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Originally Posted by The Others
The thing is, I could hack nocat onto a Linksys WRT54G for a fraction of this price, and still perform any function yours could.
You seem to be charging a lot of money for a cheap PC running linux.
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See, that is the type of feedback I was looking for. You have a very good point and that is a concern of mine as well. To be more specific, a company that has offered me a job has exactly what I am describing and I wanted to get feedback from others as to the concept and application. In researching the wifi/hotspot industry, I have come across several applications/appliances/programs. In response, however, I would say while you (and others) can hack into the Linksys box, how many of our target market have that same skill? If someone came to you and said they wanted to do that, what would you charge them?
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Let's think about this, you want to charge $2000 and $70 a month so a company can provide free internet? How on earth does the company benefit at all? You're charging for the most expensive splash screen in the world! Also, how do you plan justifying you "maintanence fee"? What exactly will that involve?
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Several good questions. 1) Benefits: Installation is transparent to the owners in that once they decide to move forward, one day they come to work and it is done. Good, bad or indifferent, there is benefit to that. Counter to that, I would think, would be you could hire someone, buy the Linksys box and have the same thing for, from what you are saying, less money.
The customer polling feature I think is valuable for the owners in that they can get a feel for their customers and what they are looking for. Again, you (and in this case, I) could create a simple web page/site with the same features, but again, for a cost. The maintenance fee is better referred to as a management/reporting fee. We would manage the installation from a support standpoint in that we would monitor the appliance, apply upgrades as needed, etc. This, I think, is the most valuable benefit as it relates to the management fee. The reporting is the other tool. To be able to gather demographic (name, address, etc) information of people that are actually in the store and, we would hope, have spent money is very valuable.
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If people wanted to provide free internet, they'll just buy a $30 AP and put a sign up.
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Another good point, however, people aren't doing that because you and I both now while it is simple, it isn't THAT simple. Also, while not as pressing as other issues, the signage, marketing collateral, etc, does cost money. Again, not a huge amount in the grand scheme of things, but there is a cost involved and we provide that as well.
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Then, if it breaks, I haven't spent $70 a month "maintaining" it. With this fortune saved, I can just buy another AP. Hell! I could buy two a month for the price you're charging! Sure, linksys customer care is crap, but, their stuff rarely breaks and is cheap enough to replace if it does.
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Two year bumper to bumper on the appliance and again, the maintenance fee should be called a management fee. That is my fault.
Thanks for your criticism. This is exactly what I wanted to hear.
As a follow up, what would see as a fair price for what I have described? By that, you can use the Linksys product, have it feedback to a central database to gather the user data, provide content filtering, customer ability to modify areas (ie, banner, etc) of the splash page, the polling/survey option (again, owner "editable"), marketing collateral, owner AND end-user support?
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Also, the devices would allow for IPSEC VPN connectivity.
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