New Hosting Provider Pricing Structure Causes Consternation in Community

The announcement of the immminent launch of ColdFusion 5.0 (scheduled for this coming Monday, April 30) caused an uproar in the community. The cause of this controversy was the new Hosting Service Provider Edition of ColdFusion and a pricing change specific only to Hosting providers.

According to a letter posted to the CF-Talk list and forwarded to other House of Fusion lists, "starting with the release of Coldfusion 5, the End-User License right to host multiple ColdFusion applications and/or sites on a single ColdFusion server will only be included in the ColdFusion 5 Hosting Service Provider License. The ColdFusion 5 Enterprise and Pro End-User License will no longer permit multiple ColdFusion applications and/or sites to be hosted on a single ColdFusion server. Web hosters that are purchasing ColdFusion 5 servers to host multiple ColdFusion applications and/or sites on a single ColdFusion 5 server will need to purchase the ColdFusion 5 Hosting Service Provider Edition."

The letter went on to explain that the ColdFusion 5 Hosting Service Provider Edition would be priced on a per CPU basis. This caused a virtual deluge of debate on the lists, and sparked fears that this pricing change would make ColdFusion too expensive for many small businesses, or for shared-server hosting. Comments on the list ranged from speculation that hosts might drop support for CF rather than pay a higher price, to concern over whether Macromedia was "shooting itself in the foot" with this new pricing structure and would lose developers who were afraid of paying higher prices. Macromedia responded quickly to these criticisms by posting a FAQ explaining the changes in more detail (see news article below). The links below show the original Macromedia letter and some of the debate on CF-Talk.

Macromedia's Letter (Posted on CF-Talk)

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