Milestone support company

A

alex kelly

n3wb
Jan 28, 2017
3
0
Hello,

We are a small manufacturing company and have milestone installed with hikvision cameras. Is there any companies that support milestone that you recommend? Is it possible to have software support directly from milestone and if so is it any good?

Thanks
 
alex kelly said:
Hello,

We are a small manufacturing company and have milestone installed with hikvision cameras. Is there any companies that support milestone that you recommend? Is it possible to have software support directly from milestone and if so is it any good?

Thanks
Click to expand...
Milestone will offer support for their PAID versions...limited to the first 90 days/1 year depending on version..then there is an extra cost...it should be good.
 
That is correct Milestone do offer support for their paid versions of their software along with Milestone Care which was once known as SUP (Software Upgrade Plan).
 
Depending on where you are situated in the world I know the support in APAC region is excellent when dealing with the team there. If you are in Americas I would assume that the support would not differ.
 
alex kelly said:
Hello,

We are a small manufacturing company and have milestone installed with hikvision cameras. Is there any companies that support milestone that you recommend? Is it possible to have software support directly from milestone and if so is it any good?

Thanks
Click to expand...

do you actually need support for an existing issue? if so, what is it?
 
TazzieDevil7373 said:
That is correct Milestone do offer support for their paid versions of their software along with Milestone Care which was once known as SUP (Software Upgrade Plan).
Click to expand...
Yes and no....... For the SUP people, aka care basic/plus people, they can't get phone support directly from Milestone. They have to go via the approved reseller they brought from for that.
They can get 'chat' support to a point.
 
I'd like to add to this in that we found out the hard way that Care Plus still doesn't allow you access to call Milestone directly, you have to go through your reseller for support. Care Premium plus an onboarding fee or such does allow you direct access to them though (I can't remember exactly what they call it but it was around $1500 US).

The software is pretty solid in my opinion but their latest move of making the Go version obsolete, moving to Essential as the next version, and basically bumping everything up really left a sour taste in my mouth (moving to a Software as a service style platform for Essentials).
 
Yeah Milestone made some changes to support, and Care Plus aka what all the old Milestome care/SUP changed into. I'm sure you'll get through to Milestone directly AFTER going via a reseller first, assuming they pass the case up to Milestone. But I'm sure they have 'limits' to a number of cases they can pass up though.

I also find Milestone forums useless, they closed them down basically, again pushing people to reseller support.

As for the changes in licences, I'm not sure why you have a sour taste? Go was limited, Essential removed most of all those limits. The product still nags you every time you start it up, so evening if you had a 'paid' Essential licence like me, you're still getting value.

SAAS I thought they dropped that 'trial' annual camera licences in 2017?
 
LevelX said:
Yeah Milestone made some changes to support, and Care Plus aka what all the old Milestome care/SUP changed into. I'm sure you'll get through to Milestone directly AFTER going via a reseller first, assuming they pass the case up to Milestone. But I'm sure they have 'limits' to a number of cases they can pass up though.

I also find Milestone forums useless, they closed them down basically, again pushing people to reseller support.

As for the changes in licences, I'm not sure why you have a sour taste? Go was limited, Essential removed most of all those limits. The product still nags you every time you start it up, so evening if you had a 'paid' Essential licence like me, you're still getting value.

SAAS I thought they dropped that 'trial' annual camera licences in 2017?
Click to expand...

Go was definitely limited VS essentials. Part of my issue was that before the transition, Essentials was very reasonable entry level around $50 a camera IIRC. Now, if you want to go the buy it once route, you've got to license for express which starts around $70 a license. It appears you are right on the SAAS as I cannot seem to find the 8 camera packs for the yearly rate anymore for Essentials. Further though, you couldn't retain the option to continue paying support at the Essentials rate, you are forced into upgrading if you wish to keep Care Plus/Premium but now at the Express prices for support.

In our company, we were just fine at Essentials but now being forced into the Express level on next renewal, we can probably expect our support costs to go up quite a bit.
 
Yeah the SAAS yearly camera pack option didn't take off, I remember reading it was EOL a while ago.

We're on Essentials, didn't take the 'free' upgrade option offered at the time, as we knew it would cost us more in the future to add licences and didn't need any of the 'extra' things the upgrade came with. We can still buy/add licences, and they are still sold for example

Milestone Camera License for XPROTECT Essential XPESCL B&H Photo

Not sure about what support you had been paying for, but we kept out SUP aka Care Plus entitlements on Essentials.

Did you take up the free upgrade option?
 
LevelX said:
Yeah the SAAS yearly camera pack option didn't take off, I remember reading it was EOL a while ago.

We're on Essentials, didn't take the 'free' upgrade option offered at the time, as we knew it would cost us more in the future to add licences and didn't need any of the 'extra' things the upgrade came with. We can still buy/add licences, and they are still sold for example

Milestone Camera License for XPROTECT Essential XPESCL B&H Photo

Not sure about what support you had been paying for, but we kept out SUP aka Care Plus entitlements on Essentials.

Did you take up the free upgrade option?
Click to expand...

Wow! That is a complete 180 from the market when this all started. The XProtect Essential licenses were marked as EOL on BH, same with support last I checked around in Nov. I really appreciate you bringing this up as this means we can still add more licenses to our servers at the $50 rate versus the new $70 rate per camera, which is big when you're talking small budget!

Did Milestone put out any press release about this reversal by chance?
 
Maybe BH got a bit excited when the changes happened? Essential base was EOL as its now 'free'.

I'm not sure it was a 'reversal' when it all went down, they offered users a choice to upgrade for 'free' or keep the current level. Most took the 'free' upgrade, but we choose not to (it was an option in the licence portal during the upgrade to the next level). Milestone had been pushing heavily for users to 'upgrade', as everything is more costly on the upgraded version for camera licences, care plans etc so more $$$$ for them.

We're running PAID XProtect Essential 2017 R1. The difference between the paid and non-paid version is paid has no nagging, can be 'licenced' above 8 cameras and can have more than 5 simultaneous users.

If you can put up with the nagging on startup, need less than 8 cameras and 5 simultaneous users, the 'free' version is pretty darn good value!

Here is a presentation from the release back in 2016, that shows the SAAS option that is gone and talks about the upgrades. Agreed after listening to this they make it sound like Essentials is dead, but it just wasn't true. I think they just had been trying to push up 'paid' customers to the next level as part of the change so they didn't feel 'ripped' off in the change.



Not in the description

* Paid XProtect Essential users with a valid Care-Plus agreement will get a free upgrade to Express if they want it.
* If they have XProtect Essential with less than 8 cameras, then they may want to stay on Essential because of the future cost of maintaining Care-Plus.
* Upgrading from Essential adds: 1) multiple monitor viewing for Smart Client. 2) archiving.ability to network storage (NAS, SAN). 3) 3rd-party plug-in integration capability: LPR, Access Control, Transact (POS text overlay), etc.​

Not sure why they say less than 8 cameras, not the case for us. Also, wish Milestone would do a backend GUI update. We have been using the product for 5 years now, and seriously question the 'paid' upgrades over the years we have gotten. While its pretty cheap, it hasn't really changed at all!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom