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Reward for Beta Testers
Idea shared by kevind - 5/28/2020 at 8:30 AM
Proposed
It's no secret that testing a new version of software is a lot of work, especially in a production environment. You have to deal with bugs, user questions, complaints, reporting on the forum, etc. Not to mention repeated installations (40 releases of SM17 in the last 6 months) and downgrades when things break.

For all this extra effort, some companies reward active beta testers with free upgrades or discounted renewals. Just throwing this out as an idea...

Kevin

7 Replies

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3
Yeah, good question!

I'm spending a lot of my time (more than 15 hours every week indeed...) to beta test it for months now...


If I had to be paid by the hour for this job it would be a nice salary increase ...  ;-)
Gabriele Maoret - Head of SysAdmins at SERSIS Currently manages 6 SmarterMail installations (1 in the cloud for SERSIS which provides services to a few hundred third-party email domains + 5 on-premise for customers who prefer to have their mail server in-house)
4
Tim Uzzanti Replied
5/28/2020 at 9:47 AM
Employee Post
I wish Microsoft and Apple would provide the same.  We wouldn't even need to sell software based on the contributions we provide to them.  :)
Tim Uzzanti CEO SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
12
Employee Replied
5/28/2020 at 9:56 AM
Employee Post
I pay for early access to games on Steam.  I think we are in a world where software is so complex the benefit is that we get to provide feedback and make things better for our entertainment or in business we can ensure our environments are stable once it goes into production.
4
You are right, but we can try to ask... ;-)
Gabriele Maoret - Head of SysAdmins at SERSIS Currently manages 6 SmarterMail installations (1 in the cloud for SERSIS which provides services to a few hundred third-party email domains + 5 on-premise for customers who prefer to have their mail server in-house)
2
We get rewarded :) We get a more stable and efficient mail server :)
1
We paid for our maintenance upgrade last August, we added the EWS/MAP function.
We dont use EWS so its been a total waste of money.

The first part of the beta was handled very poorly by Smartertools.

We asked a while back if we could get a temp license to use for a migration.
We didnt want to migrate the domains all at once.  
Got a hard no on that.

I have hosted and sold email since 1996 I think.
Used SLmail first then switch to Imail.  Ipswitch lost their mind so many of us left for Smartermail.

I really appreciate how responsive the team has been.
I am sure they have worked their butts off.



2
I second Heimir, we got stung for a renewal with EWS/MAPI instead of the usual lower cost EWS last August too. The fact we have paid for something that is not available does not sit well. Some sort of one-off recognition that we handed over money for something that was not available would go a long way.
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