I was told this morning that features will be removed in update 10.0.2 unless we pay for a different license. We are on a $500 single server fee, but to preserve current features from 10.0.1 we must upgrade to a $15k site license. The update will break our existing jobs otherwise. We understand price updates, but this puts us in a real bind telling us we can no longer update our production system unless we pay and additional 14.5k from $500 with no warning.

Was this explained to customers in any update, and does that adhere to our current maintenance plan if we have been cut off from software updates mid contract?

Any thoughts?

I hope that's a joke.. Which features are we talking about?

Ok I see it now. It says so in the changelog: https://www.visualcron.com/changelog.aspx 

Not a joke unfortunately. We use Remote Execute as it was part of the base product we purchased a few years ago, but has been removed and we can no longer update during our maintenance period. I just worry more features will be removed from the product to encourage customers to move to a higher tier which affects our production jobs. We are long time customers and its unfortunate to see what's happening.

VisualCron is a great product. We too have been using it for years. But this jump in pricing is very unexpected.
Is there an alternative to VisualCron?

I was just offered the upgrade and I'm glad I noticed this before installing it. We use the remote execute task as well and this seems like an underhanded money grab. Even worse, this has the potential to break a lot of people's systems with little or no warning.

I mean, what's the point of having the remote execute task then? YOU (VisualCron) guys put it in there a VERY long time ago! Now you've shifted your business model more towards profits and realized that this is an "unprofitable task". So now you figure that you can start taking away features in a product that we've all paid for.

I'm worried about other tasks which do something on a remote system. Are we going to have to buy site licenses for remotely stopping/restarting services? File operations?

I'm extremely disappointed by VisualCron with this move.


Riley

I just noticed the same thing. Requires Site or greater license, and other features that are locked behind a Subscription license. Really a nice screw you to anyone who's paid maintenance every year and help support them for over a decade.

Yeah, I totally agree.
I've never heard of this kind of move from a software vendor.

We probably need to look into alternative options, since we never know, what the next step is.

And the money train is running.....
Sadly they do this, if someone has an alternative please let me know.

All,

You have our apologies. 10.0.2 was released and made the Remote Execute task require a Site-wide Subscription or greater. We will be releasing 10.0.3 and reversing this change and restoring access to this task for all customers.

In the coming months we will be sharing the future strategy for VisualCron, including roadmap, pricing, and packaging.

I've spoken with several of you directly via cases but I did want to share this openly. This was an oversight on our part that we will work to correct.

Ryan

when is 10.0.3 scheduled to be released?