Mozilla, the creator of the popular Firefox web browser, finally starts its paid Firefox Premium For Enterprises service.
Firefox browser remains free of charge for users and anyone who wishes. The Firefox Extended Support Release edition also remains free, and can be used by anyone without a charge. But for those who pay for the Enterprise environment will benefit the most.
Organizations or companies that run their Firefox browser in the Enterprise environment, can subscribe to the Firefox Premium Support plan for extended and improved support options.
The plan also provides access to an Enterprise customer portal, improved bug submission options and bug fixes, SLA management tools and more.
Firefox Enterprise customers are already benefiting from:
- Ability to choose between different release channel.
- The MSI installer.
- ADM and AMDX templates.
- The “Open in IE” extension.
- MacOS plist file.
- Configuration JSON file “policies.json”.
With the Premium plan, things go more extensive. Starting at $10 per supported installation, customers get::
- Private bug submission.
- Critical security bug fixes with SLA.
- Concierge bug entry with guaranteed response time.
- Enterprise customer portal.
- Contribute to Firefox and the roadmap.
- Proactive notifications on critical Firefox events.
- SLA management tool.
These should help customers in customizing, deploying, and managing their Firefox installations.
Already benefiting from a big share in the browser market, Mozilla is hoping to keep up by offering a compelling alternative to Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer.
However, Mozilla doesn't have that business model with the same profit intensive as Google or Microsoft. Moving in the open-source community with a focus in privacy, the organization is experiencing some difficulties, especially after the Facebook - Cambridge Analytica scandal.
While most of its revenues come from Google being the default search engine on Firefox, but it’s crucial for the organization to diversify its revenue sources, as it looks beyond the search engine giant, and as it positions itself as part of the privacy advocates.
So here, the Enterprise option is Mozilla's maneuver in this critical time.
The offering follows the 2017 Quantum overhaul of Firefox, the 2018 release of Firefox Quantum for Enterprise, and Mozilla's announcement back in May 2019 that said Firefox for the enterprise will give administrators the ability to configure the browser using Windows Group Policy.
The move also comes just about time when people are becoming more worry and concerned about their online privacy, and just in time when Mozilla us trying to push for greater privacy and security for users who have largely abandoned Firefox for Chrome.
Previously, Mozilla launched Firefox Private Network, a browser proxy to improve privacy of its users.