Leased License, Subscriptions & Included Hosting!

Too many people have troubles installing, sorting out hosting issues and not knowing where to get support.

We are fixing it now. 

Zarconia.net will be our hosting partner. Mostly because of their continued dedicated help within community, extensive knowledge of Dolphin.Pro and proven track record of excellent support. 

They've also learnt a few tough lessons. 

Can you elaborate a little more on leased licensing for those who may not know? Thanks

Currently Permanent License is $599. It's a fair bit, but we have to price it high, because it should cover our future development costs.

New alternative is to rent a license for $39/month (for Starter members), which includes hosting. So, for example if you don't want or can't spend too much at the very beginning you can just get a leased license. The cost for the first year will be $468 including hosting. With same hosting and Permanent license it would be the license cost + $144/year for hosting. 

For many people Leased License wold make sense because of low initial expense. It may also be a viable option for taxation purposes, because it's an ongoing service expense as opposed to software purchase, which in some countries has to be depreciated. 

The logic may also be like this - "I'll lease a license for a few months and see how my site goes. If it's lucrative, I'd be able to buy Permanent. If it's not - I could go back to a free license or to breeding chickens."

I think this sounds great for the customers but I'm not sure how well it's going to work out for you guys. I think most people will probably pay for two months at the most before they figure out it's darn near impossible for one person to single handedly build the next Facebook or Match on a $100 budget.. and that to run a website you have to know at least how to use the internet.

What about those who already have hosting? Does the monthly lease cost go down? If you lease for a couple of months and then decide to purchase permanent license, will what you paid for leasing be deducted from the full license cost, or will there be some sort of discount rate for those who lease first?

Well from a personal point of view as a customer I think this is the way forward for both boonex and their customers . Not everyone is hoping to make the next facebook or match some just want to provide niche information or a meeting place for colleagues friends and family many want to start up a small business the full licence is good value for money considering the extensive mods that are provided but if you live in india china or any other country where the majority live on less than $4 dollars a day  a $600 dollar first month start up cost server plus licence  = 150 days of food where as $39 a month is just over a dollar a day .

Regards the near impossible for one person to single handedly build the next Facebook or Match on a $100 budget .

One of the problems has been the $5 webhosting on over clocked servers

Thousands of unity members YOU and the staff at boonex have built this platform who are you to say if somebody with a dolphin  a dream and the drive will not have a result . facebook wasn't an original idea it was an old formate in a new medium made for a few collage kids to share a digital year book..   And as for match have you ever seen the film carry on loving a computerized dating agency film made in 1970 the proprietor was Syd Bliss AKA Andrew Boon.  

Although Andrews time scales are often very optimistic and frequently frustrating His vision of UNITY really is a genuine mantra for which I would like to thank him ..

Now if only he could sort out my licence so I can lease another one with the Special offer code: DUSKY I would be very greatful .. 

 ???

So people like me who already have 8 core dedicated servers have absolutely no option to lease a license without shared hosting?    I don't want anyone's shared hosting, none of your advanced lease plans even remotely compare to the server I have, however, from what I have seen of Dolphin 7.2 I don't even consider it a finished product yet.   SO many things are disgusting with it which I'll get to in a second.   From the wording on your license page, if I want to rent a lease license I have to host my dolphin site on your hosting?   Why isn't there a lease option for self hosted?  

I would never pay $600 for an unfinished product.  This is why it's unfinished and this is just from 3 days of usage. 

Links don't work right straight out of the box.  Example go here http://www.facebookrejects.com/m/videos/view/The-one-good-thing-about-Winter click the video icon on your top left menu, page not found? 

The timeline is terrible.   If you don't use the advanced editor it can't even post a link without breaking it.   I honestly can't believe that this timeline made it out of beta testing.   There are free plugins for CMS's like wordpress that have timelines that work better than this. 

The video system is the worst I've seen of any CMS social platform.   You have to preset your resolutions in your config files for each format.   If I want HD videos I have to set it to 720p / 1080P, if I don't set it, right out of the box the program re-renders it down to something terrible like 480P.   Reminds me of viewing videos on a 1996 website.  The intelligent idea would be to have the program render a few different resolution sizes, 480P / 720P / 1080P and then display the right video depending on the users resolution.  

The embed system is not right.   You can play HTML5 on the website, but when you use the included embed option on your own website, no more HTML5, users on cell phones can't see it.   It makes me wonder if the video system was ever beta tested at any point in time before being released.

The Instant message system?   Who designed that mess?   It doesn't even expand the typing box when you're typing you can barely see what you're typing half the time.

I could go on and on but it's too late I can't switch to a different platform I already have people on the site.    Dolphin looks very promising and it does an awful lot, but once you start using it, you realize what a half A**ed job the developers did on it.   Everything has a problem somewhere, and nothing on the site works quite right.   I'd personally like to try the registered version, but I will not spend $600 for an unfinished product.   I'd like the option to lease a monthly license to test the mobile app features, but why would I want to pay for a service I'm not using?   If I don't need monthly hosting if I already have a server that obliterates your $199 a month monthly business plan.   Why do you not offer a license lease for people that want to self host?    I'm not paying for a service I'm not using, like the 150GB storage and the shared hosting.  

Thank you, facebookrejects !

You'll find that in Dolphin a lot of initial settings are designed for "easy start". For example video resolution, if set high (or multiple) would stress server on processing and may not be viable for Dolphin sites on shared hosting (which is very common among "beginner" sites).  The messenger/chat is one of the top priorities for a major overhaul now, so it's coming. 

Any other specific issues, please report in detail and we'll schedule the improvements.

As for the leased license... we don't have this option on www.boonex.com/start page yet, but happy to arrange a license-only for you at $29/month. Just write to team@boonex.com and we'll set it up manually. 

Facebook project almost got you there !. 29$only for you. Is this some kind of bribery ? 

I like boonex community but the platform itself needing attention, as i said before simplicity is the key.

the timeline should be simple , and complet system combining notitification/alert, add ads,groups, etc without going redirecting to another page. .

many more...wordpress and joomsocial example for timeline perfection.

Search button should evolved as well like in trident. Add also location to the timeline.Members like simplicity easy navigation and easy access. Not too many buttons and redirecting , load of forms here and there.

thank you

Why so many menu ? I did never understand that.

Thanks will do :)

 I agree. We should have one button that does everything.

Not one button but at least easy access, maybe as you said buttons , one here and one there . i maybe talking bullshit at 8.26am in the morning lol

Not only for them. You are welcome, too. And anyone else. We just didn't list it as an option yet. The pricing page is already cluttered. 

@facebookrejects  With all the changes in 7.2, I wanted more testing before the final release; I thought there should have been more testing before the final release and stated such.  However, I am not the one making such decisions.

The bugs and other issues will get worked out.

Hi Andrew,

I have 10 permanent licenses which I want to sell.

I don't want to but due to unforeseen circumstances I am forced to generate an income to pay medical expenses. My wife was diagnosed with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Decease plus heart failure and I don't have an income also due to medical reasons.

Please assist if possible.

Kind Regards & God Bless

Rusty

ps.. offers can be made by email. admin@sanbr.co.za or Boonex inbox Rusty

Hi there !

I saw today that I just keep one license.

What happen with the other 2 I had before you started this new page?

And as I had / have a permanent license... What means now "Advanced"?

Is there any restriction to functionality?

As I do not have the "free" license which I had before... how can we install a development system to check modules and updates before we update our "live" system or go to install new modules on it?

thanks!

regards,

Björn

Feeling slightly gutted at this announcement having just moved my hosting to TMD.  Licensing is not such a major concern at the moment as I am just using the free license until I can see first hand that Dolphin can run on shared server environment. I'm not convinced Having been butt badly by my previous hosting com.

I want to however add to Facebookrejects comments. As a brand new customer of Boonex I have to say I am not impressed. I am a massive fan of open source and in theory the product is pretty good, but no market leader in terms of functionality.  The complete and utter lack of any up to date documentation means that new users like myself are left floundering. I can not fathom how you can release a product and not back it up with any documentation.  What documents that are available are for previous versions or incomplete and searching for anything useful is a joke.  Even the moderators cannot find their own previous posts.  Google search is offered within the product so how about putting it on your own forums? While you are there, it may be a good idea to split out and properly archive articles for old versions instead of showing them in search results. or am I being too logical?

At the moment I could not recommend Dolphin to prospect clients because of the lack of documentation and the simple fact that if you havent been using the product for a few years, gone through the pain and watched it grow, there is nothing there to really help you.  Unfortunately I didn't realise this until too late. 7.2 is by no means a product that should be on general release. I have suffered both financial and time loss due to some really quite basic issues that should never appear in a product on general release.  But to be fair you do state that 7.1 is the latest stable release (which of course could be out of date like the rest of the website) however all hosting partners are installing the latest 7.2.x.  Why? New users like myself fall into a trap hear and don't realise that they are being forced to the new unfinished product.  A little unfair don't you think? Surely by offering 7.1 by default which has more ducumentation and is by your own admission the stable version, you would present Boonex in a far more favourable way leading to better customer retention and satisfaction.

I sincerely hope that your new hosting partner works out for you.  I can't say I will be going any where near them having looked over their very basic website - screams of a two bit company that really don't know what they are doing, illustrated by the fact they are not even offering the latest patch only 7.3.0 to 7.3.1. Not to mention the complete lack of T&C's, Acceptable Use Policy, SLA etc.  I know none of my IT collegues would entertain this company, but I fear once again that new users are going to be caught out.

Maybe it's time to put the breaks on and take a moment to look at where you are, the journey so far and what has slipped through the cracks.  I don't think anyone would object to the developement timeline being stalled for 6 months if that resulted in updated documentation which is complete and easier to find. We as a the community can even help out, giving an opportunity to share best practice, come together as a community and really make a difference. That's got to be better and in keeping with the ethos of Boonex no? It would certainly reduce the amount of complaining posts cluttering up the forum.