Home Protect is now available with options for Threat Prevention and WireGuard

[Armshouse]

I can read public statements, and these statements are the facts as we have them. Anything else, for or against the changes, is speculation.

Yeah, agreed... but I don't personally think we that when all the comparable competition is selling a similar feature set for at least double the price of HomePro, that nobody at Untangle would ask if maybe it was time they were more in line with that.

I'm sure I could sell $20 notes for $5 all day long and have a ton of happy customers, doesn't mean it's greed if I decide that maybe $15 is closer to what they're worth. The people who were paying $5 are gonna resent now having to pay $15, but it's still a good deal.

[Sam Graf]

I'm sure I could sell $20 notes for $5 all day long and have a ton of happy customers, doesn't mean it's greed if I decide that maybe $15 is closer to what they're worth. The people who were paying $5 are gonna resent now having to pay $15, but it's still a good deal.

Sure, and I get that. But that illustration applies, where it applies at all, to half of the home offerings The other half is a different story on at least a couple levels. And that matters.

[sky-knight]

<snip>

Ahh I see, you're grumpy about the entire SaaS model, and you're also upset that Untangle is demanding payment for building a nice easy UI to use free software.

To the former, I'll politely point out your unwillingness to reasonably deal with the nature of software. All of it will wind up SaaS in the end, because all of it needs serviced, patched, and maintained over time to do its job safely. There is no such thing as a finished product, especially one that specifically addresses security. Now, do organizations use this as an excuse to shovel bad code? Yes... but is this model worse than having stuff unpatched for decades? No... To further complicate matters, you're assuming the costs of upstream software access is relatively uniform per module, I can tell you first hand this is not the case. Web Filter is bloody EXPENSIVE, all by itself, and will remain so. General costs of access to that content control library alone is well above $1 / device / month, much less / year... I don't know how Untangle is affording to do what they're doing here at all.

As to the latter, specifically when it comes to the Wireguard and IPSec modules, I'm annoyed at Untangle for selling those too. They already set a precedent with the insanely good OpenVPN module, and I feel they'd have been better off using the other two VPN modules in the same way. When IPSec came out, Untangle's justification for not using it to expand the platform's offering was support costs. Because Untangle support is always there. You claim it isn't, but it IS. What you don't get with the Home subscription is PRIORITY support, that's not the same thing.

There are exactly zero other entities out there, granting free access to official support resources. Yet Untangle lets people that don't have a subscription open a ticket with a single email. You DO have support, you simply aren't recognizing it. And because of the availability of that support, Untangle is sensitive to the costs of tickets that move through it. And I know from my own experience supporting this and other products that helping admins over the phone, email, or forum with VPN issues is all but impossible.

Still my solution to the above isn't to sell those modules, it's to CUT SUPPORT for them. You can PAY for VPN support, either via a live support upgrade, or an individual instance being purchased or you get no support at all. Just close the tickets... and give us the free VPN modules. But Untangle doesn't want to do that, they want to keep giving away non-priority support. So here we are paying for things built into the Linux kernel... which never looks good. Even while they're doing it because they're doing something else that should make them look better. But then they look just like everyone else... Does that help?

As a business owner that operates independently of Untangle, I'm simply pointing out that what Untangle is doing does make sense... and no it's not reckless profiteering. If it was, I'd be gone honestly. I don't have time for that BS, I have networks to build and I prefer to do them without extortion payments. (Looking at you Meraki, if you want to see what reckless profiteering looks like..., also OpenDNS... but that's another thread.)

[donhwyo]

Don't forget if you raise the price you will also raise our expectations of Untangle. Customers will expect you to no longer ignore your feature requests.
https://untanglengfirewall.featureupvote.com/
Some have hundreds of votes and years with no response other than "under consideration". To name a few I would think should have been done long ago.
https://untanglengfirewall.featureup...0/lets-encrypt
https://untanglengfirewall.featureup...r-vlanssubnets
https://untanglengfirewall.featureup...5/dns-over-tls
https://untanglengfirewall.featureup...pd-on-external
And one that someone offered to help for free with. Shameful this has not been done!
https://untanglengfirewall.featureup...ncy-management

How much will these cost us?

Feel free to add your expectations so the bean counters can figure out how much more to charge.

[Farfalha]

Thank you for the OPNSense recommendation, already up and running with Sensei and I feel like I found the replacement! Untangle forget about my rant earlier, you are not deserving of a $ more from me.

[Armshouse]

Thank you for the OPNSense recommendation, already up and running with Sensei and I feel like I found the replacement! Untangle forget about my rant earlier, you are not deserving of a $ more from me.

As far as I can see, the free version of Sensei for OPNSense is limited to 25 devices. Weren't you unhappy that Untangle was limiting you to 50? Or are you going for the €799 version for 51-100 devices?

[Farfalha]

As far as I can see, the free version of Sensei for OPNSense is limited to 25 devices. Weren't you unhappy that Untangle was limiting you to 50? Or are you going for the €799 version for 51-100 devices?

I'm not getting any device limits with the free version. Also, I got wireguard as well as suricata (and suricata with way more rules than untangle version). And it also has unbound and an actual way of doing DNS over https. And monthly updates. All this for free and people are defending untangle and their device limits. I don't know how there's even people defending untagle, but the least they could do was keep the same Home as before and do a Home plus with the stuff some people asked. Guess what? Everyone would be fine with that...

[sky-knight]

Sensei as far as I know doesn't have license enforcement yet, so he's in a happy honey moon period before the crack down. Also, the free doesn't have a device cap that I'm aware of, it's crippleware instead.

It's also not nearly as polished...

But it is serious writing on the wall for Untangle, I really hope they wake up before it's too late. Everyone switching over to OPNSense is great for guys like me, because getting it to work on random hardware is so much more difficult... appliance vendors like myself get to sell more.

So I can't even say I don't have a stake in this game... I do. But if it means less whining on the these forums that's a bonus too.

I sell and support both... I prefer Untangle. So take that for what it's worth. Though my website doesn't have anything OPNSense on it yet. But it will, "soon". I've got a ton more testing to do before I go in on this one.

[drmilo]

Scale and target market appears to be the conflict in the thread. It appears the home license was originally targeted for resellers and small business so the IT team would become more familiar with the application on the off hours. Because that was the target they discounted their products and made all features available. Free labor/training for the small business as the employee learned capability at home and allowed the reseller to have greater experience without creating a small lab. For a company that is larger they would have had a test lab.

Next word of mouth and some leader thought they had an opportunity to create a new market segment. Look at old videos claiming consumer was a huge area of investment and promising IOS apps. Clearly they didn't get buy-in at the top. They made a competitive product available, but didn't know how to market/distribute so they created a small following. A few were outspoke given lack of a few features, crippled virus, no threat, etc. However, the occasional homeuser, like myself, that stumbled upon Untangle was happy with the product offering at $50 a year.

Now things have changed. Companies like Eero, Asus, etc are educating users regarding the advantage of threat prevention and consumers are reading more about protecting their home environment. Eero is offering a bundled service for around $100 that includes password protection etc. So this left Untangle with a decision and they decided to fork their home customers into two groups. Consumer vs Prosumer. The first is the consumer which they are making the bet will have a single wan and don't want wan status detection, have limited IOT and are happy with fancy acronyms in the name of security vs researching capabilities.

If you are on a forum you are 95% likely to be a prosumer. If you are a prosumer you are way more demanding in the average consumer, but you don't appreciate the business is making decisions in its best interest. aka whining rarely influences business decision making as you representing Low single digit profit margin. They don't care about the prosumer, they care about the business and consumer market. Very clear.

As for the consumer where I think Untangle has a huge opportunity, but I think they will struggle scaling down an enterprise offering by stripping features vs focusing on ease of installation. I bought a Firewalla and they have nailed the consumer market. However, I'm a prosumer so it brought me back to Untangle. Firewalla is the easiest thing to install and for under $500 you get very close to gigabit performance, notification of kid activity, filtering, etc. Really polished experience. You open the box, connect, launch IOS app, Bluetooth connect, scan QR code and within 5 minutes. It is the ring camera of home internet security.
- mDNS repeater. I have wasted so much freaking time trying to get my printers and Sonos to work that I have cursed Untangle. If they cared about consumer, they don't, they would have fulfilled the number 2 most requested feature since 2018. Firewalla responds within hours to a request on Reddit.
- DNS caching - Build into Firewalla and a very nice feature
- content filtering for kids - simple on firewalla. froze up my untangle so I had to turn it off
- Buy a firewalla and see how to do consumer and then price your product.


At the end of the day as a prosumer how much are you willing to spend to over come their limitations
1. build a PI for WireGuard or pay $100 more
2. "remove" IOT if exceed the 150
3. Set up another box for DNS repeater and DNS caching

Maybe I gave up on the firewalla too soon as you can also run a Pi Hole. If you want consumer you have to listen to our request

[Sam Graf]

It appears the home license was originally targeted for resellers and small business so the IT team would become more familiar with the application on the off hours. Because that was the target they discounted their products and made all features available.

There’s no need to speculate about the birth of the home license. Untangle told us why the license was created.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=...&v=KILmKRNHLYA