This year the quickbox.io released the QuickBox Pro. The price is 35$/year, what differences between Community edition and Professional edition? Is it worth 35$ to get the Pro version?
Contents
What difference?
There is already a official comperation in quickbox.io
The eey differences between Pro and CE are like following:
- The design of dashboard, and some widgets. e.g. traffic monitor, application manager;
- Web service. In Community use Apache + php7.0, in Pro use nginx + php7.2;
- Authorization service: CE use htpasswd with basic auth, the Pro use database;
- Any BT client will not preinstalled any more;
- The Pro edition also provide script for Docker;
- The optional applications list:
| QuickBox CE | QuickBox Pro | |
| autodl | preinstalled | Yes |
| btsync | Yes | Yes |
| couchpotato | Yes | Yes |
| csf | Yes | Yes |
| deluge | Yes | Yes |
| emby | Yes | Yes |
| flood | No | Yes |
| headphones | Yes | Yes |
| jackett | Yes | Yes |
| lecert | Only from command line | Yes |
| lidarr | Yes | Yes |
| medusa | Yes | Yes |
| nextcloud | Yes | Yes |
| novnc | No | Yes |
| nzbget | Yes | Yes |
| nzbhydra | Yes | Yes |
| ombi | Yes | Yes |
| phpmyadmin | No | Yes |
| plex | Yes | Yes |
| pyload | Yes | Yes |
| qbittorrent | Yes | Yes |
| quassel | Yes | Yes |
| quota | Yes | Yes |
| radarr | Yes | Yes |
| rapidleech | Yes | Yes |
| rtorrent | preinstalled | Yes |
| rutorrent | preinstalled | Yes |
| sabnzbd | Yes | Yes |
| sickchill | sickrage | Yes |
| sickgear | Yes | Yes |
| sonarr | Yes | Yes |
| subsonic | Yes | Yes |
| syncthing | Yes | Yes |
| tautulli | Yes | Yes |
| transmission | Yes | Yes |
| webconsole | preinstalled | Yes |
| x2go | Yes | Yes |
| znc | Yes | Yes |
You can see that, the applications list is very similar at this moment. But the compatibility, the functions for multi-user use case, the friendliness of the WebUI have a lot of differences. In the past 6 months (since the first official release of Pro version subscription), the Pro version made a lot of optimizations on the interface, which is more user-friendly than CE, people can much easier control their seedbox from the panel. But the function was still almost the same as CE.
Due to database, the Pro version performance much better in account managemant than CE, you can even register a new account in the login page, while the Community edition can only manage the account via SSH.
System support: Community edition only support Ubuntu 16.04 now, some 3-party branch support more OS. But usually only means can be installed in other OS, the compatibility is not expected, especially the optional applications. The Pro version support Ubuntu 16.04/18.04 and also Debian 9, the developer will make sure the compatibility in these OS.
Upgrade: The future updates of CE will rely on pull requese on github. The core developer JMSolo is corrently foused on the development of Pro edition. That is to say that the community edition will hard to get more features, but the Pro version will keep making adjustment according to user requirements. Both CE and Pro can update from panel.
User management: This function of CE is actually hard to use, you have to change settings via command line, and some functions are not work at all. The Pro version is much better, you can finish most task in dashboard.
Community Support: The CE and the Pro version currently share a community. If you have a Pro subscription you can directly communite with the developers and help staffs in irc or Discord to get your help.
Technical Support: If you are using community edition, you can only get basically supports from knowledge base. If you have a Pro subscription, you can ask developer for help via send DM directly, some additional support may be not free.
Language support: CE supports English, German, Danish, Spanish, French and Chinese. Pro version currently supports English, Danish, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Chinese.
Is it Worth?
For those who don’t need multi-user function, this price is not worth. Community edition already have enough features.
If you have a high performance server and want to share it with multiple users(multiple users mean more user processes requires more resources), the Pro version will be a good choice. The price of 35$/year equals only about the month fee of a mid-end server. This will help developers continue their project, and you will get better service.