The majority of commercial forum software is now following a general trend which offers a version for the cloud aka SaaS. In some cases i.e. Invision Community (IPS) it's resulted in the cloud version offering functionality not available in the self install. As far as Xenforo is concerned the time spent developing and maintaining the cloud version has resulted in a significant delay in development of both the self install and possibly the version.
It's becoming clear that forum software offered as a SaaS solution is almost certainly the future but how do you feel about this?
IPS is trying to get most to move over to their own system to cloud hosting. I'm still running my own cloud self-hosting since it's cheaper than what IPS is asking for. Plus with self-hosting, you have more power and whatnot, plus I host and run two websites and whatnot.
Starting cost for IPS hosting is like $80 a month OMG - not for me. IPS is not much nowadays compared to when I started.
I'm sure you are right. I think in the long run SaaS is something we are all going to have to accept unless we are willing to migrate to open-source products.
Personally I saw this coming some while ago and took the decision to run almost all my forums on open-source software. I'm lucky in that I have an extremely experienced coder capable of providing most of what I need from the likes of SMF. Without him I'm not sure what I'd do to future proof my sites.
I have noticed that all the paid software has a cloud feature now, and they're usually more expensive than self hosting with the exception of vBulletin, it's actually cheaper to use their cloud services. Still I guess it's good for those who want to use paid software, but don't know how to manage their forum via self hosting.
You can definitely understand why these companies are moving towards SaaS with a subscription model. That is guaranteed revenue coming in each month. The revenue with self hosting could vary drastically, but they’re generally getting a lump sum upfront, and then little bits of money for updates after that.
I think SaaS projects are gonna crash sooner than later. An investor (or investors) are calling out on SaaS's bullshit or bluff. One post had a spreadsheet showing the erratic funding for SaaS business models.
This is because the customer to pay ratio not only fluctuates, the margin is low because of the varying attributes such as cost per customer to the scale of customer(s). To actually make it profitable, you need more customers for that business model. But most well known companies lose money on every customer that stops paying. These companies don't see the writing on the wall.
If these forum software companies continue to provide value propositions, then they will most likely succeed where most SaaS/Cloud companies don't. The thing is, these companies are serving an actual "need" with these services.
The plus side of SAAS or 'on the cloud' hosting from say XF, vBulletin or IPS, is they'll always keep you up-to-date and probably handle all your backups, so all you need to do is worry about running your forum. However, this usually comes w/ some limitations over self-hosted, and with that, also a higher monthly cost. I feel SAAS plans are better suited for larger companies & corporations, eg: EA, Ubisoft, Toyota, etc.
I think self-hosted forums are better because you control the website files and database. If you don't want to continue running the forum, you can even sell it easily.
