Hello,
Pardon me for inserting this extrapolated tangent into this thread,
however Rob's statements I think deserve some (more) discussion here as
they pertain not only to the DNS service but other Tucows products as
well.
Let me preface by saying each of us has a different business model,
needs, goals, customers, etc. What may be critical to one may be
unimportant, or even undesired, by another, and vice versa. Tucows can't
be everything to everybody and they have a significant challenge in
trying to tailor their offerings and services to a vastly diverse
customer base. While any endeavor has room for improvement I think
overall Tucows has done an exceptional job and, above all, stayed
consistent with high standards of ethics and professionalism. In
addition they overall seem sincerely interested in what we want.
Sometimes they also appear to ignore what we tell them, but at least
they're listening. ;-)
Whether or not Tucows offers X service or Y product is not the topic
here. Tucows is going to offer the products and services they determine;
that is their prerogative, just as ours is whether or not to resell that
service or product, or to do business with Tucows at all.
What concerns me is the development these products are given and the
level at which they are offered. It seems in each case we're given
something one or two notches shy of a kick-ass product, and that directly
impacts our abilities to sell them to our customers.
To use Rob's example, the DNS service without the ability to configure
TTL.
And the apparent stagnation of the client code interface and RWI. We
resellers have been bemoaning the state of the client code and RWI
usability for literally years. The latest word is that new client code
is important and probably 6+ months down the road. I remember that same
"official word" perhaps 2 years ago, back when the SF client was the
model on which the client code was to be built. Specific bugs and
suggestions have gone unimplemented. (Does the client code currently
require a payment method - e.g. credit card input - for renewals? This
was the first reason I went to the SF code. We don't want to keep
numbers on file, customers' credit cards expire or they change cards or
addresses; what is Tucows's model for getting payment on renewals? None
apparently from the client code.)
The email product has the potential to be a great outsourced service for
those of us that offering fits our needs (mine does), and while some of
the product are excellent, it falls short of being superior on multiple
levels. The new feature additions are an improvement but don't quite
take it to the A list. The webmail interface is still clunky, even
compared to something like Squirrelmail, and doesn't even come close to
the web interface of Cyrusoft's SilkyMail. And besides, how many people
want to use webmail for their primary mail client? Not many I know. My
clients want the features to be usable from their email client, and the
webmail is something to use when they're not at their computer. Features
like the shared address books are great but aren't going to mean anything
to my customers unless they can share them from a mail client. There's
no mention of the protocol (is it LDAP? ISMP? ACAP? or something
proprietary from Stalker?) There are many other issues, some of which
I've raised, and Bruce & Peter, you know how to reach me. :-)
The point here is that with core reseller products it seems we're given a
less than complete, and thus less than competitive, solution. It almost
seems that the products (at least the Email and Managed DNS) were
determined prior to extensive discussion about what resellers
needed/wanted in the offering, and now that the products are out there it
might be difficult or impossible to mold them to what our customers need.
This leaves us in a difficult position of either offering something we're
not excited about, or not offering it at all.
This is in stark contrast to what's going on with the Blogware
development. That product is being tested, hammered on, Bugzilla'ed,
discussed in detail, and most importantly modified to what the resellers
want. I'm convinced it's going to be, already is really, a top-notch
product that's ahead of the curve, not behind it like Email, Managed DNS,
client code, RWI.
IMHO, I'd really like to see Tucows re-tool the quality of the products
in the same spirit they're developing Blogware. Remember guys, this is
technology --- you don't want to be playing catch-up.
Thanks for listening
tj
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Tue Oct 19 2004 - 23:37:54 EDT