Support for Perpetual License Holders

[The Clash]

As of now, those of us with perpetual licenses are basically barred from any resources/support for IPB. My suggestion is this: Leave the current ticket support setup as is, and force us to renew our license for official IPS Staff support, however, open up the peer to peer support forum to perpetual license holders.

I can't really see how this would harm IPS in terms of profit, unless, for some reason the majority of revenue is coming from support renewals? Regardless, it would be nice to have *some* support options available.

[Digi]

This has been beat to the dust. IPS is not interested in opening up support forums to anyone except those with current support licenses. :)

[Louis M.]

The Support Forums are part of the support fee for IP.Board. I, personally, do not see this changing anytime soon.

[3DKiwi]

Just pay them the money for the annual support contract. Ironic that their support is amongst the best I've encountered but about the lowest priced.

3DKiwi

[The Clash]

I have no problem paying for official IPS support - I just wouldn't use it nearly often enough to bother spending anything on it. Not to say anything bad, because their support is amazing. I just don't see why we should have to pay to ask each other questions.

[3DKiwi]

I suggest signing up at another IPB users site then like Invisionize.com then.

3DKiwi

[SnakEyez02]

Perpetual licenses did not come with Lifetime support. Only the original lifetime licenses did. I have a perpetual and I pay for support. $30/yr really is not that bad. Companies have to stay in business and continue development some way.

[TestingSomething]

$30 a year is beyond bad considering people who bought yearly licenses or standard licenses only pay $50 for a year. Makes the perpetuals not worth much if you want support becuase you're only saving $20 per year which amounts to nothing. That means compared to the yearly licenses that were offered you have to own a perpetual for SIX YEARS before you save a penny.

[Mark]

$30 a year is beyond bad considering people who bought yearly licenses or standard licenses only pay $50 for a year. Makes the perpetuals not worth much if you want support becuase you're only saving $20 per year which amounts to nothing. That means compared to the yearly licenses that were offered you have to own a perpetual for SIX YEARS before you save a penny.

:unsure:
The perpetual and yearly licenses aren't directly comparable. Perpetual licenses have unlimited upgrades.

[TestingSomething]

:unsure:

The perpetual and yearly licenses aren't directly comparable. Perpetual licenses have unlimited upgrades.

And so do yearly when you pay that fee.

Also it's pretty ridiculous that even people who get hacked are told to use the client area. Being hacked is much different than receiving new features in an upgrade. People who buy software expect it to be secure.

[bfarber]

Presently there are no security issues that we know of in IPB. That means if you get hacked, we HAVE to get in to your site to research and find out what happened. There's no way to do that without you submitting a ticket. I'm sorry, but getting hacked is a PERFECT example of NEEDING to use the client area. It's not something we can fix here from the forums, unless you got hacked due to a recent security update (at which point we could simply point you to the topic with the patch, since they are released publicly).

[zigs]

$30 a year is beyond bad considering people who bought yearly licenses or standard licenses only pay $50 for a year. Makes the perpetuals not worth much if you want support becuase you're only saving $20 per year which amounts to nothing. That means compared to the yearly licenses that were offered you have to own a perpetual for SIX YEARS before you save a penny.

$30 a year is a pittance! (about

[Digi]

$30 a year is beyond bad considering people who bought yearly licenses or standard licenses only pay $50 for a year. That means compared to the yearly licenses that were offered you have to own a perpetual for SIX YEARS before you save a penny.

Don't you mean you'd have to wait 1 year to save $20? :huh:

[TestingSomething]

Don't you mean you'd have to wait 1 year to save $20? :huh:

Nope. yearlies cost $70 when they were offered and perpetuals were $180. So basically the perpetual wasn't worth doing unless you don't use support.

[SnakEyez02]

Nope. yearlies cost $70 when they were offered and perpetuals were $180. So basically the perpetual wasn't worth doing unless you don't use support.

The yearly plan was a leased ownership. The perpetual allowed the end-user to own the product. At the end of the term you did not technically own the rights to the forum if I am not mistaken. Even if you use the support, the perpetual still ended up cheaper after 6 years. If you only needed a forum for a year, then yes the leased option was better. However, they cannot control remote leasing, especially with software. So it was probably in their best interest to do the community hosting as they do now. And as previously stated, with the perpetual license you are only paying for support, not upgrades. Now you are paying for both. Also to your point about the product being secure there are security releases in the updates that are free with the perpetual license. Now all updates are feature related. If I am not mistaken, the 2.2->2.3 was mostly feature related and security releases are in between.

Finally, what surprises me about this is how this was never brought up about the IPS Beyond website, but is now an issue that they merged it with these forums.

[Digi]

Finally, what surprises me about this is how this was never brought up about the IPS Beyond website, but is now an issue that they merged it with these forums.

Actually it was quit often, and I was a strong proponent of the idea. However, over the numerous times that it has been brought up, I've been enlighted (bashers will probably call this brainwashed) by the management into understanding the purpose of such segregation. It makes sense to me both economically and morally.

[CharlesC]

$30 a year is fine for support, but paying $30 to cover submitting and editing files/articles to the Resource Website is not.

[Michael]

You don't pay $30 to cover submitting and editing files/articles, you pay for support, access to the Resources site is a perk (that IPS is not all required to provide) you get for having an active support contract.

[China J]

As well even though there is a ticket center IPS Staff has been here in the forums many occasions helping with minor fixes and small issues that they have provided and answer to or assisted in the topic somehow which most times cuts down on tickets and phone calls. Do I want someone who is too cheap to pay for support to steal attention away from those who do pay for it? Absolutely not. I have a 2 Lifetimes and 1 Perpetual and even though there is no need for me to pay a renewal fee to access this site, I pay it every year anyway and never once used there support center for trouble tickets during the 4 or so years I have been a client, but I have used the forums to get quick answers to problems beit the staff or member to member.

And who is that mask man that thinks $50 renewal on a yearly license is cheaper than $30 renewal on perpetual? Yearly you are paying for upgrades and support vs perpetual you are only paying for support. Regardless of when you earn your money back you already are at a loss owning the yearly license compared to the perpetual but better position somewhat compared to the standard now available. Seriously how long will it take for me to make up $60 that I paid more to have lifetime upgrades compared to the extra $20 you will have to pay forever to have access to upgrades and pretty much support too because you can't split the two($50 every year forever)? The way I see it, I won and yearly license holders are the ones taking a loss lol :P Look at how much I'm saving with my lifetime... Do you think I took a loss on that too? :P

EDIT: Just realized yearly license renewal is the same cost as the now standard license renewal ($25 twice a year).

[CharlesC]

You don't pay $30 to cover submitting and editing files/articles, you pay for support, access to the Resources site is a perk (that IPS is not all required to provide) you get for having an active support contract.

I worded that wrong, but I just do not think it's a perk to be able to contribute things for the IPS community, downloading the actual files and viewing whatever else the Resource website has to offer is on the other hand is worth it with the Support Contract.

[China J]

Eh? What about bandwidth costs and etc? What about the staff who people pay for support are floating around here providing solutions, news, feedback and support? You seriously think the owners are just going to allow a free for all around here and pay their staff to monitor a free for all site?

I'm sure a lot of programmers can attest to the bandwidth and file downloads that for now I will just say "Leeches" use at their sites. Heck I can remember one member had over 2000 plus downloads for one single file lol. Why in the Sam's Hill did he need to download the same file that many times.

Example: You buy a membership at Cosco's or Sam's Club... You get to enter and shop their store that's for paying active members. When the subscription runs out you can enter still, but you can't shop the store anymore until you renew. I doubt they will ever say "Oh you bought a membership 2 years ago and even though it's expired for 1 1/2 years, we will just let you come on in shop anyway". :lol:

[Please Delete]

Look at the fee as supporting the company, because if the company cannot pay the employees then nobody gets support.

I pay my fee even though I do not have an active board at this time. I do so willingly because I support the company that makes a great product.

[kirov]

personally I think that it's ok to pay 25$ to renew your licence and have access to Client Center for support and download the latest version, but why can't I have acces to IPS Resources and the Customer Forum? I am stil an customer, I just don't understand why...

[Digi]

Because it is a perk, one that grows over time as more things are added by both the community and the company. If you stop paying the company you "were" a customer. You'd be a customer again if you come back and pay them again. However, if you decide to just suck off the value of your investment (i.e. perpetual license updates), you aren't STILL a customer from an IPS perspective.

[bfarber]

Part of this comes down to simple economics and part of it comes down to IPS attempting to give back to the community that supports us. :)

On the one hand, we WANT to give back. We look for ways to try to get our community involved and active. We want modification authors to release work for others to use and we want skinners to keep putting free skins out there for customers to use. We want to build a knowledge base of useful information for members to utilize. We want to help get unofficial projects launched (i.e. the Tracker project). These are things that, as a company, IPS is very interested in being involved with. It makes our customers happy, which in turn of course makes us happy.

On the other hand...we are all paid employees. All of the time and effort that we put into setting up, skinning and maintaining the resource site, and attempting to help (unofficially) in the resource forums, we are still getting paid for. The analogy to Costco above was perfect. Or perhaps, to take a page from Lindy's book, a car analogy. Say you bought a car and your dealer offered you free oil changes so long as you brought your car in to get a tune-up. This is called a "perk" - it's something the dealer is throwing in as an incentive to show you they appreciate your business. Say you stop bringing your car in for tune-ups...should you still be entitled to free oil changes?