Subscription costs (rant)

[User8080]

Due to inadequate performance on new servers, I decided to leave my MS Hyper-V infrastructure and adopt Proxmox. I run a small business and would like to reduce the risk of system instability (PVE and PBS) by purchasing subscriptions to access the controlled update channel provided by Proxmox.

However, there is an issue I would like to highlight: the basic subscriptions (called COMMUNITY) come with no support. I believe that €530 per year for PBS, without support, is simply too expensive. I understand that Proxmox has done its calculations, but no software vendor sells a subscription without support, especially not at this price.

I have been using Altaro VM Backup for 12 years: I can't make direct comparisons yet, but for €270 per year, I renew the full-featured version with unlimited support tickets.

For PVE, the prices seem slightly lower, but there is another frustrating issue: the per-CPU pricing model. I was hoping they wouldn’t imitate Microsoft’s questionable pricing strategies.

For PBS, the price of the BASIC subscription is simply too high. It may be acceptable as an initial cost, though barely, but not as a recurring cost.

I see private users using the word "enterprise" as if companies had money growing on trees – but that's not the reality. I sincerely hope Proxmox revises its pricing policies, especially now that their excellent product is gaining significant traction in the enterprise market. But please, don’t imitate VMware, for the love of God!

Since this post is being read by both Proxmox and its users, I would like to ask this question as well:
Leaving aside the fact that I would personally prefer to stick with KVM/QEMU because I believe it has more future potential, at this point, I wonder if I should switch to XCP-NG with Xen Orchestra instead.

The price of the Xen Orchestra ESSENTIAL subscription is €2000 for up to 3 hosts, without any traps related to the number of CPUs, 6 tickets/year with 24h response time when severity 1.

Is it true that Xen Orchestra provides a backup service? Because if that were the case, given Xen's legendary robustness, I would have to reconsider my choice. Unfortunately, IT costs are becoming too high.

Thank you.

 

[t.lamprecht]

Note that this is the community support forum mainly intended for (technical) questions about support.
Channels for any general business related inquiry can be found at https://www.proxmox.com/en/about/contact

That said, all our projects are released as 100% FLOSS without any feature gating...
And the cost of a community subscription covers the whole infrastructure, development time for bug fixes, timely security fixes and provides access to the highly tested enterprise repository, all things that support your setup already a lot and all of which all have recurring costs for our company. The higher subscription levels will provide you additionally enterprise support at a slightly higher cost, also a recurring service.
That PBS subscription costs are a bit higher comes quite naturally from the fact that developing and providing safe and secure backup software comes with more work and there are fewer backup servers in average compared to virtualization hosts while as the backup server is integrated in all of those PVEs and its definitively not less work to support – our pricing works well for us to cover all these costs while leaving some room for research and development for new projects, lowering prices would impact that and would reduce the quality of our projects for all, and potentially even risk their long term stability. So, thank you for your input, but we do not want to do that.

Anyhow, you are definitively free to choose any other solution if you like it better in whatever way that is, no need to invest time in rants here for that.

 

[User8080]

Dear Thomas,

Thank you for your prompt response. I’m sorry if my message annoyed anyone (as I mentioned in the title, it was a "rant"—those who are curious can read it, otherwise, they can simply skip it).

That said, I don’t feel that I’ve wasted my time, and I’d like to explain why:
Unlike Microsoft, VMware, Google, and other corporate giants that are impersonal and unresponsive, you (at least for now) are not, and I believe it is important to express my opinion when I find a decision unfair. Specifically, I feel that charging for the subscription based on sockets is not a fair approach. I am not a service provider reselling vCPUs—I create only a few VMs and allocate a high number of vCPUs to them. For me, having two sockets is necessary to meet the minimum required computing power, but this does not mean a proportional increase in profit. Perhaps a pricing model based on the number of VMs or usage scenarios would be more appropriate. As it stands, it feels more like a tax.

Another point of concern for me is whether I can propose PVE and PBS to my typical clients, who have 1 physical server with 2 Windows Server VMs, backup software, and 1 replica server (could be Hyper-v Server which is also free).
I did the calculations and found that if I propose PVE and PBS to my clients, over 5 years they will spend 197% more if I want them to have at least one support ticket from Proxmox (for both PVE and PBS).
Many will simply say no, some will agree but without purchasing any subscription (or maybe just the community ones). In short: it’s a challenge to justify a 197% increase to small clients, with costs rising over the years. (And I haven’t even included the replica server—in that case, the difference would be even greater.)

I fully understand the financial realities of software development and maintaining a healthy business, as I face the same challenges myself. I can completely relate to your reasoning in that regard.

Lastly, I must point out that referring to the price increase as only "slightly higher" is an understatement. The BASIC subscription for PBS costs twice as much as the COMMUNITY subscription—double the price is not exactly "slightly higher."

That being said, your products are outstanding, and the fact that you personally respond to forum discussions is reassuring—especially given the limitations of the Community subscription in terms of support.

Best regards,
Daniele

 

[LnxBil]

I feel that charging for the subscription based on sockets is not a fair approach.

and of course outdated as hell ... all tech giants now charge for dies on the CPUs, especially for high-core-count intel as well as for any AMD EPYC server. I just had this issue with Oracle and EPYC and that's insane and blew the AMD project out of the water. AFAIK, VMware has a limit of 32 cores, so that you need more licences for a single CPU with more than 32 cores.

I did the calculations and found that if I propose PVE and PBS to my clients, over 5 years they will spend 197% more if I want them to have at least one support ticket from Proxmox (for both PVE and PBS).

197% more than what? I hope you're not counting Hyper-V free in this, because you don't have support there either, so it is mathematically impossible to relate.

Another point of concern for me is whether I can propose PVE and PBS to my typical clients, who have 1 physical server with 2 Windows Server VMs, backup software, and 1 replica server (could be Hyper-v Server which is also free).

Couldn't that be archived just with Windows Server and their default licensing much cheaper using the built-in Hyper-V role? Just saying ... for such a simple setup to use a subscripted PBS is really expensive, even VMware with Veeam would be rather expensive.

That said, all our projects are released as 100% FLOSS without any feature gating...

That is the main part. For your customer, you could be the first level support. A lot of companies / resellers do this for Proxmox software as their one-face-to-the-customer approach. You could also do VM hosting for you customer, which will leverage the cost of individual licensing costs.

 

[tom]

but no software vendor sells a subscription without support, especially not at this price.

Seems you did not read our docs, or you do not understand them.

=> Community Subscriptons include Community support

All details on https://www.proxmox.com/en/downloads/proxmox-backup-server/agreements

 

[Johannes S]

Seems you did not read our docs, or you do not understand them.

=> Community Subscriptons include Community support

All details on https://www.proxmox.com/en/downloads/proxmox-backup-server/agreements

To be fair the support in this forum (or on *yikes* reddit) is available even for people without subscription like me. Of course you could change that (please don't ) but I just wanted to mention this.

That being said: Since it's absolutely legal to use your phantastic products without paying a penny I don't understand the problem of the OP. If he really thinks your subscription costs are too high (which they are not in my book, they are just too much for my homelab, but your main target groups are companys not freeloaders myself) he could still use them, even with "Internet" or community support.

And while I can't afford the subscription cost for my homelab I doubt that the subscriptions are really too expensive for companys. Depending on the tier a subscription with support cost between 1080 to 4320 Euro per year for PBS and 355 to 1060 Euro per year per socket for PVE.
Now lets assume we have a small cluster with three nodes (with a one-socket xeon) and two PBS (one onsite, another one on a vserver in the cloud) then you would have between 3240 to 11820 Euro per year for everything together. I might be rather naive but I can't imagine a business model where a company needs virtualization but can't afford to spend between 300 to 1000 Euro per month for a software. If this would be the case they have worse problems than the software costs.
Now I can understand why somebody wouldn't want to spend around 8600 Euros for PBS on two instances for the premium subscription but luckily there are still cheaper options who still have (although more limited) support offers. And 2160 Euro for two instances with PBS doesn't sound too bad for me.

I tried to google for current Veeam subscription prices if I understand correctly their enterprise offers start at 2500 Euro for a two socket subscription:
https://www.software-express.de/hersteller/veeam/data-platform-essentials/

So while a PBS subscription isn't totally free it's also not way over board compared to other software.

And I don't like the general industry trend in software pricing either but Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH is really not the worst company in that regard.

 

[beisser]

in regards to subscriptions beeing too expensive for the homelab...
i run 3 pve-nodes and one pbs-node in my homelab.
i have a subscription on one of my pve-nodes because i apreciate what the proxmox-team is doing and want to support them.
the other 2 pve-nodes and the pbs-node dont have a subscription.

i am aware that the unsubscribed nodes wont have support and im fine with that. i see the one subscription more as a donation to proxmox for their effords

 

[User8080]

Thank you to everyone who contributed to this thread.

For me, transitioning from Microsoft to Linux is a significant shift overall, and I have to balance it with both technical and economic considerations. On the technical side, aspects like system robustness during upgrades—now more frequent and critical—are a key concern. On the economic side, I need to evaluate costs not only from my perspective as a small CSP very specialized (not a hosting provider) but also as a consultant for SMEs. Before fully committing, I need to build well-founded trust in Linux/Proxmox and in the community as a reliable second level of support.

Since handling first-level support is part of my job, I am taking proactive steps: in about a month, I will be attending a four-day Proxmox training with an authorized and certified provider. This will help me deepen my expertise and ensure I can effectively support my clients.

Lastly, like many in my position will understand, I would prefer to streamline the range of expertise required to manage my clients' infrastructures. If it were economically reasonable, I would propose migrating all my clients to Proxmox to avoid maintaining separate Hyper-V environments along with their respective backup solutions. Unfortunately, at least for now, that may not be feasible.

---

(Note for LnxBil): The calculations I referred to were based on five years' worth of invoices from a client:

• WINDOWS Hypervisor & Backup scenario:
  
  1. Purchase of Windows Server Standard (non-OEM), which allows two VMs.
  2. Purchase of Altaro VM Backup Unlimited license first year + annual renewal costs for subsequent 4 years.
• Proxmox & Backup scenario:
  
  1. Purchase of Windows Server Standard (non-OEM), which allows two VMs.
  2. Acquisition of BASIC subscription for PVE for 5 years.
  3. Acquisition of BASIC subscription for PBS for 5 years.

I cannot propose the Community subscription because, in that case, I would not be able to guarantee my clients a certain and reliable troubleshooting and support process, in addition to the first-level troubleshooting and support that is naturally part of my responsibilities. This is a non-negotiable requirement for a professional offering in almost all my client engagements.

Microsoft ensures problem analysis and charges a fee if the issue is determined not to be a bug. On the other hand, Altaro simply provides unlimited support tickets.

Clearly, as my confidence grows—not so much in Proxmox itself, but in the underlying GNU/Debian stack—I may gradually replace the BASIC subscriptions with the ESSENTIALS tier.

This is precisely why I wrote this post: to gather real-world feedback from small businesses like mine that have experience in similar scenarios.

 

[uptonguy75]

Thank you to everyone who contributed to this thread.

For me, transitioning from Microsoft to Linux is a significant shift overall, and I have to balance it with both technical and economic considerations. On the technical side, aspects like system robustness during upgrades—now more frequent and critical—are a key concern. On the economic side, I need to evaluate costs not only from my perspective as a small CSP very specialized (not a hosting provider) but also as a consultant for SMEs. Before fully committing, I need to build well-founded trust in Linux/Proxmox and in the community as a reliable second level of support.

Since handling first-level support is part of my job, I am taking proactive steps: in about a month, I will be attending a four-day Proxmox training with an authorized and certified provider. This will help me deepen my expertise and ensure I can effectively support my clients.

Lastly, like many in my position will understand, I would prefer to streamline the range of expertise required to manage my clients' infrastructures. If it were economically reasonable, I would propose migrating all my clients to Proxmox to avoid maintaining separate Hyper-V environments along with their respective backup solutions. Unfortunately, at least for now, that may not be feasible.

---

(Note for LnxBil): The calculations I referred to were based on five years' worth of invoices from a client:

• WINDOWS Hypervisor & Backup scenario:
  1. Purchase of Windows Server Standard (non-OEM), which allows two VMs.
  2. Purchase of Altaro VM Backup Unlimited license first year + annual renewal costs for subsequent 4 years.
• Proxmox & Backup scenario:
  1. Purchase of Windows Server Standard (non-OEM), which allows two VMs.
  2. Acquisition of BASIC subscription for PVE for 5 years.
  3. Acquisition of BASIC subscription for PBS for 5 years.

I cannot propose the Community subscription because, in that case, I would not be able to guarantee my clients a certain and reliable troubleshooting and support process, in addition to the first-level troubleshooting and support that is naturally part of my responsibilities. This is a non-negotiable requirement for a professional offering in almost all my client engagements.

Microsoft ensures problem analysis and charges a fee if the issue is determined not to be a bug. On the other hand, Altaro simply provides unlimited support tickets.

Clearly, as my confidence grows—not so much in Proxmox itself, but in the underlying GNU/Debian stack—I may gradually replace the BASIC subscriptions with the ESSENTIALS tier.

This is precisely why I wrote this post: to gather real-world feedback from small businesses like mine that have experience in similar scenarios.

Have you considered using a gold or silver level Proxmox partner for support? Many will allow you to ad-hoc reach out to them when support is needed for an hourly fee (~$200-$300/hr) without committing to an annual support minimum. This allows your customers to maintain Proxmox Community subscriptions in order to have access to the latest enterprise-grade patches for a minimum cost and only pay for support when it is needed. You could also create your own package for your customers that includes Community subscriptions and a small amount to be set aside for support. For example: Your package is $400/yr/CPU. $240 for the Community subscription + $160 for "support". The support cost component would be pooled across all your customers in order to collectively cover the hourly cost of opening a support case. Should the pool be exhausted, overage costs would be charged back to the appropriate customer. If you have 5 customers, you're banking $1,600/year for support (assuming 1 node w/ 2 CPUs per cust) which would equate to ~3-4 hours of partner support.

Hypervisors shouldn't need a lot of support once they are configured properly. In over 15 years of using VMware ESXi with multiple clusters, I've opened 4 support tickets total. In the 6 months that I've been using Proxmox, the issues I've had have always been resolved by checking this forum. I suspect I will need true expert support for Proxmox extremely infrequently.

 

[louie1961]

Daniele, I think you came here in bad faith to stir up a controversy. I find some of your remarks offensive. Specifically:

Unlike Microsoft, VMware, Google, and other corporate giants that are impersonal and unresponsive, you (at least for now) are not,

What the heck?

 

[User8080]

Daniele, I think you came here in bad faith to stir up a controversy.

Hi Louie1961,

I believe there has been a misunderstanding. My intention was never to waste my time (or yours) with a pointless or unproductive controversy.

Instead, I shared my concerns about Proxmox, providing specific data (did you read my post with the percentages I observed?), because while transitioning from Microsoft to Proxmox, I struggle to justify a price increase to my customers despite moving to an open-source solution. My hope was to hear insights from a small business user with experience in this area who could provide guidance based on real-world scenarios.

Uptonguy75 understood both my frustration and the reasoning behind it. Not only did he grasp my concerns, but he also provided highly valuable suggestions that I truly appreciate. (I admit, when I wrote the post, I was feeling a bit frustrated after crunching the numbers—but I’ve already explained why, so I won’t repeat myself.)

My decision is already made: I will move to Proxmox. However, since this is not a home-lab project, I cannot afford to be imprecise—neither technically nor financially—for both my own infrastructure and that of my clients.

I appreciate constructive discussions and feedback, and I hope we can keep the conversation focused on productive insights now that I have clearly explained my reasoning. I also hope that no further assumptions will be made about my intentions and that others will take what I have written here in good faith.

Best regards,
Daniele

 

[User8080]

Have you considered using a gold or silver level Proxmox partner for support? Many will allow you to ad-hoc reach out to them when support is needed for an hourly fee (~$200-$300/hr) without committing to an annual support minimum. This allows your customers to maintain Proxmox Community subscriptions in order to have access to the latest enterprise-grade patches for a minimum cost and only pay for support when it is needed. You could also create your own package for your customers that includes Community subscriptions and a small amount to be set aside for support. For example: Your package is $400/yr/CPU. $240 for the Community subscription + $160 for "support". The support cost component would be pooled across all your customers in order to collectively cover the hourly cost of opening a support case. Should the pool be exhausted, overage costs would be charged back to the appropriate customer. If you have 5 customers, you're banking $1,600/year for support (assuming 1 node w/ 2 CPUs per cust) which would equate to ~3-4 hours of partner support.

Hypervisors shouldn't need a lot of support once they are configured properly. In over 15 years of using VMware ESXi with multiple clusters, I've opened 4 support tickets total. In the 6 months that I've been using Proxmox, the issues I've had have always been resolved by checking this forum. I suspect I will need true expert support for Proxmox extremely infrequently.

Hi uptonguy75,

Thank you very much for your valuable suggestions—I really appreciate them and will definitely take them into consideration. This is exactly the kind of help and response I was hoping for !

I actually hadn't considered that Silver or Gold partners might be available for on-demand support calls. That seems like a great option, in addition to your other very reasonable business recommendations.

Thanks again!
Daniele