Things you might have wanted to ask us
It’s great to see that you are looking into using flexiWAN, the world’s first open source SD-WAN. Below you can find some questions we received from people who looked into using flexiWAN. If you can’t find below an answer to your questions, please feel free to contact us.
If your questions are more technical in nature regarding specific usage issues you might want to look at our users group on Google or assuming that you have an active support plan, email our support team.
flexiWAN stands out from the crowd due to 3 major differentiators (flexiWAN’s 3 World Firsts):
- The World’s First Open Source for SD-WAN & SASE – flexiWAN is an open source SD-WAN solution. While there are many networking open source components, flexiWAN is the first and only complete SD-WAN open source.
- The First & Only Application Store for SD-WAN & SASE – flexiWAN is doing to enterprise networking and security what the smartphone did to the featurephone. flexiWAN is like Android for routers, it features an open architecture making it a modular SD-WAN. This is done by offering an application framework in the router and the management which allows running networking, security & monitory applications in the flexiWAN router dataflow or in the management system. This is different from simply doing VNF orchestration which we also allow.
- The First & Only SaaS Business Model for SD-WAN & SASE – Similar to common SaaS applications, users can open an account, use our free tier while receiving support and pay month-by-month only for what they actually used.
Read more about flexiWAN’s modular SD-WAN architecture in this blog post.
The link to download the flexiWAN Open Source code from Git can be requested on this page.
While flexiWAN is open source, we also offer a few commercial options : SaaS model and self-hosting.
SaaS model (shared and isolated dedicated environments)
In this case, we host flexiManage and save you the need to install all the components of the management system, make sure it is running continuously and in the current version. You will also enjoy the on-going development of flexiWAN through regular updates we perform to flexiManage and remote software upgrade to flexiEdge (you can control when it is done). The SaaS model includes a shared environment (that’s where you open the free account) and an isolated dedicated environment used only by you. A few data points on this option:
- Hosted multi-tenant management system (flexiManage)
- Pricing is published on our website
- End users can create their own account
- Partners can create their partner account and add their customers/users as organizations to their account and bill them directly
- Payment is based on the maximum number of flexiEdge instances managed by flexiManage during the current billing period (one month). We don’t charge based on bandwidth
- No long term commitments, you pay for what you used during the month. Can stop at any time and pay only for the month of current billing period
- Technical support is offered to our SaaS customers and prospects conducting a POC. Read more about our Support Plans & Terms
Self-hosting of flexiManage
- In this case you host the management yourself. Currently, this option is available for hosting on AWS. We will be adding support for more cloud options shortly and based on customer requirements.
- You support and manage your customers. We support you.
- Payment is based on usage reports you need to send us from the system
- 1 year commitment is required
- Fill in the form in the self-hosting tab to receive our pricing for this option
The flexiWAN pricing is published on our website. You can see the SaaS model pricing on that page and fill in a form to request to receive our self-hosting commercial license pricing.
Both options are possible. You can use flexiWAN in a SaaS model where flexiManage is hosted by flexiWAN or you can deicide to host the management yourself. Pricing differs between the two options. Typically we recommend to start with the SaaS model and once your deployment grows, shift to self-hosting if applicable for your organization.
Sure. The network architecture can be easily configured in flexiManage
That really depends on your preference and technical capabilities. If you need someone to help you build your network and manage it, we recommend that you go through a partner. We can provide you some options based on the countries in which you have operations in. Just contact us and let us know what you need.
Details on our current version and roadmap can be found in our documentation in the Roadmap & Features Overview section.