When you get to 51, you become a paying customer. All 51 is subject to pay, with cost-neutral options. You may be bring your invoice to $0 even if you use more than 50 or more…
Firstly, we have AEP paid licences on all our endpoints.
Now if you thought for a single moment how MPSs operate in the real world rather than simply push out the ‘cost neutral’ mantra, you’d know that we very often migrate clients… We ship out replacement equipment etc. how can we preconfigure these endpoints and test them etc without temporarily doubling the number of systems in the platform pre decommissioning the old ones… The ‘free’ endpoints (for all) would have covered this situation. Also there is the situation where new clients have periods to run with their old av protection and desire to use it until expiry. The lack of the ‘free’ endpoints as a buffer for larger MPSs is in my mind more of an urgency than offering them to the smaller guys, although I understand they need help starting out. This has still not been thought out well, nore the concerns of the larger clients listened too.
Just remember you also get 30 days free trial which should allow you to do all that you need with swapping out PC’s etc.
So how will that work? Lets think about this logically…
Say we have 1000 endpoints all with active AEP licences… One of our clients needs 30 pcs swapping out… We configure them and add them to the platform… ship them out… Are you saying catagorically that Comodo will know that 30 of the 1030 endpoints we now have on the platform are within the 30days? How will they know that? and is that 30days from the point the new endpoint is added to the system or in any calendar month? It’s just not clear. What if we then remove the old 30 and transfer their licences to the new 30 bringing us back to 1000… but then another client needs 20 shipping out and I now have 1020 on the platform in the second month… will Comodo know it’s a different 20 to the ones in the previous month?
It would all be so much easier to administer if there was a number of free endpoints for all so as to give some buffer between licenced and unlicenced endpoints.
We can and will work around it somehow… if that means putting new systems on our other RMM platform temporarily whilst they reach their destination and are tested then so be it… just a lot of messing about when it would be so much easier to just have the leeway of an allowance of free endpoints and put them on the indended plaform initially.
Finally… This wont help the smaller guys stay on and grow to be paying customers… The cost jump from 50 free to 51 paid endpoints will simply mean they’ll open a second account with another 50 free. All this really does is inconvenience the larger guys like ourselves who legitimately licence all our endpoints.
It’s simply not thought out well.
I will be honest, I do not know the full details as of yet.
I had @melih reach out to me and say they doing this to help in this exact situation.
There is still details to come on how all this works to come as it is still not fully finished yet. But as we know more we will help explain all!
Hi @Ed_Johnson
The first 50 endpoints are free until to switch to cost-neutral model with the 51. endpoint as I mentioned earlier. In your example, if you have 1000 endpoints with active AEP, then test out 30 new endpoints and enable AEP for these within your billing period, then they will not be charged. You don’t need to enable AEP immediately, it’s ok to enable within the invoice period. Or if you swap these 30 devices with the old ones and you still have 1000 at the end of the period, with AEP licenses, all will be within cost-neutral model and your bill will be $0 again. But if you have 1030 devices and 1000 license when the invoice is create then 30 devices will be charged.
To clarify the periods: all the calculations are made at the end of the billing period. This period starts with the first registration date and is 1 month after that. For existing customers, it’s 1st of January 2020 and the first invoice will be created at 31st of Jan. At that day, the system will check the active endpoints, calculate the number of AEP license, and the difference will be invoiced.
If on that day you have 1020 devices and 1000 AEP license, then 20 device will be charged.
I feel that we have been absolutely stitched up here. I’ve just logged into the systemt his morning to be prompted for credit card details on ITArian, and it appears that i’m about to get a “post usage” bill for hundreds of end points.
At no point has an account manager contacted me to tell me about the pricing changes, and to make matters worse, I remember when ITArian “split” away from Comodo, being assured on these forums by a senior member of ITArian, that the product would remain free always, no mention of Cost Neutral at that time.
I have enjoyed working with the ITArian product set and seeing it grow, but as others have said, being a BETA tester for many bugs have meants we have already had to invest in other tools (such as TeamViewer) to meet requirements.
I’m not happy and will be migrating away from ITArian ASAP.
Hello @curatrix_pl ,
First of all, I am sorry on behalf of the company that no one has contacted you.
ITarian - Comodo split was done in order to seperate platform focuses. ITarian - focusing on IT Management, Comodo Dragon - focusing on Active Breach Protection.
We have already announced that ITarian platform is going to be a paid platform.
You will be able to continue using the Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) capabilities of ITarian Endpoint Manager up to 50 devices completely for free. If you have more than 50 devices, you will have to pay for all devices. However, we introduced a cost-neutral pricing solution in order to reduce your costs.
You will be able to reduce your RMM costs if you have the below licenses
1- Advanced Endpoint Protection (AEP)
2- Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR)
Total seats of your licenses will be added up and your enrolled devices will be covered by those seats.
Example: You have 100 licensed AEP seats, you have 120 active workstation endpoints. -> you are going to pay for 20 endpoints
About pricing conditions, our sales team will reach you as soon as possible.
If you have more questions, I would be more than happy to answer.
Best Regards,
Ilgaz Yucecengiz
Technical Product Manager,
Endpoint Manager, ITarian
The issue isn’t that the product is becoming paid for, the issue is that MELIH promised nearly 2 years ago that the product would be free forever, no discussions about cost neutrality at that point, and secondly, that i find out when my self and members of my staff login to the platform to be requested for credit card details. I’ve not spoken to an account manager since it was Comodo One, and the fact that it has taken me to rant on a forum for a member of your team to actually reach out is extermely poor account management.
I’ve instructed my team today to move our 500+ end points away from ITArian, and they are in the process of removing all agents from your platform and moving them to an alternative (paid for) provider. Had someone actually had the decency to manage the account, I would have had no quarel with migrating to a paid for platform, but given that we were promised a free platform, to then get a shock of “enter credit card details or pay overage charge manually” alert on the account is frankly unacceptable.
That is the last thing we want to happen. I understand your frustration with not having an Account Manager, but that has certainly changed moving forward. Are you available for a phone call today?
I just got off the phone with Joe, @ItarianJoe , who was able to answer my questions and get my licensing issues resolved. I agree with everyone here about the “free forever” statement, but price out the cost of having network monitoring, endpoint monitoring, managed antivirus, ticketing, so on and so forth. There are other pricing models (per technician) but those generally are ONLY your RMM tool. You have to integrate with another AV and some type of remote access. There is no end-all solution for next to nothing to purchase. I have been on the ITarian platform for a year, and it has had some sweeping improvements in only that time. It costs money to have the support staff that you are seeing responding to messages more expediently than in the past, and there are now real account managers. It took a total of two phone calls (One was really just introductions) and I had my licenses issued and purchased and have already applied them to clients. Reach out to Joe, take a deep breath and don’t take it out on him, and I am sure he will get you taken care of just like he did for us. After working with Joe I do feel more confident moving forward with the product, and confident in the future.
Tyler it was a pleasure speaking with you today and I am looking forward to continuing working with you in the future!
If anyone else has concerns or questions please email me directly at joseph.jaghab@itarian.com for immediate assistance.
Dear all,
@ItarianJoe is doing a great at job of helping people and is the first success team guy doing this well. On top of him helping we are also a distributor helping and supplying licenses to people in £, $ & € across many countries.
Either route wch out to Jo or us for help.
Robin@strobe-it.co.uk
Regards
Robin
@ItarianJoe - I’ve replied to your DM and am happy to have a conversation next week.
We started out by using everything on offer, but over time we have had to migrate services due to performance issues or features lacking.
- We currently only use the RMM part (script deployment, patch management, software installs) as other parts are not upto scratch of a paid for solution.
- We deploy Microsoft Defender ATP and Office 365 ATP for AV and Security requirements.
- We stopped using CCS when issues with updates to the software were leaving customers vulnerable due to AV not running (and inadequate reporting in C1 to identify).
- It was also off putting to find that it was cheaper for us to buy the license from other MSPs that are significantly smaller than ourselves, rather than Comodo or ITArian directly.
- We deploy WebTitan DNS Filtering for all our customers
- Comodo Dome was used initially, however, its pricing was unrealistic when compared with products already established in the market.
- We already pay for and use TeamViewer
- This is due to ITArian not working in some customer environments, whereby other products working (such as TeamViewer, AnyDesk, Splashtop, and even the old depreciated RMM tool).
- We also had periods of time where we felt we were constantly telling customers that we couldn't connect to their machines due to our remote software being offline.
- Support has always required us to do advanced troubleshooting of their products before getting involved and this was too time consuming when trying to resolve customer issues.
- We use PRTG for network monitoring (as ITArian doesn't have anything close to the functionality that PRTG offers)
- SNMP monitoring was something that was promised by ITArian, even advertised at one point on the website, but never delivered on in a way that worked for MSPs for monitoring of networking equipment (such as switches and routers).
- We use AlienVault for network vulnerability and security monitoring
- ITArian has only recently added CVS based reporting to its platform, but its limited to Windows and nearly always out of date.
- We are starting deploying "Azure Sentinel" for customers Office 365 and Azure estate monitoring
- No cloud (O365, Azure, AWS, Google Cloud) service monitoring in ITArian
- Our BD team uses Zoho CRM
- As ITArian was a stripped out version of another Free product
- It was also missing features (such as Outlook Integration) that existing in the original version of their CRM
- Our ticketing system is Zoho Desk
- This provides my helpdesk team with a simple ticketing system that enables them to quickly respond to customer quieries wihtout spending 10 minutes logging the ticket to begin with.
- It integrates directly with the CRM so the BD team can report on tickets and service levels
- Provides an easy to use customer portal with KB and chat functions
- Links with other tools in Zoho (such as Books for account management)
- It has 3rd party integration with TeamViewer and our Phone System.
As i stated before, i’ve no issue with the product becoming paid for, but i’ve not had any account management since it was Comodo, and even that was only for a short period of onboarding before the account manager left and i’ve not had a single point of contact since.
Its not about the cost, its about principals. I already have to pay for significant services that either ITArian doesn’t provide, are implemented poorly or have suffered from unreliability in the past. The issue is purely account management at this stage and the feeling of not being a valued enough cusotmer to have a courtesy email or call from an account manager to discuss upcoming changes. For $1.10 per device, i would have likely paid for the RMM, had I been given the proper attention and warning to begin with. As is, we’ve made the decision to move to a platform that offers feature parity with the RMM part of ITArian and the move works started yesterday
I’m in the exact position as @curatrix_pl and feel the same way. C1 entered the market with an alpha release product cobbled together from open source projects, etc. They marketed it as “Free Forever” to steal part of the market (anyone dumb enough to buy into the lie) since their product was, and still is, uncompetitive for price vs. features. They then preyed on us users to do beta testing and review for them for several years while developing their product further.
Now they feel their product is finally worth something, they’re simply skipping to the “charge customers for whatever we can get out of them” stage of the MSP software vendor lifecycle. This is pretty textbook / SOP for these types of companies, except for the completely predatory nature of lying in the first place just to steal some of the market share, that’s a Comodo Special (look up the other shady stuff they’ve done/do).
I guess I was just hopeful that this project would be a different story. Despite the obvious high risk, knowing they were probably lying, I tried out C1 anyways. I try to be optimistic since every once and a while I do find a good product with developers who are honest and have genuine/transparent motives.
Time to start migrating my customers’ workstations to our new vendors. It’s unfortunate, but I suppose I was prepared for the risk/cost of this outcome already. Just sad the time has now come.
We’ve already found solid AV/AM for a much better price point and licensing model than C1, which frankly, is a bit ridiculous for how not reliable it is (I still have false-positives all the time, for well-known software such as Chrome & Firefox).
Maybe we could start compiling a list of alternatives and feature/price comparison to Comodo product offerings. It might help their devs/staff to realize where their product is actually at in the market and how it stacks up to the competition.
@RoninMedia ive replied to your other post but I think it would be best for us to have a phone call for a quick discussion. In regards to “solid AV/AM at a better price” is something I would like to specifically address. Have you ever seen a demonstration with one of our security engineers?
this is something I can arrange for you and I would be more than happy to discuss some of the discounting we can provide for our MSPs.
This started as a free product. There ARE improvements if you have been on the platform. We have used it for 1 year. To say it has not benefited our business would be absurd. Is everything perfect? No, but no solution is perfect. Thats why we chose to stay with ITarian. Any solution would have taken more time invested, more configuration, the purchase of more services (Some of which we are purchasing anyways and bundling with ITarian)
If you could buy licenses cheaper direct, and you AREN’T a distributor, what incentive would you have to use the distributors? What incentive would distributors have to be distributors? This is fairly standard.
The frustration from some of you over the retraction of free forever is comical. Have you never heard the term “nothing in life is free”? Would you prefer ad’s plastered all over the dashboard and popups to your customers where the agent is installed to fund the infrastructure? You’re technology professionals, you must understand the resources it takes to operate something like this? If you just want to complain about the fact it’s no longer free, take your ball and go home. I can only imagine the staff is as tired as I am of hearing some of the complaints about the pennies per endpoint cost. You cant possibly tell me you were marketing to your customers “FREE ANTIVIRUS” and that’s why this upsets you? Surely you had some overhead? And for the monthly cost it is to provide that AV per endpoint, you should be able to recoup that from your customers fairly easily. Or don’t if you feel it isn’t worth the cost. And if that’s the case, why are you here? There are plenty of other choices on the market. No solution is perfect. We do what we do, because we know how to find all the parts and pieces to secure, monitor, and maintain client infrastructures. I’m not saying this is greatest thing since sliced bread, I’m just saying most of these arguments are silly.
I should have expected this to go the way other Comodo products have gone, beginning with CAV. Cobble together a substandard, half-baked product and offer it for free. Gradually improve it into a barely passable product, then start charging for it. To this day I wouldn’t use Comodo security products if they were free. I’ve tested them several times on my own equipment, including very recently. I implemented C1/Itarian to provide a gateway from break-fix to managed. After years of development, the RMM is slightly better than mediocre, the patch management is a little better than that, and everything else including remote management and helpdesk is pretty poor. All but the helpdesk were worth trudging through for free, but I can’t imagine paying any amount of money for this product. I guess I will just go back to unmanaged and managed clients, instead of offering a ‘half-managed’ option.
Like others, I am very disappointed since we were promised FREE FOREVER (in caps, I think) when this thing started. I’m just glad I didn’t invest my whole business model into it.
@kw00 Which Comodo AV product are you referring to? Was it our Advanced Endpoint Protection? Was Auto Containment configured properly?
I would really like to see a poll to see how everyone’s feels in regards to if Comodo/Itarian made money from charging its customers how many of you have the confidence in Comodo/Itarian to boost it’s development and support of its products, for me I believe that they would do a pretty darn good job.