One of our core values is to make everything easier. Easier to setup, easier to manage, easier to protect, and easier to do business with. To that we have led the way generating value for managed service providers offering protective DNS for their clients while also simplifying billing reconciliation. Our long standing query based service model has allowed MSPs of all sizes to scale their DNS filtering offerings with predictive and affordable protection. Still, occasionally we get MSPs who are unsure about queries and clients and how that all works out.
To that end, we are pleased to announce ScoutDNS FLEX Seat pricing for MSPs. The new model takes everything MSPs love about the query model, scaling flexibility, pay just for what you deploy, no long term commitments etc., but makes it easier to understand and forecast. So how does it work? Let me explain.
What is FLEX Seat Pricing for MSPs?
With FLEX Seat pricing, MSPs pay just for the amount of seats used in a given billing cycle. MSPs commit to a minimum numbers of seats (Seat Tier), and pay for this up front. Then, we will bill for actual seats deployed in arears at the end of the billing cycle.
What Counts as a Seat?
A seat can be made of two things. 1) Any active roaming client defined as a roaming client that syncs or checks in with our API service in the billing cycle or 2) each block of 150,000 queries from users or devices that have no roaming client installed. We never count roaming client agent traffic towards network traffic, even if a roaming client is on a WAN network that is being forwarded to the ScoutDNS anycast.
Why Count Seats This Way?
For roaming clients, it is easy to detect and count the numbers as they check in 1 to 1. We will not charge for missing clients or clients that are offline the entire billing cycle. For network use, because network users are behind firewalls, it’s impossible for us to see the exact number of devices like we can with roaming clients. For network based users and devices, we use industry accepted norms of about 5,000 queries a day which is why we chose 150,000 queries a month.
The Benefits
The main benefits for MSPs is that they can more easily predict billing to what they believe they are charging for or have deployed to end users. MSPs don’t have to worry about self reporting guest users, networks, or guess access points. We will calculate for you, and improve the speed of bill reconciliation.
What About the Existing Query Model
We have renamed the legacy model FLEX Query and have no plans to remove it in the near future. This way MSPs have a choice for which business model fits best for them. What can be wrong with that?
To learn more or see the tier pricing breakdown contact us.
