Smoothwall Pricing

[wickit]

Just had our renewal license price come in, and I must admit it is very expensive.

 

I have just been quoted for a sonicwall device that is a third of the price

 

someone needs to convince me to stay with smoothwall

 

Discuss !

[IrritableTech]

Might be worth shopping around? Smoothwall aren't the only people who can provide your smoothwall.

[Bashir]

Might be worth shopping around? Smoothwall aren't the only people who can provide your smoothwall.

 

Expensive to one might be cheap to another

Have a shop around and also look at alternatives, its always good to have a re think on what technology we use once in a while.

I have used Websense, Bloxx and Lightspeed in the past, all do a good job but Lightspeed more Edu focused and has good integration with its other products.

 

Bash

[Homeland]

Were moving to smooth wall very soon and got a cracking deal for 3 years.

[Sylv3r]

Theres a post on here, the additional cost on your renewal is likely down to a vipre problem where Smoothwall had missed charging schools for this part of the service I believe.

[RTFM]

I wouldn't use SonicWall for your filtering. As a firewall its brilliant, as a filter its not upto the needs of education in my opinion.

 

We actually spent more money to leave Smoothwall than it was costing to stay with them as we had the cost of our firewall (SonicWall) and the cost of our filter (Lightspeed) compared to the UTM offer of Smoothwall. Money well spent so far in our opinion.

 

I'd certainly haggle with Smoothwall (and anyone else for that matter), there is always movement in the price if they think they'd lose you to another competitor, from my experience at least.

Edited May 10, 2013 by RTFM

[ThatBoringBloke]

Our initial renewal costs for Smoothwall this year were 40% up on last year.

 

Managed to get them down to a 20% increase.

 

If the same happens again next year I'll be looking elsewhere.

[john]

It is worth talking to your account manager and ensuring you understand your renewal and why you are seeing an increase. I know that I was a bit eek! when mine arrived this year but once I spoke to them about it I understand how the pricing has changed and been adjusted as the product has changed itself.

[Jona]

I would make sure that sonicwall filtering will work for you before moving. Ours doesn't work very well, we're currently looking at alternative products.

 

Jona

[dirtydog]

Seriously look at Lightspeed, no where near the cost of Smoothwall. Just switched and we are very happy so far. Havent heard great things about SonicWall for filtering TBH.

[wickit]

I have used Sonicwall in the past, and tbh i thought it was a much better product, I will take a look at lightspeed though, do you know if its content aware? Edited May 10, 2013 by wickit

[RTFM]

I have used Sonicwall in the past, and tbh i thought it was a much better product, I will take a look at lightspeed though, do you know if its content aware?

 

Lightspeed doesnt do dynamic content scanning like Smoothwall does, though whether that is a bad thing or not is i'm sure debated between people in each camp

 

I can't say we have missed it from the feedback I am getting from staff and students.

Edited May 10, 2013 by RTFM

[zag]

I need to upgrade our licenses soon and will be getting a quote from lightspeed to compare. I always get 3 quotes.

 

Last time I got a quote from smoothwall it was incredibly expensive. Just to compare our old Sophos filter was a third of what smoothwall quoted.

[lmgtfy]

Smoothwall seems to have stayed the same price for us other the last couple of years but I am starting to get a annoyed at paying £800 odd a year for just the support and getting very little for it.

 

Have had a few questions on the direct support forum on edugeek unanswered which have turned into support tickets with very slow response times. When you do get support it is generally good but I was reminded how bad it was the other day when I phoned Veeam got straight through to a technician who sent me a patch and said if that doesn't work an engineer will phone you within 2 hours, all for a product we didn't pay much more than £800 for! My most recent ticket has been open for 10 days without an update. With what other company would this be an acceptable SLA I ask myself.

[sparkeh]

Well I can only comment on our experience of smoothwall support but in the short time we have been with then it has been excellent.

Phone queries were dealt with quickly and I was amazed to get a phone call after couple of days of setting up to see how it was going and see if I had any questions. Never had that before!

[lmgtfy]

It used to be amazing, but now it appears random. Sometimes you phone get straight through and you are sorted in minutes. Other times you phone get voicemail and receive a call back upto 3-5 days later in my experience anyway.

 

The online tickets which I only really use for low priority calls since August 2012 I have had 4 tickets all with 10 days plus response times with some being upwards of 20 not ideal.

[tom_newton]

@chrisrowlands our support has been slightly a victim of our success in recent months, but we're back to fairly snappy response times, and still aiming for a lot of improvement - especially in the turnaround of cases with "quick answers" like the one you describe with another organisation.

 

Edit: also should point out that direct support is manned by people on a sort of voluntary basis - which is why you find me lurking on here on a Friday night... you wouldn't be able to pay me to do that

Edited May 10, 2013 by tom_newton

[lmgtfy]

I do appreciate that Tom and don't get me wrong I like my smoothie and that's why I always try and post on the direct support first before raising a ticket with Smoothwall. Perhaps you could implement a system though so if a thread on the direct support goes under answered for whatever reason it will flagged and a ticket raised? For example http://www.edugeek.net/forums/smoothwall-direct-support/112249-dashboard-top-domain-information-missing-well-information-emailed-reports.html

[tom_newton]

Unfortunately a ticket needs an account attached, and our EduGeek to real name database is not that good :-)

[caffrey]

I prefer the direct support too, difficult at the best of times to make phonecalls in my busy office without constant interruptions! You can guarantee as soon as I start to make the call someone will come barging in Luckily I find the product good enough not to necessitate asking for a lot of support, just need a spot of guidance now and again.

[Cache]

I appreciate the helpfulness of Smoothwall support, however while the initial contact time has definitiely improved, getting a followup to an issue still doesn't seem to have gotten any quicker. The recent issue following our migration which seemed to screw everything up and require a reinstall (as suggested on here) was sat open on the ticket system for 2 weeks without a response despite me chasing it up which I was disappointed with.

 

I hope the price hasn't increased dramatically otherwise we will also have to start looking elsewhere as good as it is because the budget won't be able to take it .

Edited May 11, 2013 by Cache

[tom_newton]

@Cache - we have made a few changes to speed up initial turnaround, and i'm told 30% of calls are closed on first contact now - but we know sometimes the priority of a call is lost when it is passed up to a senior support team member as yours will have been - expect this to improve with immediate effect as we tweak our operating procedures...

[wickit]

the comments on this thread are not helping with us staying with the smoothwall

 

Time for some serious shopping next week i think

[tom_newton]

@wickit anything in particular you are concerned about? Any company that doesn't admit they've got it wrong now and again isn't worth dealing with we did have a few blips this year as we are totally reorganising how support works (there are now more support people than ever, no corner cutting here), I see chris's comments about some tickets taking ages to get closed, and it being "random" wether you get fast or slow - I would suspect that it has been more fast of late than slow - looking at the stats it certainly seems that way.

 

Would be happy to talk on the phone if you'd like.

 

Tom

[ConradJones]

first line support is great, and its a bit of an insult to call them first line they are not by any stretch of the imagination telephone monkeys.

 

more work could be done in calls that are escalated.....