Access and Rates

[Dot Matrix]

In case it helps, I do the sums like this.

Cost of Premium Account per month: $19.95 (let's round it to $20)
Cost of 16-region Premium World per 30 days: (16 - 5) x 10KC x 30 = 11 x 300 KC = 3300 KC
Cost of single region Premium World per 30 days: 300 KC

I buy KC in chunks of $50 at a time to get the maximum discount, so each 300 KC costs me $1.

Total monthly cost of Premium Account and 16-region Premium World = $20 + $11 = $31
Additional monthly cost of single-region Premium World = $1

HG access is set at World level, not for individual regions. So if you want a single region to be always accessible to HG visitors, and not the 4x4 megaregion, you'd need to cost in an additional $1 per month. However, the Access tab in the Manage World settings allows finetuning via group access. Also, from experience, the cost of casual non-Premium visitors outside of events averages out at under $2 per month (600 inworld minutes).

For an hour-long event with 50 non-Premium attendees, the cost would be 60 x 50 = 3000 KC, or $10 when buying KC in chunks of $50 at a time.

Possible alternative for small events:
Start with smaller Premium Worlds, say a four-region plus a single region. Land costs for these are included in the $20 Premium Account.

For regular small events of up to 10 avatars, accessible to all, have a fixed price Starter World. This costs $14.95 (let's round it to $15). I'm using this option for Intersections.

Premium Account + Starter World = $20 + $15 = $35

Possible alternative for larger events:
Again, start with smaller Premium Worlds, say a four-region plus a single region.

It is possible to change either of these to a fixed-price world at any time, and you are charged pro-rata. If you time the event to happen at the end of the month, you could change either the four-region or the single-region Premium World to a Standard or Advanced fixed-price world. Then turn it back to a Premium World before the start of the next month.

If you go for a 4x4 Premium World, it will have to be an Advanced fixed-price world.

Standard World pro-rata cost per day = $50 / 30 = $1.66...
Advanced World pro-rata cost per day = $100 / 30 = $3.33...

To work out the total cost, multiply these pro-rata costs by the number of days left in the month.

Standard Worlds allow for events with up to 40 avatars; Advanced Worlds can have up to 100 avatars.

Kitely's plans are incredibly flexible and make it possible to tailor your account to match exactly what you want to do. A disadvantage is that this can make them seem complicated; but when you work out the sums, they turn out to be one of the best deals around for OpenSim, especially when coupled with ease of use and grid stability.

[Roswenthe Blackwell]

I never thought about switching back and forth. That's really helpful.

You can pay for that via KC, can't you?

[Dot Matrix]

Yes, Roswenthe, you can pay for all Kitely services from your KC balance.

Here's what the Kitely Services page says about this:

Paying for your Kitely subscription
Your subscription includes all of your monthly services: your Account (if you have a Premium Account), and your Fixed-Price Worlds. You can choose to pay for your monthly subscription using PayPal or Kitely Credits. When paying using KC, your account balance will be charged 300 KC for each 1 US dollar that is due. The default payment method is using PayPal. However, in some cases you may prefer to pay using KC instead.

• Vendors of virtual items may have a lot of KC that they received from other people. They can use these KC to pay for their Kitely subscription.
• Some people prefer not to link their credit card to PayPal. PayPal doesn't allow creating monthly subscriptions without a credit card, so such people can't use PayPal to pay for Kitely. The workaround is to buy a lot of KC in advance and then use those KC to pay for the subscription.
• Some people prefer to pay in advance for several months. This can be done by buying a lot of KC and using them to pay for the subscription.

[Carlos Loff]

If you are having a limited visits world keep it premium but if you are going for major events make it Fixed Price, either way you are paying very very very cheap prices for a 16 world compared with SL or any other OpenSim grid

[Dot Matrix]

So if I buy 50.00 of KC at a time, I'm devoting a total of 81.00 for that month in order to claim a discount.

But Kitely Credits don't expire at the end of a month, so the purchase of 50 dollars worth of KCs is likely to last more than one month -- unless you go shopping with them, of course.

[Dot Matrix]

From experience, I'd recommend Kitely over Zetamex in terms of quality and timeliness of support, ease of use, integration of backend systems (billing, support, etc), and level of professionalism.

[Carlos Loff]

Well once I looked around a bit more, the standard world is really the better value for events. Although it doesn't have that sexy 4X4 within reasonable budgetary reach for my budget.

The only competitor that seems to pop up is Zetamex as far as available land but again one needs to read carefully that a $35.00 region isn't $35.00 but actually $60.00.

It actually is more straight forward and less scary than open ended costs that could occur with HyperGate visitors on a pay per use plan. However, the change in management is concerning

over there. Also in trying to be an educated consumer/creator finding a list of grids, the number of users, and the date a given grid was established isn't all that easy. It is not just a Google away.

http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Grid_List

What can I say, running a 4X4 region means having and running a 4X4 region - On SL, with equivalent service it would be 16.000 Dollars setup and 295$X16 each month

Does Zetamex have 16 regions world ? What price would be the 16 total ???

I believe no one beats Kitely prices

[Ilan Tochner]

It's important to remember that just because some company advertises it supports some avatar and prim concurrency doesn't mean that they can actually deliver on that promise. Kitely uses more than 400 proprietary patches to OpenSim, some of which are thousands of lines of code in size, in order to help us deliver the performance and stability that we're known for. We have Advanced Megaregions which solve many of the problems that exist with regular OpenSim megaregions (and allow using ODE physics which varregions don't currently support). We also developed our own cloud-based assets and inventory systems which speed things up significantly. If you see a cheaper offering by another OpenSim hosting provider then I suggest you take their advertised prim and avatar amounts with a grain of salt and test that what they promised is what you actually receive.