How well are ATHP sales?

[Asphyxia]

This is an open call for any TeamSpeak hosting providers to inform the community how TeamSpeak server sales are doing? Are they up, down, or what is going on...

Hello Dear Asphyxia,

Thank you for contacting with us in this matter, yes we noticed about decreased the sales of product teamspeak 3 application software due of Discord, but problem is not related with the application but with the fees which the ATHP got or people who wanted purchase the gamer license in TeamSpeak Inc system are very high for some standard life example: Poland. We must take under review that fact, people who purchase a license file are usually young people aged between 14-18 years, when the Discord is free to use. We believe that the Teamspeak application is still a more independent application and more development than competitive platforms, we hope that Teamspeak 5 will solve the problem of low sales. You wrote the message about purchase TeamSpeak Systems software and allowing any ATHP to get 100% profit, so why you would do this and what profit is for you, if you did not earn money after this? Thank you.

You are considering buying the company?

TeamSpeak contact emails

[email protected]
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A Russian TeamSpeak community

[email protected]
[email protected]

 

[Asphyxia]

Dear Jake ( Asphyxia )

Thank you for the reply, i like your idea and way of thinking about TeamSpeak Community, but the idea what you provided will not success at all, i will tell you why. First mobile application and earning through views and clicks by Google application partnership, it will increase the high frustrations about to see every time, advertising 30 seconds or see something else to keep the application alive like we got in "FREE" mobile games for now, it will force people to do what they do not want to do and community will leave the application anyway. People would like pay some low subscription cost per month rather than see annoying advertise believe me. Second 100% profitable for ATHP can not be happens because how developers can earn money for their work per month? The money earned by the ATHP companies that will work but what about developers come from TeamSpeak GmBH? Dear Jake you have to think in good way for both directions, to making very good business you have to find the golden mean, every side in business must be happy then that business work. The actual system at TeamSpeak Inc works fine, but problem is that there are high fees, that makes for the first line problem for the customer, paying high price per month for several slots, second line are ATHP Companies also have to pay per month for the renting license ATHP and how much slots are sold. To bring the TeamSpeak Community back, manufacturer have to make lower fees, much lower than now, we can compare to the some example to the countries, people who are paying in country lower fees are got more willingness to invest more in products and services because people can do more then, they are happiness right? that makes also more money for the country both side are happy, same compare to the people at work, you are Employer and you require from the Employee to work for your company from 8h up to 12h a day, but you can not expect the Employee will hard work for you and will be very effective for your company because of hard stress, he got not a private time for himself, so how he could be happy for it? if the Employer required more than can be expected? Employees are more effective and more happy when people work less, and then are they less stressed out that's make them happy right? additionally i can say effective work is doing by them self the Employer do not have force to be more effective at work right if they are happy. That's all i think understand me at all. Thank you.

its declining but I trust there will be nice niche to be.

Know something? I have been told "That will never work," along with "That is impossible," way more than once. Have I failed? Yes, we all have. Other times though, I have accomplished really wonderful things.

We will only know if people give me a try, if not then we can see TeamSpeak 5 released and be a major letdown as I suspect. Then maybe it will be too late and TeamSpeak will definitely start going away if TeamSpeak 5 does not restore stronger market share - which is totally unrealistic to expect the release of TeamSpeak 5 to pull users all back. People leaving TeamSpeak are gone in my opinion, they are not coming back for mobile clients that cost money, high licensing fees, and ATHPs are indeed seeing declined sales.

Not sure what other information people need to see TeamSpeak is failing maybe somewhat slowly but CERTAINLY. Host3 above has a hilarious mindset that "Well, if TeamSpeak starts going out of business then maybe other ATHPs will crash and burn while mine stays alive."

I find laughability (no offense to Host3) in the way people are so quick to critique one's "crazy business ideas" but they never propose their own solution(s) other than "No, that is crazy and will never work."

Okay, so then what would you do differently to regain market share for TeamSpeak? Please do not say "Release TeamSpeak 5"...

 

[0x03D4D5]

The Teamspeak GmbH has failed in many different ways but also benefits from loyal customers as well as the security they provide altho its a closed source software.
They were the first one providing such a good software back then when version 2 (Teamspeak 2) got released. Then, when they published Teamspeak 3, it looked better on the frontend but they kept things going offstream and generic instead of keep updating it to the customer-base they actually have which are mostly gamers.

I myself and many other developers always wanted a nice official API provided by Teamspeak. Although the teamspeak servers works decentralized, the blacklist check is still a thing that is running centralized by teamspeak for example - and so should the API.
We wanted stuff like icon sorting so you organize your 5k+ icons on the server and put them in different folders. Such an easy task yet they never released it.
We wanted a general chat window which lets every client chat in one chat no matter what channel they are. Easy but never released.

The main issue I see here is that they want us to pay enormous amount of money for their weird licenses and yet we let them work on what THEY like to have in the next release instead of what hundreds of communities actually want to make their lifes easier.
In comparison to discord where the developers do listen to the community and trying to work on everything that has lots of upvotes (see dreamlands or w/e its called on their discord page), on teamspeak's side you actually PAY for something and even if you were a complete loyal customer that has been paying years over years for their license, they still handle your request (for example, icon sorting/organizing) like you're just a random ass guest.

Not to blame everything on Teamspeak's side but they didn't watch out for better frameworks or at least improving it so it looks the way it should be in, for example, 2019. It does look clear and all that but its just a piece of software that doesn't fit all needs a gamer has such as a united chat, better server logs (for non-dev users), colorized usernames and so on. Yet they are still promising something for over a year which then again isn't going to make any big changes other then the UI and small things that discord already has.

All in all, I would do the following:
- Listen to the community
- Work with other companies to provide exclusive features for teamspeak customers and clients
- Be up to date, provide an API, make bot-creation easier, simple and user-friendly
- Work on the UI, keep it up to date yet simple
- Remote slot-based licenses, add audio quality, file-upload and/or server banner licenses as well as drasticly decrease the prices for each license.
- Add more license types for individual needs. Furthermore provide a customized license of special needs.
- Add monthly/yearly subscription for clients to make them look special on any teamspeak server.
- Remove free badges, add paid badges that gives you the ability to set a description just for you as a client that can be seen on any teamspeak. As well as adding linked game profiles such as blizzard, youtube, twitch which also can be seen on every server you join.

There is way more stuff Teamspeak GmbH can do to get their customers back and decrease the prices on license but I believe they won't do it cuz they've been selfish and still are.

 

[Asphyxia]

There is way more stuff Teamspeak GmbH can do to get their customers back and decrease the prices on license but I believe they won't do it cuz they've been selfish and still are.

You are correct and have some great ideas on improving TeamSpeak!

I have also been in your position, where I requested security checks and was ignored with "We have features to work on right now, we do not have developers to focus on security currently," this is why our security team found a way to execute files on remote TeamSpeak user's system.

This is why I launched the R4P3 Network forum/website! To this day, I remember clicking the install button and seeing only 1 user registered here.

I am forever grateful for all of the security team members, administrators, and all of this awesome community of TeamSpeak users, developers, and security enthusiasts. We also appreciate the anti-DDoS community which I believe stems from Layer 7 (Application) DDoS attacks being easy, affordable, and effective in the gaming community.

@xzack if we are successful in crowdfunding a buyout (acquisition) of TeamSpeak, would you want to help at all?

 

[0x03D4D5]

I first thought this would be one of those nulled websites providing .. well, nulled codenz such as those lowlevel bots someone made in php and sold em on a site. I had to laugh hard when I looked over the code - daemon made in php, uff.
The second thought was "ok, people here reverse what Teamspeak GmbH provides, gonna stay here!"

I can't say much about the community here since I only made a few posts. Been mostly lurking around and looking for codes, hosting and security flaws.

Sure, I can help out if needed. Just wanted to update my profile with another name and mail address to stay up2date.

 

[Asphyxia]

Hello Asphyxia.

There is a decline on server sales in fact. And it's true that Discord get a high amount of market share mostly because of being free. It's very hard for ATHP to compete with them because of that.

But lately (in last 3-4 months) i noticed a slight increase on teamspeak sales. When asked, my clients say that Discord doesn't offer the versability and quality that teamspeak offers.

I have been following your thread on R4P3 forum, and despite i agree with some of your objectives, i desagree with others.

By example, giving out for free the slots. It's a very bad idea. I would prefere a licensing like cPanel or WHMCS for ATHP:

- 2500 slots license = 125€/month (0.05€/slot)
- 5000 slots license = 200€/month (0.04€/slot)

and so on... and for clients that purchase directly on Teamspeak website:

- Free till 32 slots.
- From 33 - 100 = 0.18€/month/slot
- From 101 - 250 = 0.17€/month/slot
- From 251 - 500 = 0.16€/month/slot
- From 501 - 1000 = 0.15€/month/slot
- From 1001 - 2000 = 0.14€/month/slot

and so on...

This way it will be competitive to ATHPs and Teamspeak also make a market share on direct customer sales.

Regarding the NPL/Sponsoring licenses, in my opinion, it's good to have but with restrictions. I don't agree with the actual Sponsoring license going till 1000 slots and they giving away to everybody. NPL licenses was a excelent idea, but instead of checking every 6 months if the rules weren't breaked, it can be done every year + random checks during the year.

Another thing i would like to see is to switch the connections from UDP to TCP. It's true that UDP offers a lower BW, but if you want to mantain voice quality, TCP is better. Also, TCP can be better protected against DDoS attacks than UDP.

And for last, visuals... The revamp to teamspeak 5 is a disaster! Despite being (almost) a clone of Discord, Teamspeak ditched completely the software targeted for companies. The version 3 is much more suitable. And this applies too to their website.
It's like they do everything exclusively for gamers. But i know some companies that use teamspeak internally for big voice reunions.

I don't know if you agree or not with my suggestions above.

Waiting for your opinion.

Note: you can post my feedback on the forum too if you want.

My favorite part of the above hoster's reply is "When asked, my clients say that Discord doesn't offer the versability and quality that teamspeak offers."

Also, I especially want to make note of his politeness/respect: "and despite i agree with some of your objectives, i desagree with others."

Respect is very important for a CEO to have and he by far has the most of it! A very deserving businessman, I would say!

Keep in mind that host4 proposes the idea of switching the VoIP handling to TCP. While he makes helpful suggestions on TCP for DDoS resilience and this can be true because of the three-way handshake but in terms of sending voice data, VoIP is really best served over UDP. My response to this part would be to check here, here, and lastly here. Discord also utilizes UDP for their voice data I do believe.

Discord mentions

Voice Data is sent using a RTP Header, followed by encrypted Opus audio data.

For anyone else interested in knowing how Discord's "magic" works, they just use WebRTC/WebSocket/ICE/STUN/TURN/UDP.. ICE does some tricks to establish connection. These developers point out unique ideas too! This is a dive into ICE/STUN/TURN from Avaya experts.

Some mentions of the security protocol(s): https://crypto.stackexchange.com/a/50330 and https://stackoverflow.com/questions...p-and-srtp-packets-send-over-dtls-connections and https://www.callstats.io/blog/2018/05/16/a-explaining-the-secure-real-time-transport-protocol-srtp and https://webrtc-security.github.io/ and https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/RTP "The secure version of RTP, SRTP, is used by WebRTC, and uses encryption and authentication to minimize the risk of denial-of-service attacks and security breaches," "RTP is rarely used alone; instead, it is used in conjunction with other protocols like RTSP and SDP."

These two Google groups posts are also incredibly helpful:

Re: RTP over websockets

groups.google.com

and

Re: RTP over websockets

groups.google.com

It's like they do everything exclusively for gamers. But i know some companies that use teamspeak internally for big voice reunions.

I am also noticing host4 is extremely intelligent, I admire his overall awareness of the TeamSpeak situation and where TeamSpeak 5 may be failing not only the company but the entire TeamSpeak community wholly. I agree with host4 in most areas, yes. There are some areas where I believe both him and I could take TeamSpeak's software and work jointly to secure funding to buyout TeamSpeak and make the software again more marketable to businesses like NASA, the military, and focus more on B2B sales as opposed to just ATHP.

If there is focus on ATHP sales, then there should be partnerships with for example AWS (Amazon), Vultr, OVH, and others whereby people can select an option much like WHMCS/Cpanel to install the software on a VPS and during checkout they are granted a calculated expense based on their user amount.

I think a pricing chart like host4 mentioned is a good idea whereby discounts are applied by bulk/large slot purchases, again to highlight host4's table example:

33-100	0.18€/month/slot
101-250	0.17€/month/slot
251-500	0.16€/month/slot
501-1000	0.15€/month/slot
1001-2000	0.14€/month/slot
2001+	0.10€/month/slot or contact [email protected]

@xzack I sent you a PM on changing your email/name. Also thank you for feedback on why you have chosen our community. Over the years, our security team and community members have surely tried to keep this TeamSpeak community alive and well! I keep trying.



Also, TeamSpeak's website apparently throws errors at you if you try uploading an invalid image. Probably some other stuff, only tried one thing and I could try 1,000 but I will not lol... because I am nice.

P.S. you can %00 upload a PHP shell I think?

Want proof: https://support.teamspeakusa.com/index.php?/Base/User/GetProfileImage/109684

Then within chrome prefix view-source: to the front of the above link.

view-source:https://support.teamspeakusa.com/index.php?/Base/User/GetProfileImage/109684

Well, now if you find a way to LFI or call the file directly - you have a TeamSpeak web server shell. Not recommending nor condoning such behavior but I do think TeamSpeak is important (security too). Hopefully they read this website and take this as a security report because they clearly do not read my emails! Keep in mind Cloudflare (WAF) is used on their website so if you for example try <script> you will end up viewing a Cloudflare challenge.

They use Kayako Help Desk Software as mentioned in their page source. https://www.kayako.com/classic



Look familiar? Yes...

maybe on Friday I will do a little more research and report to them if I find something serious.

 

[0x0539]

@0x03D4D5 Nice name.

 

[Asphyxia]

Maybe I should pick a 0x name now... 0XTEAM.. 0x0x0x0x.... x0x0x0x0x wtf?!?!

Kuss (German=kiss), hug......... kusshug?! Yep, that's the company name.

kusshug.com wtf yep, threat intelligence, cybersecurity research, exploit (Proof of Concept) development team. Anyone want to join.. waiting for some a-hole to jack the domain and point to some shock website.

0x029A = 666 edgy

 

[alcahuete]

Not a ATHP anymore, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. Was a ATHP for years, but got out a bit ago with all the nonsense going on at the TS headquarters, and with Discord taking over. Not only did sales drop, they dropped to almost zero when Discord came on the scene.

 

[Asphyxia]

@alcahuete do you remember having to contact TeamSpeak or their support? Seems to take forever for a reply and their responses oftentimes seem senseless.

TeamSpeak has turned into a Twitter company that talks and does not deliver. They need a buyout, I think. Or else they will shutdown with all their ATHP entities.

 

[0x03D4D5]

Maybe I should pick a 0x name now... 0XTEAM.. 0x0x0x0x.... x0x0x0x0x wtf?!?!

Kuss (German=kiss), hug......... kusshug?! Yep, that's the company name.

kusshug.com wtf yep, threat intelligence, cybersecurity research, exploit (Proof of Concept) development team. Anyone want to join.. waiting for some a-hole to jack the domain and point to some shock website.

0x029A = 666 edgy

My "new" (altho i use it for years on greyzone-forums) has a meaning, like @0x0539 has.

I just woke up, currently reading your pm's & the post above. I'll reply later when my brain actually starts working properly haha

@0x03D4D5 Nice name.

Nice name there, Mr. 1337

 

[tagKnife]

@Asphyxia I did mention that making everything free is not a viable marketing strategy. Yes, you will fail if you buy Teamspeak just to make everything free.

The most viable solution is what I have mentioned before. Make the client Open Source, this is what users interact with on a day to day and would benefit most. The client uses a shared library teamspeak.lib (this contains all the networking, protocols, licensing and authentication) this should be kept closed source as well with the server. Where the money is being made should kept behind closed doors.

Let people tinker and mess the client, push bug or features to the client. All that needs to be done, As the ATHP mentioned is the egregious prices need lowering. the average annual income of teamspeak users is 3k (Inflated by those who are old enough to hold employment)

I for one, have been wanting an instanced cloud-enabled Teamspeak hub-leaf network much like iRC.
For example, This is Dal.net network diagram:

For AHTP's this would be great, Because the users wont need to worry about what region their server is, because its instanced on every server on the network. and every user for any region can connect to what region is best for them.

 

[Asphyxia]

you will fail if you buy Teamspeak just to make everything free

Then you have not looked at my ideas over here: https://r4p3.net/threads/teamspeak-5-acquired-2020-by-r4p3-network.7910/

Acquisition requires a strategic plan, business is all planning, launching this forum involved planning. You registering on this forum and posting your post required some level of planning, this reply also required planning.

Everyone is so damn focused on TeamSpeak and what it is and how it can work (for stuff like World of Warcraft, CS:GO, and battle tanks). Sometimes during an acquisition, you can take a product or project and totally repurpose that without destroying the original - you can even make the original BETTER and possibly even free to restore initial company value. Did you know Amazon started off as only a bookstore in Bezos' garage? There are all kinds of really cool facts about how business started like Amazon and Apple, check over here quick about Amazon https://www.businessinsider.com/jef...her-around-to-see-if-they-knew-the-customer-2

My point is that sometimes ideas seem like wtf? For example "I am going to start a bookstore in my garage, k bro?" Yeah.. well now you can press a button and have toilet paper come to your house for restocking. I am not comparing my idea(s) to that of Amazon but I am saying a lot of people are just straight to "Wtf man, your bookstore garage is going to suck and will never work." without even considering that.. sometimes business ideas seem crazy but with planning and a strong team, anything can happen. Discord flipped the whole damn gaming VoIP market upside down real quick with a simple idea - make voice chat for gamers simpler and easier to connect/join with links.

What people are not understanding is my ideas like "VoIP dating similar to Bumble/Tinder but with voice chatting possible with other users, most smartphone users have a microphone" OBVIOUSLY does not mean switch TeamSpeak to a dating app and disregard gamers.

The VoIP gamer market is dead for TeamSpeak, I mean very alive in general but SATURATED. Don't believe me? Look:



There are more likes for projects like Riot.im and Viber than TeamSpeak.

---

Another list shows similar results:


The point is there are many free options for gamer-related (gaming) voice chat - VoIP software has other applications. There are other potential markets where VoIP can strongly grow and even thrive, to make a project profitable and generate $10 monthly payments from 1,000,000 users for example.

What people don't realize about my ideas is there are not JUST ABOUT TeamSpeak and gamers/gaming. They are about business success.

So if everyone wants to just be like "Yo, Asphyxia.. you fail, you suck, you has no idea about business."

Cool! Keep praying for open source TeamSpeak lol. But TeamSpeak is dying and no one is going to fix that. Keep praying in church about TeamSpeak deciding to declare bankruptcy and say "Yeah, just drop our source online."

That type of stuff rarely happens, too many conflicts regarding licensing rights etc. This is why an acquisition is more practical, to buy those licensing rights whatever the pricing may be...

 

[null3d]

Well, now if you find a way to LFI or call the file directly - you have a TeamSpeak web server shell. Not recommending nor condoning such behavior but I do think TeamSpeak is important (security too).

You sure they care about security? I mean they fail at the simplest things:

Location: https://www.teamspeak.com/en/
Server: cloudflare
Set-Cookie: __cfduid=Censoredhash; expires=Wed, 10-Jun-20 15:04:19 GMT; path=/; domain=.teamspeak.com; HttpOnly

 

[Asphyxia]

You sure they care about security?

No they do not care about security (because TeamSpeak cares about only features and money), also I will see you on XMPP soon man. Sorry - no Skype and XMPP server is being painful because I do not want the ejab stuff.

They (TeamSpeak) cannot even get many features though, because their developers are all scrubby.

 

[tagKnife]

No they do not care about security (because TeamSpeak cares about only features and money), also I will see you on XMPP soon man. Sorry - no Skype and XMPP server is being painful because I do not want the ejab stuff.

They (TeamSpeak) cannot even get many features though, because their developers are all scrubby.

Are you sure they even care about features, We have had the same features for the past 10 years XD. I think it's only money, teamspeak 5 is only a UI change, still the same teamspeak under the hood.

 

[Asphyxia]

teamspeak 5 is only a UI change, still the same teamspeak under the hood.

Exactly, that is why someone needs to step in that cares about TeamSpeak and especially the community using their software.

I am willing to listen to feature requests, making the voice software better for gamers, and modernizing everything from a web-based client to quick join links.

TeamSpeak sucks, we need to fund a buyout or they are likely to bankrupt and probably will NOT go open source.