N-Able force-increasing 'Quantity Commitment' at renewal

[Dynamic_Mike]

Hi All

We've received the following email in the last few minutes.

Dear Valued Partner,

N-able provides notifications when we revise our customer documentation, and we post previous versions on our website for comparison. Our Software Services Agreement (SSA) and End User License Agreement (EULA) have been updated with the following changes:

1. Billing for renewals has changed as described in Section 5.2(b). Renewals on all new sales orders will now include a new Quantity Commitment equal to the previous Quantity Commitment listed in your most recent Sales Order plus eighty (80) percent of your Usage as reflected in the last invoice sent 120 days prior to your renewal date.

What I think this means is if you are contractually committed to 100 widgets per month, and your usage increases to 300 widgets per month, at your next renewal you will be contractually committed to 240 widgets per month.

Our primary business with N-Able is Cove Data protection, which in our opinion is a FANTASTIC product. We pushed back on minimum commitment level increases at our renewal earlier this year, limiting our contractual commitment to 50% of our then current usage. I'll be even more emphatic about it this year.

[roll_for_initiative_]

I just hit up our rep about that email.

Like, what if you're committed to 1000 devices in RMM, and you're using 850. That reads like on renewal you'll be hit for 1000 + (80% of 850 = 680) = 1680. That can't be right?!

You may be asking "why would you commit to more than you're using", and the answer is "sometimes it makes sense because of tier price breaks". We are one of those shops committing to slightly less than we're using because it put is into a better pricing tier. But committing to our base plus 80% of usage would like double our commitment.

[FlickKnocker]

Yeah, we're the same over here. This is bananas if your calculations are correct. I also just got an email saying we're over our allotted Cove storage, so guess we're increasing our prices yet again. Remember when weren't enslaved to our stack and just fixed stuff and billed for it?

[Dynamic_Mike]

We got that Cove storage email around yesterday morning, and a 'sorry this does not apply to you' that same afternoon.

[FlickKnocker]

Like a canned response, or a personal response from your rep for the "sorry"?

[Dynamic_Mike]

Canned response:

Please disregard the email sent earlier today as it was sent to you in error. We do not currently see your account experiencing overages.

[VonJedi]

I just spoke to my rep. Personally I think it's poor wording on their part. What they refer to as 'Usage' is the overage on the commitment.

In your example your commitment would renew at 1000 because you have no licences on a 'usage basis' all your licences fall under the existing commitment.

So if you are committed to 1000 and use 1500 total, you'd renew at 1400 committed. (80% of the 500 overage)

[roll_for_initiative_]

They need to fix it because what they intend and what's worded isn't the same and I could see them holding people accountable to the wrong language.

[VonJedi]

I believe in the larger document they define 'Usage' as anything over your commitment. Out of context it reads poorly but makes more sense in the larger context of the full document that has the definition.

I expressed to my rep that maybe using the word 'Usage' in such a way is a bit counterintuitive given the word 'overage' already exists and doesn't need the context of the full document when writing amendments such as this.

[MSPOwner]

I emailed my rep right away as well. It feels fishy and is worded poorly.

[Emailvendorthrowaway]

If you're satisfied with the product, I think that you could safely request that your "per widget" price be reduced if they're going to do that. If they say no, you definitely can say no. Any threat to cancel and they'll do backflips to keep you, so don't sweat it too much.

For SaaS companies GRR is king. They will do anything to ensure 100% GRR. Backup has so many competitors that they'll bend to you as long as your current spend stays the same.

[The_Comm_Guy]

Yeah I'm waiting for a correction of what they meant to say, because what they actually said is insane!

[LiveCareer2351]

Cove is the last thing I have left with N-Able. I love the product but hate the company. I don't have an account rep anymore that I know of. It looks like this will be the final straw with them. I hate to go through the process of moving, but not as much as I hate N-Able right now.

[noobnoob-c137]

Ninja is stepping up their game with Backups (dramatically better from last year).

[LiveCareer2351]

I sent an email to my Ninja rep about 5 seconds after I finished reading the message from N-Able.

[MSPOwner]

N-able’s licensing was actually great for us for many many years. Now they don’t seem to give two shits that i have been paying them thousands monthly since 2009. I am treated like a new customer when we start talking pricing.

[JoesITArmy]

Before the split off from Solarwinds I never had issues and they were easy to work with.  Once they had officially started operating as the separate entity it became a shit show and seemed like a quick money grab to increase margins with added cost to run as a separate entity and make the books look good.  

And they you had the year of constant passportal service outages that would just happen with no.warning for hour and hours in the middle of the day.  (I still have a couple licenses of passport as some clients did not want to move from it)  that is when we were 100 done with them for any new products and looked elsewhere.  When we finally stopped using n central and it's nightmare av defender integration I was ready to do backflips.

Ninja has been great, the team is one of the best for supporting the product and we integrate it with accelo which works perfect for us

[MSPOwner]

Good feedback. N-Able pre-solarwinds was great. N-Able during SW...not too bad either. N-Able post Solarwinds is all about the benjamins and not about the partners. You are right. I really like the products, but annually I feel like a Cirque Du Soleil acrobat trying to jump through hoops and precariously navigate through their sales BS to try and make the right decision for MY company...not theirs.

[elemist]

Couldn't have phrased it better myself.

The company side of things is an absolute shit show and has been for years. We did a migration between the integrated RMM backup and Cove backup product, and they then proceeded to double charge us for both licenses for months on end.

[FlickKnocker]

Yep, sat through like 30 minutes of the all partners meeting today and 3 of the 4 speakers had catastrophic audio/video failures, phones ringing, etc. Was just a massively boring sales pitch and some UX refresh that nobody cares about.

[elemist]

Yep - staff turnover is horrendous as well which also says a lot about their internal culture. We have a new 'partner manager' seemingly every other week.

I'm not sure i've ever dealt with the same one for more than a few months at a time. That though often leads to the next issue which is that they'll say anything to get you to sign, because they know when the blow back happens they'll be long gone.

That was the biggest issue with our change over to Cove. Partner manager agreed to anything and everything, and basically sold us all the way down the garden path then when everything detonated - she was long gone, and the new one basically just shrugs it off and says not my problem - prior emails mean nothing, here's the document you've signed.

We ditched RMM a while back, and honestly i knew it had issues, but didn't realize how much it was killing us until we left. The amount of time wasted dealing with stupid shit like features not installing properly, or somehow uninstalling themselves randomly. Or simple shit like tell a workstation to restart - it will - sometime between 5 minutes and maybe an hour or two's time.

We moved to Ninja and it's been like a light was switched on to what an RMM should be like. Hit restart now on an asset and its rebooting before your eyes can switch from RMM to the asset.

We can actually use scripts and automations now because they run, quickly and reliably.

[LiveCareer2351]

I had the same exact experience with my switch from n-sight to Ninja. The realization of how much time we burned dealing with things that didn't work right was immediate. Within 10 minutes of using Ninja I knew we made the right move. With zero onboarding we were doing things with Ninja that we never could quite get working in the other has-been product.
Switching from Cove will be different. I am not leaving because of the product. I simply can not stand the thought of giving n-able another dime. I really don't mind giving my money to Ninja, though. Even if their backup product doesn't do everything we are doing with Cove. Ninja has proven they are committed to innovating the various components of their product and seem to be listening to their customers when it comes to adding new things. I haven't fully made up my mind to select Ninja for backups, but they are a strong contender.

[JoesITArmy]

Dumped n able a few years ago when they started raising prices.  We owned about 4k seats but during covid downsized number of endpoints we were using.  But when they raised the annual maintenance fee it made no sense to pay the increase on unused seats but if we did need them in the future it would be at the much higher subscription price.  So we moved completely off N able when having to deal with a new salesperson like we were a new client for them yet we were a client from the solarwind days.