Bia Securities

I have to admit that I'm somewhat surprised at the pricing for the hosted version of Community Server.  They seem to be ignoring individual users and small companies with their pricing.  In my humble opinion, if they added a starter account for $5 or $10 per month, they could cater to the masses.  That would be a small enough price jump for people to consider not going with free alternatives: WordPress, Flickr, and ProBoards.   There is an obvious benefit to having blogs, forums, galleries, etc that share a common url and theme.

I definitely see the convenience hosted software packages have to offer, but man… when you have competitors offering similar services for free, it's hard for the "little guy" to justify signing up for $50 per month.  But who knows… maybe Telligent just doesn't want to cater to that market.

After mulling over converting the site to WordPress MU and some other
gallery software, I decided to just upgrade to the latest version of
Community Server in the short term.  Who knows if I'll move to
WordPress MU in the future, but for now I'm going to stick with
Community Server.  The main problem was finding a replacement for the photo galleries.  Coppermine seemed like a decent alternative, but I'd really like something that allows me to have "local"
galleries as well as integrating 3rd party galleries like Flickr. 
Until I find something that solves that, I guess I'm stuck with
Community Server.