Hump Day: A Refresh Has Arrived!

[Dean_]

I think keeping the 6 months renewal would’ve been a better move, with the announcement.

Have you removed it order to keep some of us from paying for 6 months, therefore keeping our renewal to just once a year?

Like others, I’ll only renew if it’s a major version or security patch. I never used to, but with very little releases and all of us complaining about the lack of development on the other apps has stopped me. 

So now with the yearly renewal, you’ll know you’re always going to end up with us paying on time all the time, due to the announcement of more releases throughout the year.

I’m ok with the price hike, it was coming. It was only a few months ago that there was a hint about an increase with someone mentioning that there hadn’t been one in 10 years. But it’s the lump sum for one year I have a problem with.

Keep the 6 months, and maybe add a monthly option too. And for your bigger clients, keep the year subs.

Edited September 15, 2021 by Dean_

[NZyan]

My summary after diving into this some hours ago:

• Price change: I can live with that as I run my forum commercially successful. But I know a lot of small communities which would switch software oder stop operation when facing such an increase in costs.
• Annual payment: Again no big deal for me, but psychologically not a smart move – next payment is about 3 times higher than the last.
• Support via forum: I'll wait and see if you can convince me.
• Developer support: This is crucial. 

When I switched from vBulletin I had a short list of options, IPBoard one of them. The active developer community and some special add-ons where for me the nudge to switch to Invision. Without it (marketplace) and them (developers like DawPI and Adriano) my decision would have been a different one.

Andreas

[Matt]

39 minutes ago, Dexter_X said:

I'm just beginning to wonder if Invision has not been bought by bigger competitor company (social network or something like that) wanting to finish all "little" communities to definitely die for their benefit... 😕

Nope, we haven't taken a dime of investment from anyone, and ownership hasn't changed. 

22 minutes ago, Dean_ said:

I think keeping the 6 months renewal would’ve been a better move, with the announcement.

Have you removed it order to keep some of us from paying for 6 months, therefore keeping our renewal to just once a year?

Like others, I’ll only renew if it’s a major version or security patch. I never used to, but with very little releases and all of us complaining about the lack of development on the other apps has stopped me. 

So now with the yearly renewal, you’ll know you’re always going to end up with us paying on time all the time, due to the announcement of more releases throughout the year.

I’m ok with the price hike, it was coming. It was only a few months ago that there was a hint about an increase with someone mentioning that there hadn’t been one in 10 years. But it’s the lump sum for one year I have a problem with.

Keep the 6 months, and maybe add a monthly option too. And for your bigger clients, keep the year subs.

We are moving to monthly release cycles now. We're less likely to do a large monolithic annual release. We want to deliver new features and bug fixes more regularly.

[Zapusto]

1 hour ago, Davyc said:

There's also a saying that everyone will be familiar with "Act in haste, repent at leisure"  Hindsight can be an awakening moment, but often it is too late when realisation hits home.

It's not too late to do something positive and resolve this horrible situation, but you need to act now to enforce damage control

With any change, there is indeed an imminent danger of resentment and customer trust issues that may arise. Once either of those sets in, it can be awfully difficult to overcome regardless of followup initiative(s). Indeed, it is a fine line and a balancing act to enact change. The Internet is/was(?) full of companies who made a change to their detriment. The impact of resentment and brand trust is quite often underestimated. Time will tell if this is the case with IPB.

[Matt]

12 minutes ago, NZyan said:

My summary after diving into this some hours ago:

• Price change: I can live with that as I run my forum commercially successful. But I know a lot of small communities which would switch software oder stop operation when facing such an increase in costs.
• Annual payment: Again no big deal for me, but psychologically not a smart move – next payment is about 3 times higher than the last.
• Support via forum: I'll wait and see if you can convince me.
• Developer support: This is crucial. 

When I switched from vBulletin I had a short list of options, IPBoard one of them. The active developer community and some special add-ons where for me the nudge to switch to Invision. Without it (marketplace) and them (developers like DawPI and Adriano) my decision would have been a different one.

Andreas

Appreciate your feedback and insight into why you chose us.

12 minutes ago, Zapusto said:

With any change, there is indeed an imminent danger of resentment and customer trust issues that may arise. Once either of those sets in, it can be awfully difficult to overcome regardless of followup initiative(s). Indeed, it is a fine line and a balancing act to enact change. The Internet is/was(?) full of companies who made a change to their detriment. The impact of resentment and brand trust is quite often underestimated. Time will tell if this is the case with IPB.

Change is hard for sure. It throws up doubt and worry. Time generally helps.

[kims79]

We would certainly accept this pricing policy (at least personally) if and only if our requests were taken into account regarding Ipboard.
Starting with the most important one, the page loading speed and a mobile friendly version.
Compare IPB to any other forum system, you will understand, the pages load much too slowly and this problem has been raised many times.

[TDBF]

Woke up today to find out that we have a 48% rise in the renewal price and no email support, and that is the final straw for us. So, instead of $70 every six months, we will be paying $220 yearly and that starts next January. Sorry, not on guys.

With all the negative changes to the marketplace recently, and now this, means I will be moving away from IPB to one of your competitors instead.

Edited September 15, 2021 by TDBF

[Ocean West]

@Matt Can you comment on this

18 hours ago, Ocean West said:

I really dislike the "annual renewal" and would prefer to have, an option to split payments quarterly or even monthly.

The payment terms must 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. 

 

[Feneroin]

I've another idea

For example just for forum renewal:

$80/year

$45/6month

$30/3month renewal...

[Ramsesx]

After a quick and dirty calculation, you even win if you lose 30% of your customers. So, from a financially viewpoint it's a good business decision. And another plus, your support effort will be reduced too Congrats.

[sudo]

4 hours ago, Matt said:

It's something that has come up in the past. The trouble is making it a fair system.

If you're a developer who is making regular sales, would they deserve a free license at this point over someone who is trying to publish their first app? if you say that any developer can have a free license, how do they develop before they get a free license?

If we say you get free renewals, where is the threshold? A developer who spends 8 hours a day, 5 days a week making apps and looking after customers or someone who gets a basic plug-in published? Where is the line?

It's a system that need a lot of thought should be implement it.

I dont think devs need a free license as such, they should pay the initial fee for the licenses but I do think you can work some magic for renewals.
I know you wont be able to move fast on this as it will require thought but I did suggest a few approaches earlier in this thread.
You could get dev's apply for reduced renewals based on the agreement the install wont be used to run a non-related purpose. They can have a public site but its for marketing/demo the addons, testing and direct support, that would mean even though they are selling lots of addons its adding value to your platform and allowing them to continue.
In addition (or as a different approach) to this you could tier the commission for sales, they get a big discount on renewals but they have a higher tier of sales commissions for addons sold. Then if they hit a certain sales point they can pony up full renewal but reduce the commission they are charged by yourselves. This approach would allow people who make a lot of free addons to continue and feel hopefully more valued and it would make the whole product stronger.
I dont expect a big in depth reply to this, I am more throwing suggestions to you so that it can be discussed behind the scenes as losing developers is one of the huge concerns I have and is a major issue for us. Its very conerning when some of the best devs on here have voiced concerns and also said they will be removing ipb addons from their package removing the ability for them to develop and expand those addons.
I am considering releasing a few addons I have made privately but they would be free and our license would be used for a full separate site so I would not be eligible for the discount above which I would have no issue with.

3 hours ago, Adriano Faria said:

Not my case. This is my only source of income for a couple of years or so (yes, I’m not crazy to have 200 resources for nothing) but honestly, this is becoming a pain more and more at every “new thing” IPS does.

IPS don’t listen. Just read. Try to justify things and that’s it. Nothing will change.

So for the rest (of us) stop wasting your time debating here. That’s how it will be from now on. 

Man this is sad to read, I love your work and to see you doing math about its future.
IPB try harder to help developers, they may not be your bread and butter with commission profits but they are so so important to the platform. They should get a very generous discount to continue to make addons

 

Also I still think you could have done the price increase, kept everyone's next period 6 months (aka yearly switch happens 7 months from this date, 7 months to allow people to find out) and kept email support while steering people to the forum more. The price increase + losing direct email support is a big deal.

Edited September 15, 2021 by sudo

[Matt]

51 minutes ago, kims79 said:

We would certainly accept this pricing policy (at least personally) if and only if our requests were taken into account regarding Ipboard.
Starting with the most important one, the page loading speed and a mobile friendly version.
Compare IPB to any other forum system, you will understand, the pages load much too slowly and this problem has been raised many times.

I can talk at length about this and will do at some point. We have a responsive theme, PWA enabled and notifications for those that support them (Android). On our cloud infrastructure, we use CDN to serve a gzipped version of all JS and CSS which helps speed along with caching engines to reduce latency on requests.

In terms of what the software can do, we need to break up the monolithic JS and CSS packages and consider relying on jQuery less and using native JS more. However, these are framework breaking changes that will likely take 6-12 months to really complete, so it's not something we can do on a development sprint.

We are aware of page speed and are discussing the best way to move forwards. Sometimes, the solution isn't simple and requires some time to implement.

46 minutes ago, TDBF said:

Woke up today to find out that we have a 48% rise in the renewal price and no email support, and that is the final straw for us. So, instead of $70 every six months, we will be paying $220 yearly and that starts next January. Sorry, not on guys.

With all the negative changes to the marketplace recently, and now this, means I will be moving away from IPB to one of your competitors instead.

I'm sorry to see you go. Good luck with the conversion and thanks for your business. 🙂 

19 minutes ago, Ocean West said:

@Matt Can you comment on this

Introducing multiple renewal options adds complexity and some confusion. We are offering as a one time offer to split your next annual invoice into a 6 monthly invoice but it won't be a permanent option moving forwards.

6 minutes ago, Ramsesx said:

After a quick and dirty calculation, you even win if you lose 30% of your customers. So, from a financially viewpoint it's a good business decision. And another plus, your support effort will be reduced too Congrats.

I don't want to lose a single customer but I respect any decision that our customers make. We didn't increase prices with a view to trimming our customer base.

2 minutes ago, sudo said:

I dont think devs need a free license as such, they should pay the initial fee for the licenses but I do think you can work some magic for renewals.
I know you wont be able to move fast on this as it will require thought but I did suggest a few approaches earlier in this thread.
You could get dev's apply for reduced renewals based on the agreement the install wont be used to run a non-related purpose. They can have a public site but its for marketing/demo the addons, testing and direct support, that would mean even though they are selling lots of addons its adding value to your platform and allowing them to continue.
In addition (or as a different approach) to this you could tier the commission for sales, they get a big discount on renewals but they have a higher tier of sales commissions for addons sold. Then if they hit a certain sales point they can pony up full renewal but reduce the commission they are charged by yourselves. This approach would allow people who make a lot of free addons to continue and feel hopefully more valued and it would make the whole product stronger.
I dont expect a big in depth reply to this, I am more throwing suggestions to you so that it can be discussed behind the scenes as losing developers is one of the huge concerns I have and is a major issue for us. Its very conerning when some of the best devs on here have voiced concerns and also said they will be removing ipb addons from their package removing the ability for them to develop and expand those addons.
I am considering releasing a few addons I have made privately but they would be free and our license would be used for a full separate site so I would not be eligible for the discount above which I would have no issue with.

Man this is sad to read, I love your work and to see you doing math about its future.
IPB try harder to help developers, they may not be your bread and butter with commission profits but they are so so important to the platform.

 

Also I still think you could have done the price increase, kept everyone's next period 6 months (aka yearly switch happens 7 months from this date, 7 months to allow people to find out) and kept email support while steering people to the forum more. The price increase + losing direct email support is a big deal.

I appreciate the thoughtful reply, thanks. There's lots here to think about.

[Ocean West]

@Feneroin  That's worse its punitive for entities who would rather manage cash flow instead. 

But the base line would have to be flipped and discounts would be applied to longer terms. 

Example: My renewal $310/year

Monthly: $25.83
Quarterly: $77.40 - 3% discount or $75.18
Bi-annual: $155 - 5% discount or $147.25
Annually: $310 - 8% discount or $285.20

[sudo]

3 minutes ago, Matt said:

I appreciate the thoughtful reply, thanks. There's lots here to think about.

As Ballmer would say:

It is one of the reason several of your competitors were not options for us, they are so so valuable to a platform even if a customer doesnt buy an addon, its the perception that they can and there is a diverse ecosystem of addons as options.
Nearly all big platforms over the last decade have been powered by very strong developers adding value. iOS, Android, forum competitors all have got where they are because of developers. Windows Phone died because of the lack of developers. Keeping them onboard and happy is a huge deal, it wont necessarily affect huge enterprise customers but it has a big effect on your long tail customers.

[Ocean West]

8 minutes ago, Matt said:

Introducing multiple renewal options adds complexity and some confusion. We are offering as a one time offer to split your next annual invoice into a 6 monthly invoice but it won't be a permanent option moving forwards.

Only a one time split? 

[ZLTRGO]

14 minutes ago, Matt said:

Introducing multiple renewal options adds complexity and some confusion. We are offering as a one time offer to split your next annual invoice into a 6 monthly invoice but it won't be a permanent option moving forwards.

How would that add "complexity" and "some confusion"? Are you telling me that you think that your customer base it not able to handle it and gets confused by that? lmao no, you just want to "lock" your customer in for a year...

This has nothing to do with "confusion".

 

Essential you just said that it would be to "complex" and confusing" for us, so guess we are all a bit too incompetent to handle it. 🤥

Edited September 15, 2021 by ZLTRGO
ouffff

[Davyc]

I have put up expiry notices on both my licenced sites and have already found one alternative at a one-time price of $59 with six months support and I can increase this to 18 months for an extra $20.25.  I'm considering another alternative for my other site which is less expensive but has the same features, again for a price considerably less than the new IPS prices.

I'm no penny pincher, but I am retired and living on a pension, I have rent and utilities to pay for so my hobby money is limited.  I understand about the price increase, just not the way it blitzkrieged its way into our lives with no alternative payment options other than annually (with a not so generous offer of a one-time split bi-annually).

I find some of the comments mildly amusing and often disturbing from IPS:

22 minutes ago, Matt said:

I don't want to lose a single customer but I respect any decision that our customers make. We didn't increase prices with a view to trimming our customer base.

I'm sorry to see you go. Good luck with the conversion and thanks for your business. 🙂 

Short and sweet and couldn't care less - definitely not good customer relations. This is not a 'Hump Day' it's a 'Sad Day'.

[Matt]

21 minutes ago, ZLTRGO said:

How would that add "complexity" and "some confusion"? Are you telling me that you think that your customer base it not able to handle it and gets confused by that? lmao no, you just want to "lock" your customer in for a year...

This has nothing to do with "confusion".

 

Essential you just said that it would be to "complex" and confusing" for us, so guess we are all a bit too incompetent to handle it. 🤥

Hah, well that's a hot take. Complexity from a billing POV, a user interface POV and yes, people make mistakes and choose the wrong option, then realise a week later and need it fixing. I'm not suggesting our customers can't cope with understanding what a month or year is - simply that the more you offer, the more it can be confusing or easily misunderstood.

23 minutes ago, Ocean West said:

Only a one time split? 

Yes, we'll do a custom 6 month invoice on your next renewal, but it's not an option we're considering moving forwards.

5 minutes ago, Davyc said:

I have put up expiry notices on both my licenced sites and have already found one alternative at a one-time price of $59 with six months support and I can increase this to 18 months for an extra $20.25.  I'm considering another alternative for my other site which is less expensive but has the same features, again for a price considerably less than the new IPS prices.

I'm no penny pincher, but I am retired and living on a pension, I have rent and utilities to pay for so my hobby money is limited.  I understand about the price increase, just not the way it blitzkrieged its way into our lives with no alternative payment options other than annually (with a not so generous offer of a one-time split bi-annually).

I find some of the comments mildly amusing and often disturbing from IPS:

Short and sweet and couldn't care less - definitely not good customer relations. This is not a 'Hump Day' it's a 'Sad Day'.

I do care, but what can I say? I can't change people's minds. I hope they reconsider, but I can't make them.

I understand your position Davy, and it seems like you're making the right decision for yourself and to secure your communities future and I wish you the best of luck with it. I'm here if you need any help. 🙂 

[Zapusto]

11 minutes ago, Davyc said:

I have put up expiry notices on both my licenced sites and have already found one alternative at a one-time price of $59 with six months support and I can increase this to 18 months for an extra $20.25.  I'm considering another alternative for my other site which is less expensive but has the same features, again for a price considerably less than the new IPS prices.

DavyC, I'd be very curious to hear your findings. Would you be open to a private discussion relating to alternatives?

Edited September 15, 2021 by Zapusto

[Feneroin]

42 minutes ago, Ocean West said:

@Feneroin  That's worse its punitive for entities who would rather manage cash flow instead. 

But the base line would have to be flipped and discounts would be applied to longer terms. 

Example: My renewal $310/year

Monthly: $25.83
Quarterly: $77.40 - 3% discount or $75.18
Bi-annual: $155 - 5% discount or $147.25
Annually: $310 - 8% discount or $285.20

 if it's their final decision, you can't change final price.

But if we want pay yearly, they can make as i've said before.

You know, when the bottle of drink is small, the price became expensive per litre...

[Ocean West]

I would like to offer a story in hopes that it is heard.

It's tangentially related to IPS.

I develop database solutions for customers using Claris FileMaker which is an Apple Company my forum site is a technical community born at a time when Claris was tone deaf with regards listening to their developers and partners. They removed a vital communication - email list serve. Thus my forum was launched, and gained a steady following, and now after 20 years been thriving on the Invision Platform for the past 12 years.

Several years ago Claris made some decisions which including introducing their own community which was running on Jive for a long time, it was not with out its quirks but tolerable. A few years back they switch to some Salesforce abomination and which is what is running today. My observations and discussions with others in my community spotlight it was a corporate culture problem, these decisions had reaching tentacles in too many other interactions with developers. Where there was lip service paid and they were simply not listening to the feedback from developers in the trenches - many vowing to jump ship and find alternatives platforms.

In the past year and half there has been some very positive change from this stagnate corporate culture - including being much more resolved to be more transparent by inviting feedback from trusted partners with open exchanges of ideas and plans well before they are set in stone and communicated before they are made public. They have switched to an agile release cycle but they are also using the agile methodologies in all departments of the company.

at your leisure watch the keynote address from last month. If you're at all interested I've started it at a good point in this video. Feel free scrub back and forth and listen to entire messaging and commitments. It's refreshing and moves us past misgivings of the past.

Reading thru this thread I see similarities with this community and the ecosystem that it creates.  Not the time now to alienate your trusted developers and content creators. You must focus on what you do best and allow your community to thrive by encouraging investing, focusing lowering the bar to entry for them to provide much needed talent. It's a symbolic relationship and we all can win. 

I was very pleased when @Jordan Miller came on the seen and started communicating conversing with us; intensions and direction of IPS. This was a much welcomed change akin to that of what other communities have come to realize is the glue that binds us together. 

 

 

Edited September 15, 2021 by Ocean West

[The Old Man]

6 hours ago, Matt said:

You can, but really we would urge you to keep your software up to date. We often release security updates or improvements that would benefit your community.

Here in lies a pretty controversial policy.

You make a professional grade product, we choose it over free software like SMF because it's more secure and coded by professional certified developers, but we don't buy it, we never own it, it's still yours and we pay a license to make use of it.

Then the inevitable security flaws are identified and we must ensure we renew our licences to obtain the fix for what are problems that weren't created by us, if only to conform with GDPR and other legislation to keep our members data and personal information secure, never mind the inconvenience of cleaning and recovering from hacked sites.

So really we have no choice, once a self hosted forum community is installed, put aside anti-spam, IP lookups, forget Marketplace niceties, forget new feature temptations and nice to haves, the only 100% real reason is because of this.

Charging for access to security patches is just plain wrong. They should be free for at least 5 years if only as a mark of quality and pride.

Can you imagine if Microsoft charged for ongoing access to Windows security fixes and flaws?

 

UPDATED to add:

"We are looking to increase the speed of releases to a monthly release schedule so everyone gets bug fixes and new features regularly."

This a bad news for theme and app developers. More work. More time consuming localdev updates. Please improve the process of updating localdev installs so they are more robust.

Edited September 15, 2021 by The Old Man

[alistairgd66]

As a long time user of approaching 20 years who has been a customer since the Ikonboard days and has a first recorded invoice here in 2005 for "Purchase: Invision Power Board Perpetual License".

For what it is worth, here is my feedback on the e-mail I received about the price hike and reduction in support levels.

Six years ago you contacted me as a "lifetime" member to tell me that the lifetime agreement I signed up for, which helped set the the financial foundation of these forums, was to be replaced with an annual fee. It was nice to get a little credit on account by way of apology, however, I bought a lifetime licence and it should have been for lifetime. Offering a lifetime licence is a marketing incentive, and not something that should be reneged on further down the line once a company has reaped the benefits of the marketing drive. Telling customers its one payment for lifetime access, then changing the goal posts to an annual fee is not the type of thing that reflects well.  

Onto the new e-mail....

• Forums: was $50, now $80 (increase of $2.50/month)

The marketing team really earned their wage this campaign as $2.50 doesn't sound like much, however this represents a 60% price hike from $50 to $80.

A 60% price hike needs to be backed up with some serious upsides.... however...

• For most customers, support is simply “how do I do this?” and these questions tend to be quite similar. Rarely, support questions are “this went wrong”

Not my experience. My support experience is basically the same every year - my forums go offline with errors every time I do an upgrade. It fills me with dread every year or so, and true enough I need to submit a ticket to try and get the forums back online. To think that that base line support for a quick turnaround on outages is either now reliant on an additional payment for a support plan, or posting in publicly accessible forums is not a sustainable proposition for me.

• Creating a strong support community backed by our support technicians will result in a more detailed and richer set of answers

For "how to I customise this" or "how does this feature work", the above statement is true. For critical board offline situations, the above sets alarm bells ringing loudly. Critical issues need a formal support ticketing system - which is included in the licence fee. Come to think of it, no other service I use has separate support and licence fees.

• For those that wish to retain ticket support longer term, we will be unveiling a premium support option soon.

No, just no.

 

I already discontinued my other IPB forums as the cost/benefit ratio slid off the scale.

A 60% price hike means I will now have to look at other options for my final licence, it would be easier if I felt any degree of trust or loyalty to Invision as I would just pony up and pay the money, however - and sadly for such a long time customer, this is far from the case. I cannot trust you as evidenced through the lifetime licence fiasco, and I feel absolutely no loyalty due to this 60% price while reducing access to critical support.

Very disappointed.

What I would like to see?

1. Cancel premium support plans and retain this as part and parcel of customers licences.
2. Maintain current pricing plans for existing customers and roll out new price structure for new customers.

 

 

Edited September 15, 2021 by alistairgd66

[The Old Man]

5 hours ago, Adriano Faria said:

You should know after so many years in this business that people DO NOT search. You will have repeated topics with same matters in same day/week.  People don’t like to waste time checking a huge list of topics.

I think the main reason is that the search facility is crap. When they dropped specific forums per app, it made finding solutions to say Pages very difficult.

This is another reason I've said for years there should be a FAQ and Knowledgebase.

Lately I've been using and learning about the REST API lately to import Invision Gallery into Wordpress Media Library and the documentation examples are almost nonexistent. I got it working by a mix of consulting Stackoverflow and the Wordpress docs, where users post some handy tips and code snippets.

PS. Kudos to Matt for weathering the storm blowback today. He must need a cold beer this evening. And whatever happened to that Lindy chap? 

[RevengeFNF]

2 hours ago, Feneroin said:

$30/3month renewal...

Till now i was paying 25$ per 6 months. With that i would pay more for only half the time.

Perfect...