Keeping Our DaaS Prices Fair and Simple

Posted on July 16, 2015

By Lanny Gray, VP of Sales

When a company raises its prices, it can indicate success — at least for that company. But when an entire consumer segment can increase its prices without fearing a market loss, it provides a clear sign of a maturing industry with widespread consumer acceptance.

Cloud computing has now reached that point, at least according to a recent Fortune story by Barb Darrow entitled “Surprise! The cost of cloud is about to rise.” It looks at recent price increases by Microsoft for Azure (outside the US) and speculates Amazon might follow suit or will, at least, stop matching price cuts.

While Microsoft and Amazon offer a strong case for increasing prices, at Nuvestack we prefer to set a fair and simple price — $99.50 per user, per month. Our customers tell us they love that pricing, and because of that, we have no plans to raise our prices.

Do we have increased costs? Yes, but we consider those our problem and not something the customer should have to “absorb.” We want to retain our current customers and attract new ones, not simply drive revenue with higher prices. Microsoft may believe otherwise, as they seem willing to risk alienating their current customers with increased prices.

Microsoft may also bank on the challenge of shifting providers, even in the cloud. While the ability to jump from one cloud vendor to another is an oft-cited benefit of living in the virtual world, making such a move can cost a company significant money and time. A more likely scenario for a company that changes its cloud-computing provider is simply starting fresh, especially because cloud usage is fairly dynamic and growing.

We like to believe our fair, simple pricing structure encourages companies to stay with us instead of constantly shopping for new providers. That allows them to focus on growing their business.

Obviously, we monitor industry trends, but we don’t spend a lot of time worrying about the actions of other cloud companies. We also watch our competitors in the Desktop as a Service space closely, and certainly welcome the maturing and acceptance the cloud – and our company with it – has received.

In reality, this is just the beginning. Cloud and virtualization are what drives computing these days, and the growth of the industry will encourage some cloud providers to increase prices.

It’s just not something we plan to do.