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WHM/cPanel admins and hosting providers, could you share your opinion?
Hi guys, I'm hoping that if you clicked on this, you're a cpanel admin or hosting provider using WHM/cPanel. Some of you already know that I build cPanel plugins and I've released a few products in the past. From my experience so far, this niche is a difficult one to target and I've built my first release of WP Tools which is a cPanel plugin that allows users to quickly install, backup and administer WP websites.
HOWEVER, 2 providers have already told me that they're not interested in this module citing Softaculous as doing the basics which users want... which is install and backup. The idea is not to actually be a softaculous replacement but really a SUPERB product where it creates value to the customer (both the cPanel user and admin).
Trying to make this post as short as possible, I decided to rewrite my previous plugin Apps Installer and bundle it with the WP Tools. I have also added most of the functionality from my other cPanel plugin - Utilities and bundled it as well.
My simple question(s) are there:
As a cPanel admin, now that I've bundled and added additional value to the product, is this plugin tempting enough for you to bite, install and perhaps purchase?
Is the price point in your opinion a fair price point? My launch is intended to be a measly $10 per year (less than $1 dollar per month and if you have multiple servers, I would be willing to further discount it!) - I want as much customers as possible... not just for money... but really to make it a flagship product (if possible).
If you don't think it's worth it, I would appreciate your feedback or suggestions on what could/would tempt you to purchase a plugin. Whether it's a feature or a price adjustment etc.
Please let me know what you think, you can surely be negative but please don't be mean if you can avoid it!
Thanks for taking the time as usual to read my posts! I really appreciate it!
Comments
http://www.dovetechnologies.net/whmsuperb.html
well, if im interested in two, each one has differente license, i will try them again this week and give my opinion.
"I want as much customers as possible... not just for money... but really to make it a flagship product"
Rethink that phrase. Aim to provide the best product possible, then the customers will come by themselves. Also note that there is probably nothing more annoying than having to support a LAARGE customer base on a buggy product. Many customers also may need a lot of support, even more if the product itself is already buggy and/or rushed.
Hi @dedicados, thanks for your quick response, don't use the old plugins on that page, I will be decommissioning those in favour of WP Tools + Utilities + Apps Installer as an all in one product which is cheaper AND a single license.
Thank you for the quick response @Ympker, feedback greatly appreciated! Yes, I agree definitely and that's what I factored in when I said the statement. I realized from the past with this niche that while value is important, price sensitivity has been extremely important to the consumers in this niche especially with "similar" products which I am trying to avoid comparing the product because it would be comparing an apple to an orange (so to speak). I do testing from time to time and most of the bugs are ironed out during my testing phase before release (with the exception of Apps Installer which I am still doing constant checks and tests).
Support is something I will be doing better, I intend to implement a ticketing system and also use incoming requests to add to a knowledge base for users. I have to admit, the highest priority has been testing to reduce support requests at this point but again, that is because I would rather the product work on install than have a customer complain about it (if it was in my control to avoid it)
which one should i use?
edit:
i see is: http://www.dovetechnologies.net/wptools.html
would be nice if can be used in a single server without cpanel. because with cpanel i already have softaculous.
Hey @richarde
It depends. I'm a Plesk guy and love their WP Toolkit, have a look into that as an example.
If it had a means of staging Wordpress sites and you could then push changes to the live production site, then yes, I'd be fully on board.
$10 is very fair. If it works anything like Plesk's WP Toolkit, you're doing yourself a disservice by offering it that low.
Aside from the aforementioned suggestion to add staging abilities, if your plugin was able to monitor plugins/themes for updates (alerted to the server admin) that'd be pretty decent.
You're absolutely right that it's a niche market, and hosts would be right in saying that Softaculous is doing the job for them, although your market research sample is rather small. If you market this to web design agencies they might be interested.
Hi @dedicados unfortunately the plugin uses a lot of cPanel hooks particularly for the automation of creating databases and users. Maybe in the future I could branch off to a stand alone version but I've been trying to stay far from creating and support my own stack. In terms of supporting an entire stack for $10 per year, I have a feeling I'll be shooting my customers in the foot which is something I don't want to do (also shooting myself in the foot). But it's still a suggestion I'll keep in mind for when I've exhausted development on the current app.
Also, remember a plus to this license compared to Softaculous is that my licenses don't cost more for dedicated servers. One flat fee per year for the service. No unexpected rises in price etc once locked in. I really don't intend to alter prices since I want it to the market to want it similarly to how yearly vpses from reputable companies do it.
Hi @ElliotJ, thank you for that detailed response, really appreciate it. It doesn't do staging at the moment but it's definitely a nice suggestion that I will think about in terms of implementing. I can surely do it but I will have to think about the process involved to make it easy and safe for the user's websites (especially the live site). Thanks for this suggestion, something I didn't think about in expanding the niche further. The niche still requires the WHM/cPanel admins to make a decision on purchasing so I'm not too sure they see the value in the product though I believe the value is there.
I thought about the monitoring themes / plugins and yes definitely something I want to add in the next upcoming update. I might begin working on that today and see where I reach. Thanks for that suggestion.
It can already upgrade core or upgrade plugins but the user has to choose to do it. Particularly because there is an odd chance that upgrades could break something (or at least my concern that it can). I will definitely consider adding an option to allow the user to autoupdate.
One of the challenges has been advertising this type of product to the right people. Most advertisers don't have an option for this sort of niche. It's a bit frustrating.
Thanks so much for the feedback, I hope to bring you updates on some of the features you just mentioned there soon!
Actually a dedicated license lifetime owned for softaculous is around $75(was when I got one myself back in 2013/2014)
That was a good deal, it seems to be $150 now for dedi and $75 for VPS.
Do you think this is a better method of selling than $10 dollars per year for 7 years? I'm wondering how they actually sustain development (considering if most their users did that, they'd probably dead pool but then again, they do have other products to get profits from)
well not exactly the price point and well softaculous is the defacto standard in the hosting industry makes it very hard to survive in cpanel/whm development only which is like my vps service I used to do only vps services but after figuring out that is unsustainable by itself I started doing custom development of my modules/plugins/etc for blesta/whmcs and licensing them and selling them to have extra products/revenue to fall back on.
@risharde i saw you have some about spam notice, or alert.
is that included in the app?
WHMSUPERB Wordpress Tools + Apps Installer + Utilities
I understand how you feel, sorry to hear about the VPS and total understand your motive for the diversification of your company. Yes, I think it is a bit unfortunate it that softaculous is the defacto standard because there is so much more that can be added to cPanel and yet the adoption is focused only on premade scripts which is quite a bummer.
The WPTools bundle is slowly increasing in value and development so hopefully admins and users will see it in a different light (I'm crossing my fingers)
Hi @dedicados, yes it is but its not a blacklist checker, what it does is shows you if messages from your server is being sent as spam so you can resolve the issues. I still have a few tweaks to do on it but essentially this can be used so you can see if any of your cpanel users are sending out spam
Why people should chose your product over softaculous? Because this will be your competitor.
Your product support 1 script when softaculous supports 500.
Can you do to softaculous what softaculous did to fantastico?
I suggest to invest your time in something that has more potential.
Hi @AndreiGhesi, firstly the product was not suppose to be a softaculous competitor. It was firstly designed to help WP users administer and solve problems with their Wordpress websites. It was not meant to be just an installer.
Secondly, its now bundled with Apps Installer which installs over 20 of the most popular web apps. Not sure I will ever reach 400 like softaculous but loads of scripts in that 400 list seems to be 'crap'. So I will focus on providing the ones which seem to be stable and have been on the scene for a while.
Thirdly, with Utilities, WHM admins also get a few features to help them maintain their servers etc.
I am still continuing to add more features to make it a unique product that gives to both the frontend cPanel users and the backend WHM admins features to make their lives easier.
Thanks for your comment, really appreciate it
I was going to suggest for you to do something like https://watchful.li/ for Wordpress.
but as it seems these guys already added WordPress to their product (used to be Joomla only).
Well, even now that they added WordPress, I still think that you might do better being their competitor than competing with Softaculous.
Hey @paulof, thank you for responding, I do apologize for taking a while to respond back to you. It does look like an interesting product and I agree with what you are saying. I want to reiterate to those out there reading this topic that WP Tools was not supposed to compete with Softaculous. However, due to the comparison and association with Softaculous with the majority of people I have spoken with, it will be extremely difficult to change their minds and this is why I have bundled the Apps Installer into the product. Really it is to ensure the users that they get a value-packed product.
Thanks for the suggestion, I'll be looking closely at watchful. I've added a few more utilities and fixes to WPTools for those of you who haven't checked it out yet.
I have more to come soon - I'm looking into staging for Wordpress or server io administration in the next release.
can't find it. i have just installed the trial in a server.
Hey @dedicados, please check in WHM, once successfully installed, you should see WHMSuperb - WP Tools. In there, you should see a mail section. Afk console, as soon as I get back, will try to post a screenshot if you can't find it.
how to remove it?
Seems like a very good product. However, UI needs to be refreshed with a new unified set of icons imho.