@igaudette said in Focus on Business Apps:
With all the respect I have for the Cloudron team, I think you are not as good marketers as you are developers.
No, they are NOT marketers at all and, well this imho, not even much business oriented at all either I even wonder if they understand marketing. No offence intended I too respect the team and its work VERY much, but unfortunately in general this is the proper of the majority of developers even though they're among the bests. I wonder if only they have any idea of HOW to market Cloudron efficiently.
I can relate because I'm doing marketing and business online for almost 25 years, in the software and hosting industry and been part of the team that contributed to the marketing and rapid EXPANSION of cPanel when it got out.
At the time we literally revolutionised the web hosting business industry because this was the first GUI created that would allow a MUCH larger crowd of people out there the much simplified capacity of hosting one's website and hence install a presence online on the web without having the much deeper technical knowledge to do so before the advent of cPanel. That was circa 2005, I was already hosting website the old way through the use of CLI and FTP etc. But cPanel had totally changed the game not only by helping to provide hosting services much faster and in an much easier manner, but also expand more rapidly by providing training and allowing clients to host themselves while being able to accomplish simple maintenance tasks that they wouldn't have been able, or wouldn't dare to do before cPanel. And even so, many have become Web Hosting Providers thanks to cPanel and have made new careers and fed their family and even became very comfortable financially, the industry just EXPLODED.
When I discovered Cloudron in 2019 I started to use it immediately, I fell off my chair I thought really that could be the new cPanel alike REVOLUTION but "in the cloud" and with a higher level of easiness to manage and privacy and security, to not just hosting websites but also an amazing array of apps that a LOT of people and businesses need, all of a single click. I'd already explored many other panels out there and solutions with Docker, Kuberneties, and Portainer etc. but man, there was nothing like Cloudron, yet, and still.
You can imagine I contacted the guys here. I've made MANY proposals, suggested several ideas and even privately revealed some of my secret plans for marketing and getting clients at scale to no end, unless the world explodes. All along with several technical suggestion for the platform to make it marketable at scale like crazy etc. I'll keep it brief, but now we're almost 2025 and here we are... They never give any kind of feedback, nor intention it's like talking to ghosts loll okay not that much but when they're seem to maybe have an open mind on something then that is all there is though, an intention until now, and never went any further... It's pretty hard to know what they think and what they really want to achieve at any level. I respect that, it's their way of doing things and they'll get the results that goes along.
Now, sadly I can't wait forever and now I'm like many of the power users here and I start to look elsewhere too, not because there's not enough apps on Cloudron, no it's been a long time there's enough, it's only that nothing goes nowhere, and in the actual state of how Cloudron is implemented for deployment there's NO WAY to create the momentum we created for cPanel in the past. And, at the moment to access and use the very popular apps emerging that are getting dust on before to get onto Cloudron, I use EasyPanel which IS, a very interesting choice as an 'alternative' to host what's not yet supported by Cloudron.
Cheers!