 10 users that uses CRM,
> accounting, projects. They have 3 sales person, 4 consultants, 1
> director, 1 secretary and 1 accountant.
> 
> When you do a quote for this customer, how many users do they have per
> application?
>  - is the director using accounting and CRM?
>  - can the sales have read access to project for follow-ups to their
>    customers?
>  - can the accounting check sales orders coming from the sales?
>  - is it the secreatary that give access rights to others users?
> 
> I checked in our production database. We have 7 persons working in the
> marketing department. If one do a quote of 7 users for the marketing
> application bundle, it's totally under-estimated.
> 
> In reality, we have 45 users on marketing application, not 7:
>  - the Professional Service team that built the certification sample
>    exam on the website (survey)
>  - users that train others users on features
>  - managers that need statistics about events, mass mailing, ...
>  - most sales need an access to check prospects on events,
>  - system administrator need an access to allocate access rights and
>    test for others users
> 
> 3/ Is it expensive?
> 
> Absolutly not. It's 2x to 3x cheaper than the market average. Check this
> comparison of software vendors:
>  https://www.odoo.com/website/image/ir.attachment/537400/datas
> 
> Moreover, partners get 50% to 60% discount on the public price. It means
> gold partners pay only 4.8€ / $6 per user and per application. Whatever
> the market, it's super cheap and super competitive.
> 
> 
> 4/ Is it an increase of the price?
> 
> For some customers: no. (1-3 apps)
> For some customers: yes.
> 
> The biggest increase would be around 2x more for one particular customer
> that uses a lot of applications. (6) I never saw a company running 10
> apps and if they do, it's normal that they pay 120€ per user because the
> value they get from Odoo is huge. No other product can offer this.
> 
> 
> 5/ localization & customization
> 
> Odoo has a lot of huge advantages compared to traditional ERPs:
>  - higher scope: website, ecommerce, cubes analysis, CRM, ...
>  - better usability, faster implementation
>  - better flexibility: allows custom development and high level config
> 
> Odoo also has a few disadvantages compared to traditional ERPs, the main
> one is the localization in some countries. (something we will fix for v9
> as we will massively invest in accounting l18n)
> 
> Odoo has a lot of PROS and a few CONs. But the few CONs are largely
> compensated by the PROs. As the product is better, economics tell us
> that the product must be more expensive.
> 
> Not only we are not more expensive, but we are at least 2x to 3x
> cheaper. And, if you take the partner price 4.8€ per user and per app,
> we are 6x cheaper than the competition!
> 
> I do not know a lot of industry where a product can be 2X cheaper for a
> better quality.
> 
> One should not be frustrated about the price.
> 
> @marcelo
>> I recently read the posts by the Compiere founder explaining what
>> went wrong after he got VC money. Read it and it will look like it is
>> all happening again.
> Every time we do a change in the community people cry: take care of
> forks, read Jorge's blog, VCs are evil, OpenERP does not understand its
> users...
> 
> Odoo is not comparable to Compiere/Tryton/Openbravo or others. The
> sustainability of a product is not related at all with fork threats,
> failure of others open source software or what ever.
> 
> The sustainability of every product is directly linked to it's ability
> to create a sustainable model where partners and publishers get enough
> revenues to grow their activities on the product.
> 
> This requires a lot of things like: having a great product allowing good
> service margins, a good price for the publisher, happy customers, etc.
> 
>>     What kind of business puts potential clients in front of active
>> paying clients? The model is wrong wrong wrong.
> 
> What's wrong is to have a pricing so cheap that it does not allow to
> sustain the development of the product, or too few customers because the
> product is not competitive. That's what killed some products.
> 
>>      If Odoo was a ready-to-use software then the model would make a
>> lot of sense. But they are ignoring the importance of localization &
>> customization. If I wanted off the shelf software I wouldn't bother
>> going open source.
> 
> Our customers don't choose Odoo beause it's open source. They choose
> Odoo because it's better (products and/or servives of partners)
> 
> We should stop being frustrated of being open source. It's not because
> we are open source that we should be cheaper. The only thing that
> matters for a customer is to have a great product at an affordable price.
> 
> Open Source is not a customer value, it's a way to develop better products.
> 
> 
>>            Also, this thing that partners will not get any commission
>>        on contracts with more than two years is REALLY nonsense. It
>>        essentially means that the contract will become 50% more
>>        expensive on the 3rd year because the partner will need that
>>        revenue back and of course it will be important for the client
>>        to keep bonds with the partner. It is really sad when companies
>>        pull this sort of crap on their "partners".
> 
> My understanding is that partners don't sell Odoo Enterprise because of
> their commissions. They sell it because they need it for their customers
> and because this allows them to sell more services. (and this is how it
> should be)
> 
> The part of the commission on Odoo Enterprise is usually lower than 4%
> of the revenue a partner take on a project. So, their motivation is not
> on the commission.
> 
> I may be wrong. I am open to discuss this during the community days.
> 
> 
> 
> Hope it helps better understanding this strategic move,
> Thanks for the feedback,
> 
> -- 
> Fabien Pinckaers
> Odoo Founder
> 
> Phone: +32.81.81.37.00
> Web: https://www.odoo.com
> Twitter: @fpopenerp
> 
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