XF 2.3 ?

[AndrewSimm]

Time brings expectations

 

[Ivancas]

Patient, or frustrated and disengaging? The two can be easily confused.

It will be at least 2.5 years, looking increasingly possible it will be 3+ years, between 1st dot point releases for XF. That's not patience, that's borderline negligence and certainly arrogance towards the customer base. The lack of features information and a decent/reasonable release cycle speaks more to XF's value of its customers than it does of customer patience. I've very much tempered my interest in 2.3 new functionality, primarily because I think that I will be largely disappointed and that 2.5+ years of development will not produce the sort of advancement or innovation that I would expect.

And whilst XF makes customers wait, competitor products have innovated and released new functionality that is superbly impressive. Functionality comparison is now at a point where I feel XF is very unlikely to ever reach parity, and only ever able to try to copy and catch-up. Perhaps as a reflection of its slightly cheaper entry level and annual renewal pricing. I want my community to thrive and be at the forefront of what functionality I can provide for their content and engagement, not playing catch-up to other alternative communities and arguably not that far in front of free alternatives.

In the 10+ years I have been a customer of XF, for the first time ever I have let my annual license/support/updates renewal lapse. Partly as a protest against the totally unacceptable long release cycle and lack of upcoming functionality information, and partly because I see no reason or value in renewing at this time. Perhaps XF and I no longer align as to what is a reasonable product release cycle and what sort of functionality and engagement I want for my community, we certainly don't align as to what is arrogance towards the customer base.

For the short-term, I'm waiting to see what 2.3 brings to the table and if I don't feel its adequate for 2.5+ years of development and annual renewals, as well as some sort of commitment to a much more reasonable release cycle, then I'll probably have to give serious consideration of whether XF will help or constrain me to deliver what I want for my community going forward.

Hell yeah, but did you test their cloud hosting? They spend several years working on it for sure.

 

[Andy.N]

What happened to @Mike?
He hasn't posted since 2021 and I haven't been around much to know.

 

[duderuud]

AFAIK he has left the team

 

[Mr Lucky]

innovation that I would expect.

I’m all for innovations but can you list some of the innovations? Or better still make them as suggestions?

 

[eL_]

Going "THIS IS SPARTA" against the devs, it's not an option!

 

[Sebastiaan]

Patient, or frustrated and disengaging? The two can be easily confused.

True, my post was also meant sarcastically.

Hell yeah, but did you test their cloud hosting? They spend several years working on it for sure.

Have you seen the prices? Starts from $60, then I really prefer a VPS anyway.

Why does XF not inform the customers about xf 2.3, this is bad for the image as a company and in the long run customers just walk away too.

 

[TPerry]

Have you seen the prices? Starts from $60, then I really prefer a VPS anyway.

But then add in what RELIABLE email and hosting costs.
So, you DON"T have to the initial $345 buy-in for all the products that come with it, nor the (let's call it) $20 a month for an adequate VPS to run the equivalent add-ons (ElasticSearch takes some horsepower), nor the time that you have to devote (or pay) someone to administer the server itself (figure another $50-75 a month in basic costs).
So, let's see.

Year 1
Cloud = $720
Self-hosted = $1185 (yes, your time IS worth money)

Year 2
Cloud = $720
Self-Hosted = $890

Now, that doesn't even include outside mail hosting by such as Amazon SES or similar... nor does it include the costs of additional email accounts for bounced/unsubscribe. Yes, you can do that with a panel... but then you have to add that panel cost into the mixture.
For many, the simple fact of now having to mess with administration of a VPS to perform adequately (which most shared hosting plans will fail miserably on) is worth well more than the estimated cost.

Personally... the cloud is not attractive to me for other reasons... but cost is not ultimately one of them.

 

[Frode789]

But then add in what RELIABLE email and hosting costs.
So, you DON"T have to the initial $345 buy-in for all the products that come with it, nor the (let's call it) $20 a month for an adequate VPS to run the equivalent add-ons (ElasticSearch takes some horsepower), nor the time that you have to devote (or pay) someone to administer the server itself (figure another $50-75 a month in basic costs).
So, let's see.

Year 1
Cloud = $720
Self-hosted = $1185 (yes, your time IS worth money)

Year 2
Cloud = $720
Self-Hosted = $890

Now, that doesn't even include outside mail hosting by such as Amazon SES or similar... nor does it include the costs of additional email accounts for bounced/unsubscribe. Yes, you can do that with a panel... but then you have to add that panel cost into the mixture.
For many, the simple fact of now having to mess with administration of a VPS to perform adequately (which most shared hosting plans will fail miserably on) is worth well more than the estimated cost.

Personally... the cloud is not attractive to me for other reasons... but cost is not ultimately one of them.

LOL. I have costs nowhere near this for self hosts, but YMMV I guess.
Cloud is expensive. But yes, for some it may be a better option.

 

[Sebastiaan]

But then add in what RELIABLE email and hosting costs.
...

Cloud is the complete package, so you pay for services you may not need.

For $50 I have my own VPS with Plesk complete with mail server.
Even though the prices are not that much different, I still have the feeling of more freedom.

 

[Forsaken]

Cloud is the complete package, so you pay for services you may not need.

For $50 I have my own VPS with Plesk complete with mail server.
Even though the prices are not that much different, I still have the feeling of more freedom.

View attachment 282117

Think he was going from the stance of someone with little experience, thus why there's administration costs included.

If you can handle all the server stuff yourself, cost is obviously cheaper.

 

[Nicolas FR]

For $50 I have my own VPS with Plesk complete with mail server.

+ ~$10/month for XF licenses renewal (XF + XFMG + XFRM + XFES) you get the same price.
But XF Cloud brings more tranquillity... You care about NOTHING but your forum...

I don't have the budget for it but if I did I would have been on XF Cloud a long time ago.
And then quite to give $60 per month as much as give them to XenForo.

 

[TPerry]

Cloud is expensive. But yes, for some it may be a better option.

Really? How much is your time as an IT person worth? When I do work now for local companies, it's at $150 an hour. And I spend at least 4-5 hours a month in MY server doing updates and tuning. So even at 4 hours a month, that's $600 worth my TIME when I could be doing work elsewhere..

Those OTHER costs are pretty much going to be standard.. as you have a FIXED cost for the initial purchase of XF (and all the add-ons that the cloud provides) and then you have a FIXED amount for the yearly renewals. And to get a decent enough server (VPS) to be able to run the site AND ElasticSearch is going to be an easy $20 a month.

 

[TPerry]

Cloud is the complete package, so you pay for services you may not need.

For $50 I have my own VPS with Plesk complete with mail server.
Even though the prices are not that much different, I still have the feeling of more freedom.

View attachment 282117

So, in effect you are at $600 a year for the hosting, $345 for the initials licenses that you get from the cloud service equivalent (after the 1st year then another $100 a year for renewals) - so you are at $945 for the first year, then $700 for each year afterwards, meanwhile, that does NOT include ANY server admin time devoted to the site, so again, figure 4 hours a month on server related functions @ 200 a month going rate for a half-way decent IT admin. So now you are at $900 a month. Remind me... how much more is that than the $720 a month quoted for the base package?

My point is... the price is not really a valid argument if you actually put VALUE on the time you spend in the server admin functions. And time IS money.
As for "price"... I'm getting just about as much as you are for less than 1/2 what you are paying.... and I'm not dependent upon a control panel to do so, and probably have a LOT better mail deliverability since I'm using Amazon SES... but once more... the below sentence applies.
BUT, as I said, I'm realistic... I know that my time IS worth money, and it's counted into the equation.
My costs are going to likely increase shortly as I'm looking at getting ES, and that's going to take another VPS set up to run it on for MY preference... and that's ALSO going to involve more of my administrative time (read monetary value).

One major problem I have is that they are STILL stuck on restricting number of page views... even IPS has gotten beyond that point now.... albeit their base monthly cost is about $39 more, but their base plan also give you 10 times the storage that the base XF plan does.

Personally... the SaaS/Cloud services aren't for me... I prefer to have more control... but as I also said, it's NOT based upon a major cost difference.

 

[Sebastiaan]

So it has a different reason for everyone, putting time into my server I don't mind. I don't have to do this at a cost.

 

[TPerry]

So it has a different reason for everyone, putting time into my server I don't mind. I don't have to do this at a cost.

Doesn't matter if you "mind" or not.... your time doing it HAS VALUE. When sitting down to and doing the basic economics of ANY business, you have to count your time as having a value.
The simplest way to ascertain that value is based upon how much you make an hour at your current job... and as I said, my contract work for IT related functions runs $150 an hour. ANY time I devote to my site should be based upon what an equivalent cost of doing labor for someone else for that time equates to.
To base it upon the "it doesn't count because I enjoy it" is disingenuous at best... if you were doing that work for someone else, would you be doing it for free?

 

[Chris D]

If you can handle all the server stuff yourself, cost is obviously cheaper.

Somewhat of a misnomer, though certainly reasonable. This was our presumption too.

Many Cloud customers, in fact, are perfectly capable of the server and technical stuff. They just don't want to do it anymore. Gives them the capacity to focus on other things such as launching other communities or building the community they already have.

And time is undervalued in this context. "Time is money" etc.

The increased cost should be somewhat offset by the time saved.

 

[Mendalla]

Love Cloud in principle, but not happening for me.

The site I run is low volume, doesn't use first party add-ons, and has no revenue stream beyond donations. We are working fine on fairly inexpensive shared hosting with no real need for more right now. US$720 is something like CA$980 right now and our budget is under CA$300 most years. Even accounting for my time, which isn't really much due to the shared hosting, I doubt our annual spend is that high.

But if I was starting something more ambitious? Sure. I can see value in there.

Many Cloud customers, in fact, are perfectly capable of the server and technical stuff. They just don't want to do it anymore. Gives them the capacity to focus on other things such as launching other communities or building the community they already have.

This = me. Forum administration is my hobby, not my career. I would rather focus on working with Xenforo itself than on infrastructure like server, OS, DBMS administration. So, if I need more than I can get with shared, then Cloud is probably my next option.

 

[Chris D]

US$720

Just worth noting that you save 10% if you pay annually each year. I appreciate not everyone's finances allow for a one-off spend annually but just wanted to make that clear. So that's $648 per year.

But yeah in some cases the financial reality just isn't viable so I accept that for some DIY is the only option.

 

[Frode789]

For many hobbyists, cloud would be a significantly increased cost though. That isn't to say that cloud serving is bad or overpriced.. Just how it is.
At least If you have enough with shared hosting, which can cost you like 20-80 ish usd per year. (depending on if you want the cheapest or ones with a bit more features/speed). Yes you get XF license and some other minor stuff, but still it's far from 650 usd.
But yes, if you can budget it and want to save some time/hazzle, go for it, it's no doubt a good package.