Starting on September 12th, 2013 BetterCloud will be implementing Paid plan for FlashPanel. A few months ago they sent out surveys to current customers asking specific questions about pricing plans, so it's no surprise that they're taking off the Beta label and creating an Enterprise (paid for) version.
It sounds like there will still be a Basic (free) version. Check out the pricing plans here. You can see which features will be in each type of plan. I see that bulk actions won't be in the Free version, which is a bummer because I've used that several times. It was nice to be able to search for certain users and bulk move them into OUs. For example, our 5th graders at a certain Elementary school were going to pilot email (we have email turned off normally for all Elementary students). I was able to go into FlashPanel and search for "NH" (the school) which we map into the "department" field along with searching for the graduation year. Then, I exported a file, changed the OU they were in and bulk updated the users.
It's a bummer that they're taking away a lot of the features but it was pretty transparent what their plan was and their communication was handled well. One good sign of this move is they are obviously committed to the product and it sounds like they plan on adding more functionality. Provisioning and Deprovisioning Workflows and Chrome OS and Mobile Device Management sound interesting in "what's next?".
I'm not a fan of the "per student" model for payment. Having around 12K users in our system (students + staff) will probably be too expensive unless more compelling and "must have" features are added. I've used GAM before and I believe it offers some of the same things but it's not a nice GUI interface. I haven't looked at it for awhile. I think I may have to take a closer look at all of the other features but for now we'll stick with the Basic plan.
I tweeted out and commented on Google+ about this decision and I've already received some feedback saying they work with larger districts on plans. Not an uncommon thing but it's also nice to know they have people on social networks trying to please potential customers.
On a side note
There hasn't been a whole lot new with the Admin Console regarding--I haven't been too deep in it--but I haven't seen anything new added recently which is disappointing. If FlashPanel can grant all of my Wishes, I may have to consider them! :)
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