Hump Day: A Refresh Has Arrived!

[Dll]

23 minutes ago, Charles said:

Everyone should receive an email by this time tomorrow with all the details. Remember only a small percentage of clients hang out on our site. We have thousands of clients to email.

1. You chose to update your website and the price that your existing customers pay before emailing them. It's not really about what is posted on here. And you make it sound like emailing 'thousands' of clients is a difficult or time consuming process. Which of course it isn't, beyond writing the email, which could have been done weeks ago, unless you made the prices up on the spot this morning.

2. You're probably going to have to drop the 'barely any clients use this forum' line to justify the lack of reasonable communication on offer, now you're only offering support through it to the majority of your clients.

I'm broadly supportive of the price rise, but can you not just admit that the way it's been communicated has been poor and stop spinning it. It would be so much easier to believe the 'we want to be transparent' pr type guff then.

Edited September 14, 2021 by Dll

[Jordan Miller]

11 minutes ago, Kjell Iver Johansen said:

Could anyone explain how to not buy Blogs and Gallery in the marketplace? It is not so popular on my site.

I understand the price-increase and I do not have a problem with that personally on my two sites. But I don't like the way IPS communicate news like this. It is kind of hidden in a sort of "Hump day" stuff that suppose to be good mood humour? I don't get that part.

We're sending out an email with the nitty gritty about the pricing, and have a blog post on the way laying out our new website refresh. Today was a bit of a soft launch. We aren't trying to causally pull the wool over anyones' eyes. Sorry if it came off that way. 

[Ramsesx]

12 minutes ago, Jordan Miller said:

We noticed too. We'll get it sorted asap ;] 

There are some parts of the site now really slow, is this known too?

[Sonya*]

38 minutes ago, rnorth6920 said:

And to add to this, the payment will be processed on Sep 23rd or 24th based on previous renewals. So actually, I have LESS THAN 9 days notice to prepare for a payment that is more than twice my anticipated renewal costs.  100% unacceptable!

You do not need to pay. You can just not renew. As long, as you like. You will not get any update, you will not get IPS support und you will not be able to use Marketplace. But your site would be still online. It does not depend on renewal.

[Clover13]

43 minutes ago, Adlago said:

I've been wondering for a few hours whether to leave an opinion or not ...
I can accept new prices - it is clear that you have an argument for this.
But!?!
Even 4.6.6 does not offer a performance boost, especially for mobile.
Too many sites that allow Google ads - Web Vitals have desperately bad results - I don't see anything in this direction in your work, developers.
And what should owners of these sites do? Google lowers their revenue, you increase their license!
Apart from your own budget, don't you have an interest in performance improvements for your clients?
You have good enough developers and you can easily solve all the requirements for Web Vitals. Why don't you do it?

I wonder if I'm wondering, but your new site is also performing poorly

 

Your FCP and LCP results for the last few hours are deteriorating.

You have also allowed duplication ID of "elSigninButton_mobile".

https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Finvisioncommunity.com%2Fforums

In short - nothing new, but more expensive.

 

This is an excellent point, as those who are using Google ads are getting effectively penalized for something I don't believe is within our control.  If it is, I'm not sure of how to resolve these.  If you're going to increase prices, you definitely should prioritize integral parts of the suite that affect client revenue (in order to afford those price increases).

 

[rnorth6920]

1 minute ago, Sonya* said:

You do not need to pay. You can just not renew. As long, as you like. You will not get any update, you will not get IPS support und you will not be able to use Marketplace. But your site would be still online. It does not depend on renewal.

Would previously purchased Marketplace items still function as they did previously, just without future updates?  And I would like to add that I would lose IPS spam fighting tools as well if I fail to renew. 

[Ocean West]

Um well this wasn't expected and the pricing has really distracted from the nice fresh look. 

I really dislike the "annual" pricing renewal and would prefer to have, an option to split payments quarterly or even monthly. The payment terms should be independent of the license agreement - Yes I agree to license yearly but please, — sincerely please — allow us to better mitigate this change. Turns out my renewal is right in the middle the holidays.

From a business perspective I would imagine you would rather have a steady stream of revenue instead seasonal highs and lows. 

 

[CoffeeCake]

Bottom line: You didn't communicate these changes effectively at all, and you didn't learn from the last time(s) you didn't communicate effectively.

What will the next surprise be that you don't communicate effectively to your customers be?

[Sonya*]

Just now, rnorth6920 said:

Would previously purchased Marketplace items still function as they did previously, just without future updates?  And I would like to add that I would lose IPS spam fighting tools as well if I fail to renew. 

Yes, all Marketplace add-ons will continue to work. It is just like frozen development, no new feature, no bug fixes. But it works.

1 minute ago, rnorth6920 said:

I would lose IPS spam fighting tools as well if I fail to renew. 

I do not rely on IPS spam fighting. I use CleanTalk that works whether your license is active or not. It is free for the first 7 (?) days. The prices are democratic, worth to try.

 

 

[Clover13]

32 minutes ago, Jordan Miller said:

I can see why this might be a bit ehh at first, but I've seen first-hand how many times we answer similar questions privately via email. Shifting support to the community should become super useful to free us up a little so we can focus on expanding the platform. I know, very PR-ey response but what I mentioned is what we're aiming for. We're not going to abandon you guys. 

The one huge gain would be reuse of the solved issues that are common among clients.  I've seen this has increased in the community over time.  I just think when it comes down to a site outage, there has to be a better way to get immediate support than footing $1250 a year up front.  This is particularly important when it's related to an upgrade via IPS (I know Priority support covers IPS doing the upgrades, but I think that's overkill as almost every upgrade goes smoothly *knock on wood* for us but that one time I need it, I don't want to be offline for my members for 24+ hours).  Maybe a per ticket or per hour pricing model or something similar?

[Feneroin]

I must renew in 2-3 days (Sep17) for 40$ with Pages... Now 125$

Make an offer and take last renew with old price please for one time...

Or please remove PAGES for me.

Thanks...

in France my salary isn't increased 15% in ten last year and now with Covid situation, work life is very hard...

Edited September 14, 2021 by Feneroin

[rnorth6920]

7 minutes ago, Sonya* said:

I do not rely on IPS spam fighting. I use CleanTalk that works whether your license is active or not. It is free for the first 7 (?) days. The prices are democratic, worth to try.

I've used this in the past as well.  

 

 

 

Guess that settles it!  I will NOT be renewing my IPS but will continue to use it as is.  The real losers here are the independent developers who I've purchased from many times in the marketplace.  I will revisit renewing once 4.7 or maybe 5.0 is released, as 4.6 was a yawn-fest in my opinion. 

[Yamamura]

56 minutes ago, Charles said:

We have thousands of clients to email.

"Great". Now my topic with a problem will get lost under thousands of topics with problems from other clients. A very "smart" approach.

[Marc]

1 minute ago, Yamamura said:

"Great". Now my topic with a problem will get lost under thousands of topics with problems from other clients. A very "smart" approach.

We have thousands of clients, but not thousands of clients with problems. A list in a forum or a list in a ticket system is still a list our support staff would need to work through. There really is no difference at all to you as a client. In fact its advantageous. You will see solutions other people have, and other people may at times respond to yours to state they know of a solution. While its easy to see this as a downfall, it really isn't.

[DawPi]

https://invisioncommunity.com/innovate/content-discovery/

Quote

Succucessful

😉

[Jordan Miller]

3 minutes ago, Dll said:

1. You chose to update your website and the price that your existing customers pay before emailing them. It's not really about what is posted on here. And you make it sound like emailing 'thousands' of clients is a difficult or time consuming process. Which of course it isn't, beyond writing the email, which could have been done weeks ago, unless you made the prices up on the spot this morning.

2. You're probably going to have to drop the 'barely any clients use this forum' line to justify the lack of reasonable communication on offer, now you're only offering support through it to the majority of your clients.

I'm broadly supportive of the price rise, but can you not just admit that the way it's been communicated had been poor and stop spinning it. It would be so much easier to believe the 'we want to be transparent' pr type guff then.

I hear ya. In hindsight maybe we should have done that. There really was no great way to communicate this, it's one of the harder parts of what we do. We don't want to let you guys down, but we also believe in our platform and want it to continue to grow and develop. Appreciate you being broadly supportive as you put it. That means a lot honestly. 🙏 

[Yamamura]

3 minutes ago, Marc Stridgen said:

We have thousands of clients

"We have thousands of clients to email." Now these thousands of clients will write not to email, but to the forum, creating thousands of topics.

Sorry, but I think this is an absolutely wrong step in development.

I don’t mind the new prices, but I don’t like the new type of "support" at all 😞

[Hexsplosions]

2 hours ago, Jordan Miller said:

There was no great way to share this news.

Yes there was. The email should have landed first. Logging into a refreshed website to find out the prices have increased without so much as a whisper, especially when increasing as much as they have, is quite frankly appalling. If customers in the sector I work in found out about prices like that, we'd be fined by a regulator for treating customers unfairly.

In the years I've been an IPS customer I can count on one hand, with fingers to spare, how many times I have been upset about something IPS has done. I have truly been an advocate of IPS in all that time. This is a time I am really quite upset, because the feeling I am left with is simply that IPS no longer values me as a customer. If it did, it would have taken steps to communicate with me in a more proactive way. An email landing tomorrow is like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted... Pointless.

I've gone from a $140 renewal split across two 6-month periods to a single $205.00 renewal every year.

Firstly, that's a 68% price increase in one go and it's an inflation-busting one at that. I do not expect a business to holds its prices forever, but I do expect to have price increases communicated before they're made effective, and I do expect them to be reasonable. Secondly, and this is leaves a far more bitter taste in my mouth, it's a great way of increasing IPS's cash flow whilst simultaneously hurting mine. IPS benefits from a big chunk of renewal cost all in one go, while I'm left trying to desperately plug a short-term financial gap that was not planned for. Thirdly, it's due in November so I am left with little time to deal with this situation. It may not be as short notice as some, and I really feel for those people, but a small hobbyist website like mine can't just muster those kind of funds in that short space of time.

This entire fiasco really is a piss-poor show towards a long-time loyal customer.

53 minutes ago, Sonya* said:

You do not need to pay. You can just not renew. As long, as you like. You will not get any update, you will not get IPS support und you will not be able to use Marketplace. But your site would be still online. It does not depend on renewal.

I'm afraid that suggestion falls flat as soon as this happens:

To not renew, and risk running unpatched software, simply puts my users' data at risk. That is the reason I renew religiously every 6 months, and have always done so. I know that technically we can do this, but I do not believe it to be sensible to do so.

[Jordan Miller]

45 minutes ago, CoffeeCake said:

Bottom line: You didn't communicate these changes effectively at all, and you didn't learn from the last time(s) you didn't communicate effectively.

What will the next surprise be that you don't communicate effectively to your customers be?

I hear you. We genuinely talked about today's news for a while because we wanted to be as sensitive as possible while also forging a path forward. It's been a weird line to walk to be honest, however we're committed to making this the best community platform on the net. We feared the backlash, so we wanted to also offer a website refresh as a demonstration that we're always looking to better ourselves. This is by no means a reflection that we could care less about the clients that have been with us through thick and thin. We know the news is a bit of a shock. We're going to continue to be here for you more now than ever. Yea cheesy PR verbiage from me but it's also real talk. 

[Dll]

3 minutes ago, Jordan Miller said:

I hear you. We genuinely talked about today's news for a while because we wanted to be as sensitive as possible while also forging a path forward. It's been a weird line to walk to be honest, however we're committed to making this the best community platform on the net. We feared the backlash, so we wanted to also offer a website refresh as a demonstration that we're always looking to better ourselves. This is by no means a reflection that we could care less about the clients that have been with us through thick and thin. We know the news is a bit of a shock. We're going to continue to be here for you more now than ever. Yea cheesy PR verbiage from me but it's also real talk. 

And between you all, none of you thought that communicating the changes in advance may be the way forward? 

 

Edited September 14, 2021 by Dll

[CoffeeCake]

2 minutes ago, Jordan Miller said:

There really was no great way to communicate this, it's one of the harder parts of what we do.

I don't understand this at all. What do you mean there was no great way to communicate this?

From: IPS Community
To: CoffeeCake <coffeecake@mmmcoffee.cake>
Date: September 1, 2021 9:00 am
Subject: Upcoming changes to your subscription

Dear community administrator,

Effective December 1, 2021, we will be making the following adjustments....

<insert changes here>

[rnorth6920]

When I deleted my payment info from the  client area for https://invisioncommunity.com/clientarea/

 

Edited September 14, 2021 by rnorth6920
added web url

[Jordan Miller]

29 minutes ago, The Heff said:

Yes there was. The email should have landed first. Logging into a refreshed website to find out the prices have increased without so much as a whisper, especially when increasing as much as they have, is quite frankly appalling. If customers in the sector I work in found out about prices like that, we'd be fined by a regulator for treating customers unfairly.

I feel that. It would have been a good call to get that email out first 👍  Upon release, everything ran pretty smoothly, but we ran into a couple of hiccups that the team needed to put all our attention on. In hindsight we could have sent that email out first - btw it's on its way as I type this. We were a few hours late with this and we apologize. It's not our intention to push people away. We want to offer better support and also grow. Hopefully in time you can see how we knock our next projects out of the park. Actions speak louder than words, so sit tight and we'll show you versus me telling 🙏 

[Nathan Explosion]

34 minutes ago, Jordan Miller said:

Yea cheesy PR verbiage from me but it's also real talk. 

It's waffle, Jordan. It's the equivalent of "Look at this shiny thing over here while we sh*t on your doorstep" in internet terms. I've kept schtum about things on here for years, but this is getting to be the final straw.

And don't reply to me with the "I feel you" waffle, please.

 

Edited September 14, 2021 by Nathan Explosion

[Adriano Faria]

Just got the email. It starts funny, I must say:

”Don’t worry, it’s not bad news, but there is a price increase”

Yes, it’s bad!