

Despite the Cloud only having been in existence (in its current form) for less than a decade, it already has a whole set of rules and norms that have become norms only because the majority of cloud vendors say it has to be that way.

Here are some of the things that are common features of your average cloud company:

Monthly or annual subscription fees are the only way to pay for their products

It has become the absolute standard within the cloud industry that customers have no ownership of the products they pay for beyond the terms of their contract. For many cloud companies (e.g. cloud hosting of websites or online shops) this makes complete sense, but others are on shakier ground.

Why, for example, should a small business subscribe to an accounting software vendor for a monthly fee when they could pick up a disc based alternative and install it to their computer for a single one-off payment?

The cloud vendor will justify this additional subscription cost through regular updates, but what if the small business doesn’t have room in their budget that month to pay for access to their cloud accounting software? They won’t be able to do their accounts at all!

Integration problems are out of their hands

Many cloud vendors claim to be integrated with multiple other cloud offerings but in reality this integration through API is often very limited by necessity of design. Any changes they make to update their own API will often mean that the software that is integrated with them stops being integrated at all.

If you complain to the vendor about this you will be told that the problem is out of their hands, which is correct. They cannot force the other software developer to patch their software. If they are unwilling to do it, the vendor can’t do a whole lot about it as they didn’t design or own the other software.

They barely exist in the offline world

Aside from a support email address, a lot of cloud companies seem to hardly even exist in the “real world”. In fact, come cloud vendors won’t even offer that much to their customers and their only support channel will be a giant, difficult to use, “Knowledge Base” with common queries about their products.

You’ll also notice that these cloud vendors will be very keen to get you signed up to a monthly subscription and will probably even make a sales call to try and get you signed up, but that kind of care and attention will expire once you are actually a customer of theirs.

WinWeb doesn’t care about these cloud industry “rules”.

We offer many of our apps on a non-subscription basis

There would be nothing worse for a micro business unable to pay to access their accounts. That’s why we offer a number of our apps on a “pay once, use forever” basis just like traditional software vendors used to do in the old days.

Our system is built from the ground up to be integrated

All of our apps are part of the same overall software suite and can be used individually or in a highly integrated fashion depending on your requirements.

We exist in the real world

Not only do we provide 24/7 support on our website, you can come to see us at one of our WinWeb HUBs.

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