Product
What is included with Connhex?
With every version of Connhex you'll get:
- a state-of-the art data collection infrastructure. Simply put, this is an entity responsible for receiving data and storing it efficiently into a database
- every service included in Connhex Cloud
- Connhex Control: Connhex's device management application. Think of it like an admin-level device management application for all the devices connected to Connhex: you can see what messages are coming from each device, send commands and configuration to devices
- out of the box Grafana integration to create custom dashboards
Connhex AI and Connhex Edge licenses are billed separately instead.
Will my customers see Connhex's logo? Can they see my platform has been built on top of Connhex?
Absolutely not.
Connhex has been designed to be the foundation for your product, with an emphasis on "your". Moreover, Connhex is not yet another white-label platform: if you're using one of those, you can probably customize the both the logo and the branding - but your most knowledgeable customers will still be able to tell what white-label platform you're using.
Needless to say, we are very careful in sharing information. Some of the companies using Connhex were gracious enough to provide a testimonial: this is, of course, optional. Every success story was shared with the customer involved before publication.
I bought a Connhex license. What else do I need to offer a complete service to my customers?
It really depends on your needs. A few examples:
- if you plan to use Connhex to gather data and create dashboards, you can leverage Connhex's Grafana integration. Let Connhex do the heavy lifting for you - getting data from devices into a database - and build your own dashboards to visualize those data. A typical use case for this is the creation of internal dashboards to monitor company equipment
- if you need to create a complex web application that includes more advanced logic than simply collecting and visualizing device data - think users management, handling user-devices associations, generating reports - you'll need to hire a software development team, typically a software house or a web agency. The advantage in using Connhex is two sided, the first being cutting down time to market, since developers be able to use all the additional services included in Connhex through API calls. The second one deals with demand and supply: there are many great companies that can develop beautiful apps, less of those know all the nitty-gritty details involved in getting data from intermittent sources and storing it efficiently. By choosing Connhex, you are expanding the pool of potential suppliers for the solution and lowering the total cost dramatically.
- if you need to create a mobile app, all of the previous still applies with a single exception - you'll probably need to hire dedicated mobile developers instead of a standard web agency
These are just examples: if you're not sure whether your solution could benefit from leveraging Connhex or not contact us and we'll take a look at it together.
What are the differences between Connhex versions?
The main differences between the three versions are their features and performances. Broadly speaking about performances, there are two factors that scale the cost of a data collection infrastructure:
- how much data is involved
- what the required availability for the infrastructure is. For example, are you okay with the system being down for a few hours in a year or not?
Connhex Enterprise is engineered to auto-scale as the data flow goes up, whereas the other versions have been optimized to work with relatively low hardware resources.
Can I change my plan and retain all of the data previously collected?
Of course you can: just get in touch and we'll migrate all of your data. Downgrading is a bit trickier, since we have to figure out how to handle excess data - but that can be done too!
Can't I just strap together some open-source projects and get the same functionalities Connhex provides?
The short answers is: yes, but.
You can definitely piece together many open-source projects and write some glue-code to connect them together. You can also write it yourself from scratch. However, besides the fact you'd be giving up on all the optimizations we spent years to achieve, there are a few things to consider:
- open-source components are typically developed in isolation. While this is why open-source is great for lots of infrastructural stuff (we didn't write an MQTT broker from scratch, rest assured!), you can't build a great product by forcing together pieces that are not intended to work this way. This is another reason why, if you decide to go the in-house route, you'll need to write a lot of it yourself.
- sad as this is, open-source funding is a hard problem in itself. You should also factor in the risk of the project you're using to be abandoned in the future
- creating something is just a fraction of the work. The real deal is testing it, smoothing out edge cases and making sure it's production-grade
- once you bring a project in-house, it immediately becomes both an asset and a liability. You should compare the benefits of building it yourself with the costs of monitoring, maintaining and updating it. Do you have a dedicated team or do you need to build one? What's your core business and where are you subtracting resources from?
Keep in mind the total cost of ownership: you'll need to code your solution, test it, validate it, monitor it, maintain it and support it. Look here for a detailed comparison between Connhex and custom projects.
Why isn't Connhex open-source?
We've shared our reflections here. In a nutshell, we will never open-source something if we can’t do it properly: right now we are still a small team, focused on serving our customers as best as we can. The overhead involved in managing and supporting an open-source project would be at the expense of the level of service we are currently providing.
Connectables vs. edges vs. devices
Connectable is the general term we use to describe anything that can connect to Connhex (a bit of a tongue-twister, we know).
The difference between an edge and a device is actually very simple. An edge is a physical electronic device that is running Connhex Edge, whereas a device is a generally simpler object sending messages to Connhex and receiving commands from it. In short, you can think of edges as super-powerful devices that leverage Connhex Edge's functionalities.
You can read more here.What are the minimum hardware requirements for Connhex Edge?
Like everything in software, it depends 😁. We wrote extensive documentation on this topic: you can find it here.
Plans and pricing
Is there a minimum time commitment?
Yes. Here's how it works in detail:
- After the first 30-day free trial, if you decide Connhex is the right product for you, the entire suite will be transferred to a server you own.
- Since you could simply lock us out and enjoy years of work, after only paying for a single month - we know you'd never do that, but we still need to consider the worst case scenario 😂 - we require a minimum commitment of 4 years for every Connhex Cloud Standard and Pro instance.
- Enterprise plans have a dedicated minimum commitment - so feel free to reach out even if either Standard or Pro are sufficient for your needs, but want to discuss a different commitment duration - and Connhex AI plans follow the same policy of the Connhex Cloud instance they are connected to.
- Early redemption is available at any moment, without any additional fee.
What happens once the commitment period ends? You can keep your subscription active: in this case, nothing changes - you'll still get updates and all the latest features of Connhex, plus support. Or, if you're happy with the current functionalities, can stop your subscription and - optionally - have a separate maintenance and support agreement.
Do you offer a free version of Connhex?
In short: no, at the moment we do not.
We are a small, independent and self-founded team with the goal to operate in a way that’s sustainable. Our business model is simple: we sell our product at a fair price and that's it. We believe this commitment to long-term sustainability is a responsibility to our customers, who can trust that we’ll continue to be here and leverage Connhex as a foundation for their products. We are focused on making Connhex better every day instead of spending time trying to upsell customers that have signed up for a free tier of our product.
This doesn't mean you should buy Connhex blindly. We:
- try to continuously improve our online documentation and use cases
- are more than happy to chat and help you understand if Connhex is the right product for you
- offer a 30-day free trial on all Connhex Cloud instances hosted by us, as long as you have not accessed our servers during this period
How much is Connhex Enterprise? The website doesn't show it.
As of right now, Connhex Enterprise is priced differently according to a few factors - how many devices the application needs to handle, what cloud provider has been chosen and what availability is expected, to name a few. We are working to publish its pricing transparently: expect updates on this front - just contact us for the time being.
I want to move Connhex to a different server. Do I need to pay another license?
No, you don't. Just contact us before migrating the system and we'll generate a new license, while deactivating the previous one. If you want to clone Connhex on a different server, keeping two active installations, you need to pay an extra license instead. This may be the case if you want to provide two of your customers with two identical but separate platforms based on Connhex.
Will Connhex Edge keep working without an active Connhex Cloud subscription?
Of course, it will still work: but without an active Connhex Cloud subscription, neither support nor future updates for Connhex Edge will be available.
As for all of Connhex's components, a dedicated support contract is available for Connhex Edge too.What happens when I reach the maximum number of users or devices included in my plan?
We'll get in touch to find the best solution for your needs. In the meantime, your Connhex instance will keep operating as usual: you'll still be able to add devices and register users while we figure things out together.
Why are plans so different in price?
Our standard pricing plans have been designed to address two distinct segments of the market: small companies, with a low volume production but still needing their own cloud infrastructure, and medium-sized manufacturers.
Why is Connhex so cheap?
That's a great question we often ask ourselves 😂
Jokes aside, our goal is to empower small manufacturers to offer services that are better than those provided by their bigger competitors. Connhex needs to be cost-efficient by nature, otherwise it won't be a practical choice for those who's dedicated to.
Incidentally, this is also why we put so much effort into making it performant enought to run on very limited resources.
Why is Connhex so expensive?
Connhex is tailored to manufacturers: it's typically not an economical choice if you only plan to connect a few devices, unless your needs are peculiar (for example, you have a few devices generating lots of traffic).
Its price also includes support, maintenance and updates - always. Many alternatives are priced differently, with support being billed separately: make sure to double-check, in order to compare apples with apples.
Trials
What happens after I click "Create my Connhex"?
A Connhex instance will be automatically provisioned and exposed at the URL you chose. You'll be notified as soon as the process is complete.
How long does the process take?
The entire process typically takes a few minutes to complete: it might take longer in cases where we need to spin up additional servers. Definitely get in touch if your instance isn't available after a few hours - something went wrong!
What happens after the trial ends?
We'll get in touch before the trial ends to understand whether you Connhex suits your needs or not. If we don't hear back from you, your instance will be permanently deleted after an additional 30 days.
I need a bit more time to take a decision...
No problem: just get in touch and we'll figure it out together!
GDPR
What is GDPR?
GDPR is a commonly used shorthand to identify the Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation).
You can find the complete regulation here.
Why do you place such importance on Connhex being designed with GDPR in mind?
How we approach GDPR compliance is a prime example of what we mean when we say Connhex is an IoT suite, not a platform.
We offer a comprehensive solution for device manufacturers: legal aspects are just as important as technical ones if your goal is to provide a service to your users. GDPR compliance is one of those things that comes easy if one keeps it as a constraint during the initial design phase: otherwise there could be fatal flaws impossible to patch.
And if you're not convinced on the importance of protecting personal data just from a moral standpoint, sanctions can be quite heavy (see below).
Am I GDPR compliant simply by choosing Connhex as a foundation for my Cloud infrastructure?
No, you're not - and incidentally you won't be by choosing any IoT solution.
You should have a 360-degree view when reasoning about GDPR. For example, no one but your company can:
- adhere to the principles relating to the processing of personal data (Article 5). One above all: you are expected to only acquire data relevant to the purpose of processing (data minimisation, see also Article 25)
- establish whether a data protection impact assessment is needed (Article 35)
- designate a data protection officer (Article 37)
Is there any IoT solution out there that can guarantee compliance to GDPR?
To the best of our knowledge: no, there isn't - nor it can exist at all.
If you have a role in deciding what data is collected, you are the data controller: there's no way any supplier can guarantee your compliance to GDPR - no matter what their sales representatives say 😉
What is the role of Compiuta with respect to my obligation to meet GDPR requirements?
In GDPR terminology, Compiuta is a data processor. This means Compiuta (or any other data processor) must:
- provide sufficient guarantees to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures in such a manner that processing will meet the requirements of the Regulation and ensure the protection of the rights of the data subject
- process the personal data only on documented instructions from the controller (you)
- ensure that persons authorised to process the personal data have committed themselves to confidentiality or are under an appropriate statutory obligation of confidentiality
- assist the controller by appropriate technical and organisational measures, insofar as this is possible, for the fulfilment of the controller's obligation to respond to requests for exercising the data subject's rights
- make available to the controller all information necessary to demonstrate compliance
For the complete list of obligations, see Article 28.
Why does Compiuta need to process my users' personal data?
The GDPR includes consultation between the actions performed on personal data that classify as processing - see Article 4.
Since we need to maintain, update and support Connhex instances, we need to have access to database clusters.
We don't take this responsibility lightly: Connhex databases containing personal data are accessible only to a limited number of people inside Compiuta and we keep a log of any action performed when accessing them.
How does Connhex help me with compliance?
There are two ways Connhex helps you with compliance:
- by implementing tools that address specific obligations or data subject rights. For a first look at what those are, see the GDPR compliance map: you can also contact us to get information about design details of those tools, should you need it.
- uses best practices and state of the art approaches to ensure security of processing (see Article 32)
What sanctions can I face if my solution fails at GDPR compliance?
See Article 83: up to 20.000.000 € or 4% of total worldwide annual turnover of the preceding financial year, whichever is higher.
I have no idea if the data I want to collect is personal. Can you help me?
Definitely: we have a clear understanding of what personal data means and have lots of resources you can access. Just contact us!
Support
I don't understand which Connhex version suits me best. Can you help?
Of course, we'd be delighted to. Just contact us and we'll get back to you.
I don't find a phone number on any of your websites. Does this mean you're not reachable by phone?
We're definitely reachable by phone and ready to jump on a call if you'd like us to, but we prioritize product development and supporting current customers over new business. We don't have a dedicated sales team and reinvest all of the profits coming from Connhex into making it better.
I'm experiencing an issue with my Connhex instance. Who can I contact?
To get the fastest response, you can contact us through any of the dedicated support channels we've shared with you. If you're not able to access those, just send us an e-mail and we'll get in touch with you.