jackchristel
commented
4 years ago This is a good idea, I feel like if someone buys beacon Omni for $15, then any child account they want can be added for $5 so people don't need to buy a whole different plan, or instead they can upgrade to a teams account account, and add as many child accounts as they need for a price, the more child slots you buy are cheaper maybe? And the teams account would just be a upgrade to the Omni account, for the extra $5 or $10 depending on the extra slots they wanted.
Redriver559559
thommcgrath
One issue with Beacon at the moment is account reuse. One admin will purchase a copy of Beacon and simply let their whole team of admins use the account. On the surface, this seems like a revenue problem and I'm not going to deny that it bothers me a bit, the bigger issue is revocation. Sometimes admins go bad, and the true account owner may believe they can just change their password if it were to happen, but it's not that simple. Since the private key is downloaded to each computer signed in, changing the password gracefully (that is, when the password is known) doesn't change the private key. The "bad" admin will be able to immediately re-authenticate because they still have the private key. There's no way to get that off the their system if they don't want to do it. The only option becomes a force password reset, which generates a new private key. However, this means all data in the user's cloud bucket will be lost, which includes presets and custom engrams. The user's documents will also lose any encrypted data, such as server records and admin passwords. So for these reasons, account sharing is very strongly discouraged because recovery options are limited.
Beacon's document sharing is a good solution, but while not every user needs Omni, any user who wishes to push changes to the server would need their own copy. That could become an expensive option, and it's not my goal to bleed users dry.
This proposal is to offer an alternative to these teams of admins: child accounts. The "head" admin would be able to create Beacon accounts that mostly share the permissions of the parent account. Child accounts would automatically get access to the parent's documents and cloud files, just like they were signed into the parent account directly. The parent account could at any time turn off a child account, so no password changes or private key regeneration would be necessary.
This ability would not be free, but would come at a steep discount. These numbers are not set in stone. I envision a "Beacon for Teams" product for $25 that would include access for 2 child accounts. Buying separate copies would normally cost $45, so this would be a significant savings. I don't believe a lot of teams are even considering buying every admin a copy, so this probably isn't leaving money on the table. Instead, I believe this would encourage teams to take the more legit approach. Teams needing additional child accounts could purchase them for $5 each. Any user of Beacon Omni would be able to purchase child seat slots, not just those who purchased the "Beacon for Teams" option. That option would essentially just be a bundle.
There is the occasional purchase of 1 copy and 1 giftable copy that I assume is somebody purchasing for themselves and one other admin. This proposal would cannibalize those sales by $5, but they're rare enough as to not be a concern. I cannot recall any purchases of more than 2 full-priced copies at a time.
Child Account Restrictions & Considerations
Concerns
There is a potential for abuse that would need to be monitored. I could imagine somebody trying to make a buck by offering Beacon Omni for $10, and simply buying a $5 child account for the user. There's honestly no real solution though. Terms of service would need to explicitly prohibit reselling of child accounts, and usage would need to be monitored. If such a behavior were detected, the parent account would need to be disabled and something done about all the child accounts.