Crystal Reports Runtime

I would love to see Crystal Reports Runtime support added for Winhost web hosting. I have tried developing with the Microsoft Reporting tools (.rdlc reports) and have overall been very unsatisifed with the designer capabilities and overall usability of the Microsoft Reporting platform.

I would much prefer to use Crystal Reports for creating Reports for all of my ASP.Net Web Applications since it offers significantly better designer support and many more capabilities than the Microsoft tooling.

Since Crystal Reports is bundled with Visual Studio 2010, it would make it very easy for ASP.Net developers to deploy this to Winhost web hosting.

In addition, several other hosting providers such as Arvixe and ASPHostCentral already support Crystal Reports runtime so it would also help Winhost to support Crystal Reports runtime in order to improve their competitive advantage with other ASP.Net Hosting providers.

 

The licensing costs for Crystal Reports is prohibitive, and if I remember correctly, they don't even want to license it for shared hosting. So I'm afraid that it's not something we're ever likely to support.

 

Shared Hosting for Crystal Reports runtime

I am not sure about the licensing costs for Crystal Reports runtime, but I am sure that other Web Hosting providers provide it in their Shared Hosting environment since several competing vendors such as Arvixe and ASPHostCentral provide Crystal Reports runtime at a cost basis similar to what is currently offered by Winhost.

Here is the link to the Crystal Reports licensing details:

http://www.sap.com/solutions/sap-crystal-solutions/query-reporting-analysis/sapcrystalreports/licensing/index.epx

I believe a Shared Web Hosting provider would have to investigate the OEM Licensing option.

In terms of licensing cost to the end user, I believe that many users would be amenable to subscribing to either Winhost Max or Winhost Ultimate in order to be able to utilize the Crystal Reports runtime feature.