XO pricing evolution

At Vates, we've been always 100% transparent about our development processes, quality control and the conduct of our businesses. In 2014, when we started selling Xen Orchestra, we offered 3 paid tiers for companies of different sizes and needs. Those three tiers were intended to cover most types of structures that we identified at the time (you can even read the original blog post here).

Today we are announcing a change of this pricing, and explaining the reasons behind it, in the same fully transparent manner.

TL;DR

For those who are not really interested in the causes of this change, here are the main changes in pricing that will take place starting October 1st for new customers (and at your renewal date for older customers):

An evolving economic context

In 2019 with the COVID-19 crisis, 2020 and 2021 with various lock-downs around the world, and finally 2022 with the start of the war in Ukraine, the world is going through a difficult period overall. We at Vates are thankful that we are in a country that is at peace and where the epidemic is "relatively under control".

One of the direct consequences of this complex period is that global inflation, which had been virtually non-existent until now, has become very high. This has a direct impact on our current team working at Vates, and since we want to keep people on board while continuing to hire people (at a higher price), it's inevitable that we need simply… more money!

With this in mind, first and foremost, we must adapt and change the pricing of our solutions. We will, during the year to come, continue to monitor the inflation and might adjust our pricing according to the global context.

IT job market and skills

In line with inflation, the cost of hiring in the IT sector has risen considerably over the last 3 years. We attach particular importance to the quality of the profiles we recruit, both to ensure a satisfactory level of development and to deliver quality support to all of our users. As you know, our vision of support is unique and we want to continue to offer this quality of support in the future.

This price change is a way to keep allowing us to grow our team with skilled people at all levels, while keeping up with revenue for our existing talents.

A necessary change

Since 2015, the year of its first paid release, Xen Orchestra has gained:

• 84 releases
• 400 new features
• 3 times larger development team
• 3 times larger support team

While our pricing has remained unchanged for the past eight years, our team has grown steadily, developing Xen Orchestra and strengthening its performance, stability and security over that time, with our steady monthly release pace.

Xen Orchestra (and XCP-ng, our virtualization platform) can now easily compare to some of the major players in the virtualization market (Gartner has even listed us and put us in their Market Virtualization Guide!), and yet our pricing has remained the same since launch. One could argue we should probably have raised it sooner. And I agree, we did not spend enough time to think about it. But now, external factors made us realize how critical it is today.

So we can say with confidence that both the tools we provide and the level of support that goes with them is much higher than it was 8 years ago - so we feel that this change is not only legitimate, but necessary in order to maintain our momentum and continue to deliver in the years to come.

And ever more to come

Obviously, this great evolution in 8 years is in fact not the only "product" related reason: today, we are investing more than we ever did, continuing to improve our stack. Just on Xen Orchestra, we are now working on XO Lite, XO 6, a brand new UI build with an UX designer, a new backup process that will be a lot faster and more secure (encryption, compression, deduplication…). Without forgeting about our huge R&D investments in XCP-ng!

XO 6: what’s on the horizon

A quick review of our progress on XO 6 front, the full rewrite of Xen Orchestra UI and part of the server!

XO BlogJulien Fontanet

And as we continue to do since the start, we are transparently sharing what's going on, like our roadmap for Xen Orchestra and also XCP-ng. There's exciting new features and improvements coming in the following months, so stay tuned!

Finally, we wanted to collectively thank you for your trust in our products and values we share together: providing an integrated, secure, truly open source and community driven solution for your IT infrastructure.

Pricing guide for existing subscribers

Here is a quick recap on what it means for you, as an existing subscriber.

For a monthly subscription

To smooth the transition and giving you some time, we agreed to make this new pricing change for you only starting in October. For example, if you subscribed to Xen Orchestra Premium plan on February the 12th, you will only be charged with the new price on October the 12th during your monthly renew.

For a yearly subscription

The new pricing will be taken into account on your renewal date. If you subscribed for 1 year in February, then the new pricing will apply on your renew next year! If you purchased a 3 year subscription, congrats, your price will stay the same for the remaining time of your contract 😉

New offers coming in the following months

Since we are changing the pricing of Xen Orchestra, we also wanted to provide new competitive offers for people interested in the entire combo "XCP-ng + Xen Orchestra". Those offers will be tailored to be easier to adopt and scale better for your infrastructure. Contact us if you want to learn more before it's officially announced!