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.