Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Until recently I liked ZOHO. For the charity that I worked for, we built our website around ZOHO. They made us buy 7 licenses at the regular price, and that was a pretty tough arrangement for us. We only had one actual user. The rest were because a bunch of volunteers using one particular product. Zoho would not accept that fact. So we are a bigger part of that $1B than we like.


If the volunteers are using one particular Zoho product then in what sense are they not actual users?


Sometimes these low-code platforms only have one idea of a user. So, maybe you make a app to accept applications for employment. It's reasonable, then, to pay licenses for your developer and your HR staff. But, if you want the candidates to be able to check status of their application, often the licensing is such that you would have to pay for a seat per applicant.


Bet the alternatives of what you're asking are much more expensive.


It sounds like you are using Zoho One. You get 40 apps for that price of $37/month paid annually. But the situation is that to get that great price, and it is fantastic, you have to put Zoho One on every computer. It's stated right in the purchase price. "Must purchase license for ALL employees*" "*Your business will have to commit to purchase Zoho One licenses for ALL employees on payroll."

If the volunteers are true volunteers and not on payroll, you should be able to have only one copy.

I see that they do have the Flexible-User Pricing for $90/month paid annually.


if the charity is a non-profit, you should look into https://techsoup.org

they have relationships with many software providers to get discounted non-profit pricing.

MSFT offers Office 365 @ $3/mo/user for their nonprofit tier

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/nonprofit/plan...




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: