Bucket Pricing

[yotefn]

I'm bringing this up again because this is becoming a real pain for me. I am on the verge of dumping Untangle for Sophos UTM, as it is about half the price and claims to do much more. (I don't claim to like it more, but my clients won't care...)

I have many sites with 15-20 computers, without multi-WANs and without multi-sites (i.e. no VPN needed). With the current pricing model, there is no way that Untangle competes with any other UTM, as we are forced to purchase many apps we have absolutely no use for, and to buy 50 licenses for a site with only 15 computers! (and buying individual apps is ridiculous, since the cost of any 3 apps is more than the complete package)

I remember that at some point appliance licensing was unlimited and not IP based. Although the hardware cost was unbelievably expensive, this at least helped for clients that had a BYOD model (i.e. Hospitals that allow patients to use phones and laptops). From my phone call today, appliances now also have an IP limit. So now what am I supposed to do in a hospital or nursing facility? (and bypassing is not an option!)

The licensing model needs to change ASAP or its goodbye Untangle! I would suggest having several packages (filtering, networking, etc.) and fixing the IP allotment bucket to something more reasonable (1-10,11-25,26-50,50-100,100-250 and so on...), reducing the price of individual apps, and removing the IP restriction from hardware devices.

P.S. Sophos UTM is changing their software licensing model to be dependant on the CPU and RAM, so that the UTM is still licensed based on the usage, so while its not technically IP limited, the company still makes more money from larger deployments.

[Berserk]

You've obviously used Untangle more extensively than I, but today I finally said goodbye to Untangle "NGFW" for our home network. We moved to Sophos UTM (formerly Astaro Security Gateway) Home. This edition has a 50-IP address limit and only allows home/personal use. The web administration interface is growing on me quickly. It may be more complex in some ways, but I find the admin interface fairly intuitive and the documentation thorough.

[MechanicalThinker]

This is something I have to agree unfortunately. Not that we are considering dropping Untangle at the moment but the pricing just seems wrong. It's one of the most expensive UTM solutions out there. I do not like the pricing by IP count, as it's often very hard to predict the real IP count long term. Also single apps are way too expensive to make any sense to buy - making customizing installs pointless.

[WebFooL]

MechanicalThinker,
If you buy there appliances directly from Untangle you have unlimited users behind the unit.

Just so you know :-)

[sky-knight]

Not anymore, that software was removed from the hardware at the beginning of the month. If you want licensed modules on the uSeries, you buy the open software that's always been there.

[yotefn]

Not anymore, that software was removed from the hardware at the beginning of the month. If you want licensed modules on the uSeries, you buy the open software that's always been there.

And besides, the cost of the hardware applicance was cost-prohibitive (who wants to spend $1000 for a unit with an Atom based CPU?)

[sky-knight]

Depends on which Atom. That line is rather diverse.

[chmcwill]

Not sure I follow the pricing issues, most of my clients are small businesses, usually 5-25 users and/or devices. I usually build my own Atom based system and use the free edition? I know that some of the appliance vendors included Untangle preinstalled on their machines and there was some issue with the discounts, etc. on renewals but most have now removed the paid versions from their hardware?

[sky-knight]

I certainly haven't removed the paid version from my hardware.

We sell Untangle the same way we've always sold it. And given the change in the uSeries sales model, we're going to be offering it along side the rest of Untangle's products as soon as we can rebuild the store to properly present them.

That doesn't however mean I think the Untangle model is perfect.