EE 7 now limited to 1 user?

I don’t mind paying for EE and I actually did in the past, but for extra features. For my surprise EE 7 is limited to 1 control panel user now. And as it seems this does not apply to other type of users, I’m very confused and not very happy about this. I paid EE with Ellis Lab in the past, but I don’t think they ever limited functionality wise, they basically offered extras like the forum, wiki, etc., in the commercial license.

What kind of limitation in the technical side does this involve?

When they mean 1 control panel user, what happens to all other type of users? I’m trying to find out if your site has a membership or registration which uses the member accounts either for users, customers, just visitors that leave comments or even using for subaccount (more than one account per user) what exactly or how does this affect a potential upgrade?

I’m concerned that this can be further increased in the future to limit what users can do. Example, if you run a forum or community, they need to manage their preferences from the control panel.

So let me get this straight, if you have 5 persons that need to post articles in a blog channel, you need pro now? This seems extremely aggressive if you ask me. What kind of website does have just one single user, even a person website probably allows at least 1 or 2 persons to manage a website. Isn’t the whole concept of EE to be a content management system? I’m more concerned they can further limit users features in future releases or even go to a metered per user fee which would basically result in them killing EE all together over other options like WordPress, Drupal, etc.

This does not seem right in an open-source commercial model. The fee should be for support (business will require and happy pay them) and extra modules or addons that are not available in the open-source version but limiting users…ouch…Its web 2.0, websites are not static anymore which is basically what the free version can or will be used. And static sites will probably just use a sitebuilder or static HTML without a database. Something using a PHP CMS content management platform is very likely running something dynamic which requires of course, user interaction which makes little sense to try to make money out of something this basic. It’s like trying to charge based on the amount of hits your website receives. Unless someone does not get it, the number of users you run in the software has no effect or influence on the cost for Expression Engine. The customer is still paying for his server or hosting, the most users, or bigger its website, the more it costs already. This seems like an artificial way to make money instead of actually adding value that people would pay for.

The way open source makes software is:

1. Charge for support, either subscription or per ticket. Allow someone to start free and pay once they make money
2. Addons, they can charge a small % for addons in their store, or some certification of some sort like EE approved
3. Official addons, Ellis Lab charged gave forums, or wiki just to name to with the pro but not free
4. Features, MSM, this they already do which is fine

I completely understand Packet Tide needs to make income and I purchased several of their addons as well and from many other developers because they add something new, and yes while I will also pay for Pro in the future my concern is if they start to go this route of artificially limiting things in the software this can really break the adoption in the future. I saw many companies doing something similar, first limiting users, then charging per number of users, then charging per amount of this and that and most of them are gone now because of that. Charging per users works in cloud, example, they host everything, the more users the most it costs them in support, bandwidth, database, CPU, etc. but not with self-hosted software. This would be like Microsoft charging Office 365 based on the number of hours you use Word or the number or emails you are sending with Outlook (using your email server).

Note, I think the price is fair, but they can keep changing this next year, and then in version 8 and then limit more and more things which is very concerning. Pro should have extra features, unlimited members was always free, even with Ellis Lab. It’s that they are charging for something new but limiting existing functionality from version 6. I suspect this will also fragment the user base with many people sticking to version 6 and not upgrading to 7 for those reasons which again is bad.