Hey everyone,
A couple of weeks ago, we temporarily suspended registration of new Libraryh3lp trial accounts. Although we indicated that this was a temporary situation and that new trials would again be available this summer, we're hearing a fair bit of inaccurate rumor mill stuff, so we feel the need to provide more detail.
Why did we disable new Libraryh3lp signups? Plain and simple: heavy load.
Libraryh3lp has grown tremendously, approximately doubling each year. We're at a point now where the system is under a pretty amazing amount of strain for its current architecture. New trials only increase this load, and we still need to be able to survive the peak usage months this semester. April promises to bring a new record amount of traffic. New trials would only increase the chance of instability for existing customers, many of which have paid money for subscriptions.
Proof:
In order to get Libraryh3lp over the next anticipated growth wall, we need to release a large upgrade. The coding work is underway. When we push out this new release, it will be somewhat disruptive, and there will be lots of bugs to be squashed in the weeks following the upgrade. This is better done over the summer than it is during the peak usage time in the Spring semester.
Also, keep in mind that Libraryh3lp has always been about providing a pretty much unlimited platform. You can create any number of users, queues, and gateways. You can put the widget and presence calls on any number of web pages. All of this does, in fact, require a pretty serious technical infrastructure. We could throttle growth and usage by placing all sorts of limits on things like users, queues, widget loads, and presence calls. But, we really believe in making this system very flexible, so we haven't done that.
Now, to some specific rumors:
- Libraryh3lp has been sold. Patently false.
- We are forcing libraries to use My Customer Cloud. Also false. But, MCC is a very good place to start if you're a wanna-be Libraryh3lp user. MCC still has plenty of capacity for new users. AND, for many libraries, MCC is cheaper than Libraryh3lp.
And, as another option, keep Refchatter by Altarama in mind. It is also very similar to Libraryh3lp, having the same code base, and it comes with guaranteed training and support (which Libraryh3lp does not).
If you'd like to be notified when new Libraryh3lp registrations are available again this summer, please write to Pam at psessoms@gmail.com.
One small favor: If you are a current user, please check your Account Status tab in the admin site. We haven't had a lot of time to do proactive renewal billing, and it saves us a lot of time when libraries renew independently using the form in the site or at least write to us requesting an invoice. Help keep Libraryh3lp inexpensive by not requiring us to hire a billing person!
Over and out!
2 comments:
Hi Pam, sorry if I'm just being blind, but I can't find our account status in the admin tab...
Hi Paul,
Very good question! That tab only shows up for top-level admin-level accounts. That's either the acct used to initially register with libraryh3lp, or an acct owned by that account that has been granted admin rights.
I totally should have noted that in the blog post, sorry about that!
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