Why is it not possible to buy Core only?

[CheersnGears]

It’s more the other way around. IP.Content was for coders only, if you wanted anything but the basic functionality (e.g. default articles and default templates for them).In Pages you can now achieve so much more with just ACP settings and drag-&-drop.  

But yes, that needs proper documentation (which is not yet there) and the upgrade paths for blocks and certain functionalities are still lacking. 

I disagree somewhat.  I could make blocks using the existing filters. I could get a sample template from the market place and put those blocks on it and hack it into place. 

I can't get anywhere with Pages at the moment.  I'm going to have to hire someone to make a 4.0 version of my current portal and articles.

[jaeitee]

I have no issue with the price increase, IPS have actually given me excellent support overall and the last thing I want is for the self hosted option to become an unprofitable offering and they move to cloud only. So if a price increase is what's required so be it. 

The suite is in its own league, if your time is worth nothing to you then sure go play with the Wordpress ecosystem and you still won't get anywhere near the integration that's available with the suite. Enjoy your weekends of upgrading all different platforms and having the software bridges break on you. We did this with Joomla/jfusion/phpbb/gallery2/dokuwiki, fast forward 6 years and the site was broken, software no longer updated and we are now migrating to ips.

IPS4 in its current form may not be perfect, but it doesn't mean it's not worth the current price tag. If your website isn't worth a couple of cups of coffee a week to you then you're probably no longer the target for IPS.