Sage 100

I think I might have started two prior threads on the topic of what consultants are advising their clients about V-Technologies and the push to get users off StarShip On-Prem and over to StarShip Cloud. I don't remember either of those message getting much traction or actionable feedback regarding experiences.

I have two clients who are regularly contacted by V-Technologies and they have quotes which seem designed to push up the cost of on-prem when compared to StarShip Cloud. 

The reason this conversation keeps coming up is that some portions of what V-Technologies offers - such as their recent integration with ScanForce - only work with StarShip Cloud. I'm also seeing some mailings where V-Technologies says that a new carrier integration or two will only be on StarShip Cloud.

As clients see these demos and emails they've begun asking when and if they should move to StarShip Cloud.

I've seen some of the quotes clients have received from V-Technologies and it doesn't clearly spell out what their new annual cost for StarShip Cloud is going to be and if there will be any lost features.

What are you advising StarShip users when it comes to upgrading to StarShip Cloud?  Is it still about staying on-prem until forced to move or am I just a laggard and should have been advising clients all along to get with the StarShip Cloud program?

This is a tough conversation we are having with our clients.  The quotes to move to cloud are not always "realistic" and it often makes it sound like "staying on premise" is going to be much more expensive than I calculate it costing them.  What I have seen is that when they quote, they include an "upgrade cost for On Premise" that is 2x the current maintenance price.  So if the client pays $2,500/year now, the quote for the next "upgrade" for the comparison is $5,000.  As a consultant, we can do most StarShip version upgrades for significantly less that the quote. 

Also, if clients do a large number of LTL Shipments; the pricing options are not optimal.  A client that needs up to 1500  LTL Shipments per month is paying a fee that includes 30,000 parcel shipments.  Most of our clients that need that high volume of LTL, are not shipping much parcel and it is priced at $1,655/month.  A month!  The lower tier of $1,070/month only supports 500 LTL shipments with 16,000 parcel packages.  They need a tier that supports LTL better to be cost effective. 

We do have some clients that have tried to move to the cloud; but for one reason or another they reverted back to their on-premise version (they don't document that very well for us; so I can't provide the "why" they are doing this). 

 
I do think the product has gotten much better, and overall moving to the cloud hosted version sounds like a great move for many of our clients. 

Here is the link to review the pricing if you are interested.  Don't forget, there is a $ 3500-$5000 Onboarding Fee on top of the Subscription.  https://subscription.starship.online/products/starshipplus#pricing

------------------------------
Madeline Stefanou
RKL eSolutions, LLC
------------------------------

You describe exactly what I've seen this week with a quote one of my clients received. Overall I advised them that when only UPS/FEDEX are in play then the use of StarShip Cloud doesn't seem to be problematic. However, when you are using volume LTL shipments the pricing tiers might force you into a higher monthly fee. Naturally the response from the client was "oh, we never ship LTL"........

My feedback after reading the quote was very very similar to your assessment. I though that the quote was puffed up with costs to upgrade on-prem that weren't realistic - especially since V-Technologies didn't appear to have the professional services bandwidth the last time around ( I think that was the UPS OAUTH push to upgrade ).

I did a recent upgrade to a client site that had StarShip Cloud ( I wasn't their partner when they put it in ) and the upgrade was super easy and I look forward to not having future StarShip server upgrades. However, the client did mention unspecified challenges getting onto StarShip cloud.

I'm also "iffy" on exactly what the professional service fees quoted by V-Technologies get the client. Last year my personal opinion is that the quote V-Technologies was issuing for professional services assistance with upgrades was way out of line. To V-Technologies favor I found they were very willing to assist with minor issues when the client performed the upgrade themselves.

The quote also asked for two years up-front of fees for StarShip cloud and had a disclaimer at the bottom about no refunds unless due to a bug that V-Technologies couldn't resolve.

The whole process - both last year's push to upgrade and the continuing push to upgrade - has me a little queasy. I won't want to be in the middle of V-Technologies and the client should their shipping process go down for even one day. For that reason I'm working hard to provide a pro/con list to the client and letting them pick.