Public website with millions of users built ontop of Rocketchat code?

Community Ideas
1

Hi

Let’s say we have a few solid developers who are ready to developer a forum-like-app within Rocketchat-based public website. Potentials millions of registered users can join the website to post their content (text/image/video) , a new room will be created for each content so that they can COMMENT on and talk about the content. Users can talk to each other

My questions are :

  1. Is it technically possible to have that many users and rooms ( millions)
  2. How are Rocketchat gonna charge us? we only got few thousand $ profit a month from those millions users. Most users are inactive (some visit the website few times a years, some never need to chat ). Most of the contents are from the ~100 employees who often use chat features

Thanks

2

I’ll see if I can someone to speak to you about this as your requirements are far from straightforward.

Please be patient.

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3

thanks.

haha. to make it simple just think about building a very simple forum inside Rocketchat platform. Where each forum thread/topic correspond to a Rocketchat’s room, so that people can discuss about it easily.

We don’t need to dig to deep into the requirement… As the main point is: potentially, we can have a lot of rooms (both active and archived/read-only). and alot of users (from daily active to online-once-a- year). Which raise 2 questions :

  1. Is Rocketchat able to support that many users and rooms ?
  2. How is the license gonna cost fairly for both sides? When public website don’t generate much profit (around $10K a month)
4

As I said, your requirements are not straightforward. I believe Rocket can handle this but you’ll need some support. The sort of admins who could help answer you don’t hangout here!

I have referred this upwards to the team and hope someone will be in contact.

A couple of questions you can answer me.

I presume the millions of users are customers and you want to provide online customer support?

For your usage you would likely need some serious hardware and I’d guess the cost of that would probably eat up a good chunk of your monthly website “profit”.

So no, you don’t make money out of support. But you do make money somewhere in your business?

You would not be providing a service to millions if you weren’t making money somewhere, somehow?

So surely this is a “cost of doing business”? An expense against profit?

What’s “fair” ?

Your website might not make much, but the general business presumably does?

How is Rocket meant to stay in business to provide you code for millions of your customers if they essentially work for almost nothing?

I’m genuinely curious!!

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5

Again, to make it simple, just call it a simple forum built on top of Rocketchat. Obviously, forum normally could have millions of users.

I presume the millions of users are customers and you want to provide online customer support?

No, they are “forum users” , they can talk to whoever they want, including employees. Of course, “customer support” is reserved ( or prioritized) for VIP users only.

So no, you don’t make money out of support. But you do make money somewhere in your business?

Most of our income are from paid service , VIP membership, donation, etc… We come from a developing country, so the profit is not as high as developed countries. Around $10K profit month (after employee salary and tax) is above small but below medium business in my country.

For your usage you would likely need some serious hardware and I’d guess the cost of that would probably eat up a good chunk of your monthly website “profit”.

Currently, our website ( similar to a forum), has been running for 10 years. And forum/blog website usually can handle millions of users easily with minimum hardward specs (less than $500 a month). I wonder if there any real Rocketchat-powered-website with that huge user number? Most Php-based forum can do that task easily and cheaply.

In fact, we did integrate Rocketchat to our website in 2017 for 6 months. We stopped for technical problem. But recently after considering the solid and beautiful Rocketchat architecture and code base, our developers are so in love with the platform and are willing to develop a custom Rocketchat/forum hybrid website

How is Rocket meant to stay in business to provide you code for millions of your customers if they essentially work for almost nothing?

Most open forum software like Xenforo can help business create website with millions of users (potentially customers) with just a few hundreds $ a month
xenforo

What’s “fair” ?

I mean if those forum software charge by users-count like Rocketchat, biz like us would have to pay millions $ a month which is unreasonable.
I think a compromised solution should be pricing by number of employees ( very small part of millions users registered)

6

I made a very long reply but supposedly deleted because of a link to Xenforo.

Our automated spam filter, Akismet, has temporarily hidden your post in Public website with millions of users built ontop of Rocketchat code? for review.

I can not retype my post. But in brief forum software only charge a few hundred dollars a month for website with millions of users. Can rocketchat do it, or atleast , just charge with the number of employees ( very small part of those millions users registered)

Thanks

7

I edited it for you.

OK

There is a reason for that… forums are pretty static and much easier to manage with much lower overhead. Rocket is far more complex and needs a lot more power. Xenforo do not offer a ‘free version’, at all. They make money on every install. Rocket does not.

Technically you are asking it to handle millions of users at the same time. Though unlikely, it is a situation you have to consider.

It has overhead when you look up a user. It has to parse a few million records to do that, on the fly. Possibly you try a global search across a million channels.

To get decent, instant, response times you would need a fairly powerful setup. Probably load balanced instances and multiple DBs.

https://docs.rocket.chat/docs/system-requirements

Yes, Rocket does handle some extremely large installs with vast numbers of concurrent users - which is probably more work for the system.

Again, what is ‘unreasonable’? Companies have to make a profit somewhere or they go out of business and you get no software! They have a business model that works for them.

Remember that Rocket is NOT a forum site. You are trying to compare apples and pears.

Rocket is a hugely complex piece of work. It is waaaaaaay trickier than a forum site.

Also note that open source is not a free lunch :wink: Unfortunately many think that it is. Happy to take, with nothing in return. Rocket offers free use for smaller organisations to get them started which is pretty generous.

However, I am sure that sales will be willing to work with you on this, but I cannot guarantee the outcomes. What you consider reasonable and what they consider reasonable may not be the same :slight_smile:

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8

thanks for your information. I think i need to clarify 1 thing so that we can be on the same page:

Yes, the load is heavy and required alot of hardware and optimization ( tuning , caching, load balancing, etc…). And we will do it all by ourselves, don’t need any involment from Rocketchat. Maybe just a few technical question from time 2 time.

So the license ( of Xenforo for ex. ) is “just for the right of using the software” and it fits us well.
Yes, we will surely contact sale when we finalize our plan.

9

You will probably need the EE version/code as it has micro service optimisations and makes managing a large install much, much better.

As is the licence for Rocket.Chat to use the EE code. Please check the git repo accordingly.

I’d do it sooner rather than later as they may save you a lot of wasted time and effort.

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