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only 5 users in the free version?


.Ian

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Seems a rather low figure, and one that most sites would go over.

Was hoping it would be say 20 rather than 5, which is a reasonable number for a small community.

One would have to question whether it would be worth installing at all if a site was limited to 5 - would be better sticking with the shoutbox.

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Maybe IPS just can't handle that many people chatting for free though? I mean, it is using their servers. Hopefully the other pricing packages aren't too expensive.




Indeed. If every single IP.Board had a free chat room with 10 users in, the costs on our end would be huge.
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Who says they cant earn anything? Are everyone here using their hosting plans for their forums? No.

When they claim this is so high load service most people would not be able to host this themselves. My concern is that when they have hundreds, maybe many thousands of forums using this service it would quickly become overloaded and slow for everyone.

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I agree. I was thinking more along the lines of ten, but five seems way too low.



Maybe IPS just can't handle that many people chatting for free though? I mean, it is using their servers. Hopefully the other pricing packages aren't too expensive.




We are offering the first level package for free. That is - completely free. You don't need to pay for the software OR the service. I'm not sure how one can complain about something they're not even paying for. :P

That said, I've seen some potential price figures for the service for higher levels, and I can assure you that the prices are quite reasonable. I wouldn't worry too much about it at this time.

Fun fact: The only chat room I've seen, to date, go over 5 active online users is here on our own forums, and that's only been (1) when we first opened the service (everyone wanted to check it out) and (2) when I specifically posted a topic asking people to join.

Why not try it out and see if you even get to 5 online chatters before worrying if that level is too low. :P I haven't seen any one customer get that high yet myself.


Who says they cant earn anything? Are everyone here using their hosting plans for their forums? No.



When they claim this is so high load service most people would not be able to host this themselves. My concern is that when they have hundreds, maybe many thousands of forums using this service it would quickly become overloaded and slow for everyone.




The backend is extremely scalable. You should let us worry about the load. That said, it does cost money (bandwidth and servers) and to allow free reign without recouping any costs would simply be unsustainable. This is why we are allowing a smaller package for free, but allowing users to upgrade the package if they wish.

Our servers have been specially optimized to handle the specific type and frequency of traffic we expect with the the chat service. The backend is designed so that we can literally drop in a new server, add it's hostname to a database table, and instantly it's available to use for everyone. Clustering is all supported basically, so as traffic and usage increases, it's easy for us to just drop in new servers as needed. The type and frequency of traffic, however, would not work well under most shared hosting plans, so we have decided for a hosted-only version of the service at this time.

Let's not turn this topic into another "can we host this ourself" request. :P


What about private rooms or something ?




Not sure what you're asking. There's no support for multiple rooms at this time, however you can certainly restrict access to the chat room based on group permissions if you want (turn it offline, and only give the groups you want to have access permission to access while offline).
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Not sure what you're asking. There's no support for multiple rooms at this time, however you can certainly restrict access to the chat room based on group permissions if you want (turn it offline, and only give the groups you want to have access permission to access while offline).


Sure... But it would be better to have private rooms (members, staff, friends) and add people to those rooms. :)
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If a person were to implement this then I could see as many as 100+ people being in a chat at any given time.
I wouldn't use this for the mere fact that it is essentially hosted on your servers and not my own.
I have a dedicated server with 8GB of ram. I should be allowed to have everything ran on my own server.

With this option not being available the IP.CHAT is not a viable solution.

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I've learned the hard way that people don't come to forums to chat, most of my members have window$ live messenger, Yahoo, and Paltalk installed on their machines, so when I said: hey! check this out, now we have a chat room! yeaaaaah, they were like: :sick:

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I've learned the hard way that people don't come to forums to chat, most of my members have window$ live messenger, Yahoo, and Paltalk installed on their machines, so when I said: hey! check this out, now we have a chat room! yeaaaaah, they were like: :sick:




Yep, I learned it hard ways (attempted 3 times, digichat and all) that people don't come to forum to chat. IM softwares are way too convenient nowadays. I also learned the hard way that chat software by nature is a big security risk and a large burden on server load even on dedicated servers.

As for security risk part, this is what normally happens. People chat. They eventually get into an argument. They fight and one of them holds a grudge eventually somehow. A nice (?) reason to initiate all kind of crap (including DDoS).

P.S.

20 limit for free? I'd say that is being extremely unreasonable and unrealistic.
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let me clarify the reason for my first post.

The problem with 5 is that if suddenly 6 people decide to chat and we have only implemented the free chat version then we will get complaints and until we implement it then we will never know if it is going to work for our community.

Would have been better if it was say 20 for the first month of release going down to 10. Some sites will not run beta, so the current testing phrase is not an option for some.

If they have never seen forums with more than 5 in them anyway, then setting a limit of 10 or even 20 would not have been an issue. ;)

5 just seems not worth bothering with a free version. Just giving feedback.

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let me clarify the reason for my first post.



The problem with 5 is that if suddenly 6 people decide to chat and we have only implemented the free chat version then we will get complaints and until we implement it then we will never know if it is going to work for our community.



Would have been better if it was say 20 for the first month of release going down to 10. Some sites will not run beta, so the current testing phrase is not an option for some.



If they have never seen forums with more than 5 in them anyway, then setting a limit of 10 or even 20 would not have been an issue. ;)



5 just seems not worth bothering with a free version. Just giving feedback.




We could have not had a free version at all. When you purchased IP.Board we never said there was going to be a chat room included, we're adding it as a perk, because we're nice like that ;)

We would have liked to have 10, and when I was first told about IP.Chat I was told it was going to be 10 - evidently testing has shown that's not going to be feasible.


If a person were to implement this then I could see as many as 100+ people being in a chat at any given time.


I wouldn't use this for the mere fact that it is essentially hosted on your servers and not my own.


I have a dedicated server with 8GB of ram. I should be allowed to have everything ran on my own server.



With this option not being available the IP.CHAT is not a viable solution.




You might, but the vast majority of our customers do not. It's not a case of we can just "whip up" a version you can run on your own server, it would need to be completely rewritten.
We have to make products that appeal to the vast majority of our customers - and the only way to do this with IP.Chat is going to be with a hosted service. The number of people who would use IP.Chat as a hosted service is going to be many times that which would as a self-hosted product (purely because the majority of our customers don't have that level of resources).
We understand this is not ideal for everyone, but it is the way the software is designed as I'm sure if you take a minute to think about it from our perspective you will understand.
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Hey, guys. If we decide to on the 10 user package, is the price going to be affordable? Because I wouldn't want to fork over another 30 dollars fore another app. It just seems like every IPS add-on seems to be running in the $30+ range. If it turns out to be $30+, then I'll just stick with Ajax Chat and Chatango, which I currently have running through my site.

I wouldn't mind a ten user package for IP.Chat, but it's doubtful that I would spend more than $15 on the package.

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Hey, guys. If we decide to on the 10 user package, is the price going to be affordable? Because I wouldn't want to fork over another 30 dollars fore another app. It just seems like every IPS add-on seems to be running in the $30+ range. If it turns out to be $30+, then I'll just stick with Ajax Chat and Chatango, which I currently have running through my site.



I wouldn't mind a ten user package for IP.Chat, but it's doubtful that I would spend more than $15 on the package.




I think IP Chat the application will be free it will probably be a monthly subscription based on the number of users etc.
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let me clarify the reason for my first post.



The problem with 5 is that if suddenly 6 people decide to chat and we have only implemented the free chat version then we will get complaints and until we implement it then we will never know if it is going to work for our community.



Would have been better if it was say 20 for the first month of release going down to 10. Some sites will not run beta, so the current testing phrase is not an option for some.



If they have never seen forums with more than 5 in them anyway, then setting a limit of 10 or even 20 would not have been an issue. ;)



5 just seems not worth bothering with a free version. Just giving feedback.




Right now it's unlimited for the beta. I realize some people do not use betas, however now is a great time to install the chat and see just what kind of demand you're getting. If you regularly have 5 or less in the room, then you know the free version is probably sufficient. If you have up to 10 people, you'll know that either (1) you will want a version with higher limits, or (2) IP.Chat won't be suitable for you.

Basically, we're doing exactly what you suggest, except we're doing it during the beta period.

Right now we are seeing less than 5 in a room. This does not mean this is the activity we will see once it goes final, and we have to plan accordingly. There's nothing stopping us from increasing the limit 6 months from now if we find that it is underutilized and we can easily handle 10 without undue costs.

Please keep in mind that at the end of the day, this is a business, and we can only do so much for free. ;)


Hey, guys. If we decide to on the 10 user package, is the price going to be affordable? Because I wouldn't want to fork over another 30 dollars fore another app. It just seems like every IPS add-on seems to be running in the $30+ range. If it turns out to be $30+, then I'll just stick with Ajax Chat and Chatango, which I currently have running through my site.



I wouldn't mind a ten user package for IP.Chat, but it's doubtful that I would spend more than $15 on the package.




We have not announced the prices yet.


Too concerned with trying to get rid of database errors that I keep seeing in my control panel - heck even got one trying to uninstall chat LOL




There was an additional post to the announcement that explained exactly how to stop the database errors when uninstalling Chat....did you miss that post perhaps?

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Seems a rather low figure, and one that most sites would go over.



Was hoping it would be say 20 rather than 5, which is a reasonable number for a small community.



One would have to question whether it would be worth installing at all if a site was limited to 5 - would be better sticking with the shoutbox.




I believe the free version comes with a money-back guarantee if you are not satisfied with it.
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There was an additional post to the announcement that explained exactly how to stop the database errors when uninstalling Chat....did you miss that post perhaps?



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It is sad when staff resort to rudeness.

I have this several times within my control panel

Should I read every post on the forums?
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Hmm, perhaps you misunderstood my last reply. I was certainly not trying to be rude... :unsure:

I was simply asking if you missed the post that explained how to correct the SQL error. Your original post did not indicate if you missed that post or not, so I had no way of knowing (hence why I asked, and also provided a link). Apologies for any misunderstanding.

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It will never cease to amaze me how some manage to find a way to complain about something being free, but to each his own. :)

We gave careful consideration to the 5 user limit in the free version and the conclusion was, it's very fair to small communities and those who wish to try the product. Pricing for larger packages will be very reasonable and quite comparable with other hosted chat services. We will be releasing pricing information shortly.

As for a standalone version - this too was given careful consideration as we do recognize that a select few would like the option to use the product on your own server. It made much more sense to develop a specific environment for our needs and then build the hosted product around that for scalability, performance and expansion capabilities. Developing it with other configurations and platforms in mind would be counterproductive to those goals, thus, we have no immediate plans to offer it as a downloadable product. The market for those able to run the product on their own server is so minimal, I'm afraid we cannot justify the development resources necessary to make it happen. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Thank you for your feedback. We're not always able to accommodate every request, as is the case here, but we do listen and appreciate your input the same.

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