Hello, I've already used the search but couldn't find anything that helps me. Is there a possibility of branding free at forum? If yes, how much does it cost?

Kind regards, Wiebke Wagner

 

 

now i found it

If you mean removing the Invision Community branding as shown below:

Then navigate to your Client Area and choose and pay for Branding Removal as shown below:

 

Yes, it's a great situation isn't it that is not mentioned when you buy.

You are forced to

• Pay for the product
• Pay a 6 month license fee
• Advertise free for Invision
• Link to Invision free
• You have to pay Invision NOT to advertise and backlink to their site

Win, Win for Invision of course.

I think "forced" is a bit strong when we are just one community platform vendor. 🙂

@MattI did check the sales page and help guides for mentions of branding. If I had seen something I would have provided a link. Some companies provide for personalized branding some don't, some charge and some don't.  As such, you might consider letting potential customers know your policy and pricing before purchase.

Customers:

Some third-party developers charge an extra fee to remove their branding some don't brand their apps at all.  To replicate the functionality of the IPS suite and third-party add-ons it would take a dedicated development team and a very, very large budget.  Paying to remove branding can give the appearance of a custom site while only having to pay pennies on the dollar.  The reality is few members will be fooled that you designed and built the site from scratch.

Increased sales for IPS and third-party apps via branding links insures they continue to have the development budget to continue releasing new and useful updates. They need every win they can to continue to develop.  

Instead of looking at personalized branding simply as another fee, think of it as an investment in your community.

I would recommend reaching out to the sales team for any company you wish to do business with to find out what is or isn't included and pricing for various add-ons prior to making any purchases.

Edited March 24, 20223 yr by Chris Anderson

3 hours ago, Chris Anderson said:

Increased sales for IPS and third-party apps via branding links insures they continue to have the development budget to continue releasing new and useful updates. They need every win they can to continue to develop.  

Instead of looking at personalized branding simply as another fee, think of it as an investment in your community.

@Chris Anderson I don't agree with you in any way on the above point. However, Invision should certainly be employing you in a PR role. Your attempt to spin a negative into a positive is impressive.

I'm reasonbly certain that small and non commercial forums are not labouring under the illusion that by removing Invision's branding anyone would think they had built there forum from the ground up themselves.

Your premise that the presence of Invision's branding with backlinks somehow supports development and updates is quite frankly laughable. Everyone paid for the product in the first instance and pays a license fee every 6 months in the second instance presumably for development and updates and an income stream for Invision.

Very few forum owners would be willing to pay the massive $500 fee to have the branding removed.

Only corporate and large business's would, if they even carry Invision's branding in the first place and let's face facts most development and updates will be done for their benefit anyway.

Edited March 24, 20223 yr by Bethanyrayne

Everything OK there?

It's pretty industry standard to retain a link to the app's homepage. We add nofollow so it doesn't benefit us at all in terms of SEO. The option to remove it is there in our store.

I realise not everyone likes it, but it's been there for the last 20 years.

 

@Bethanyrayne

You might think that I was attempting to spin a negative into a positive and you would be completely wrong. I was simply relaying some points of view that “some” developers adhere to. 

Please don’t assume comments are meant to be either positive or negative in nature.  Occasionally they can be neutral and meant to be helpful. With that in mind your comment to me could have been framed in a more positive fashion.  

On 3/24/2022 at 2:00 AM, Bethanyrayne said:

Yes, it's a great situation isn't it that is not mentioned when you buy.

You are forced to

• Pay for the product
• Pay a 6 month license fee
• Advertise free for Invision
• Link to Invision free
• You have to pay Invision NOT to advertise and backlink to their site

Win, Win for Invision of course.

Have you ever created a business, and hired skilled employees, and paid for insurance, and marketing, etc., etc., etc?  All that stuff cost money, you know.  So the business has to figure out ways to make that money.  

I'm new to invision communities, but from what I've seen so far, I'm impressed.  They deserve to be able to pay their employees well and to make profit...  Plus, that's part of what motivated people to create amazing products and services to begin with.

And if you don't like it, don't buy it.  Or try hiring someone to personally build your own forum software.  I'm sure you'll end up paying much much more.

Or, you could go with MyBB... it's free.  But it's nothing compared to invision.

Edited May 23, 20222 yr by Lucas Thompson

I would gladly play something much less than $500 for copyright removal, but this flat rate is just too much for hobbyists.

I was reading the wording of the license agreement. We're not allowed to remove the copyright notice. No mention of not being allowed to modify the style. So making it more discrete could be a solution also.

I didn't like the name my website was powered by, "No offence," so I changed mine to Powered by Satan the Devil. Then I discovered I had to pay the Almighty God five hundred big dollars to get it removed. It was the best $500 I have ever spent. Trust me, paying the $500 to remove the IPS branding will make your website popular and prosperous in no time. My website has returned that $500 multiplied by 100 times a long ago. Spend money to make lots more money. That is the aim of the game.

Edited June 7, 2024Jun 7 by beats23

2 hours ago, Andreas Grace said:

I would gladly play something much less than $500 for copyright removal, but this flat rate is just too much for hobbyists.

As a hobbyist site, how is a single line, four word copyright line going to change anything for your site?  In over 30 years of running sites, I’ve never seen an end user say something like “well I just can’t use this site because they’re using <INSERT SOME NAME> platform instead of writing their own from scratch even though they have great content.”  It’s purely a vanity play.

IPS has clearly is not wanting the copyright removal option to be a big revenue stream. And why should they?  Instead of simply saying “it must stay”, they give you an option to pay to remove it.  If it’s too much for a hobbyist site… you honestly don’t need it in the first place.  Would you rather IPS raise the renewal rate $100 per year and remove the branding?

3 hours ago, Andreas Grace said:

I was reading the wording of the license agreement. We're not allowed to remove the copyright notice. No mention of not being allowed to modify the style. So making it more discrete could be a solution also.

How much more discrete do you honestly want it to be?  It is literally four words at the end of the footer in the smallest font.  It would be different if there was a big popup that must be clicked by users acknowledging the site was powered by IPB or if it required you to put a big banner ad pointing to them at the top of your site.  If you’re asking for being able to style the font color to your background color or to make the font 1px size… you’re intentionally asking for the ability to remove it. If you don’t want it… buy the option.  If the price is too much, it obviously is not that big of a deal. It’s been there for over 25 years and not changed so it’s not like this is some brand new thing to come up. 

perhaps the link could be a unique referral code so that if somebody clicks through and makes a purchase we get credits towards licence/cloud hosting fees ?

Quote

As a hobbyist site, how is a single line, four word copyright line going to change anything for your site?

Well this is for me to decide. Hobbyist means I do it for fun, not profit, and the community could be bigger and more important than for-profit ones. I might want a brand removal for whatever reason I certainly do not need to prove to anyone.

To me it doesn't look like a reasonable pricing to charge $500 one-off branding removal for a $499 one-time purchase software license. If it does to you, I respect that but to me it doesn't. It could be $100 and still few would do it, same result for Invision advertising-wise and affordable for those who hate it.

 

Quote

How much more discrete do you honestly want it to be?  It is literally four words at the end of the footer in the smallest font.

I agree it is discrete. I just made the comment for someone who might still hate it and can't afford $500. If the license agreement is to be respected, it goes both ways. Someone should be able to do whatever the agreement allows with no pointing fingers.

 

 

Try removing Discord and Slack branding. 😄 

1 hour ago, Andreas Grace said:

I agree it is discrete. I just made the comment for someone who might still hate it and can't afford $500. If the license agreement is to be respected, it goes both ways. Someone should be able to do whatever the agreement allows with no pointing fingers.

It's worth mentioning that it does need to be legible to continue to comply with the agreement. Can't have it be white font on a white background 🙂 .

------------------

Taking off my IPS hat and putting on my community owner hat, I run a hobbyist community now for over 15 years. I don't think an actual member has once told me that I'm running Invision Community. Moreso, the branding is there for the target audience of community admins looking to start or convert a community and go "Oh, community xyz is running Invision, I should check them out." Otherwise, it means nothing and people move on.

As Matt said though, there is an option if it bothers you enough. There isn't an option on many other platforms 🙂 .

1 hour ago, Andreas Grace said:

Well this is for me to decide. Hobbyist means I do it for fun, not profit, and the community could be bigger and more important than for-profit ones. I might want a brand removal for whatever reason I certainly do not need to prove to anyone.

To me it doesn't look like a reasonable pricing to charge $500 one-off branding removal for a $499 one-time purchase software license. If it does to you, I respect that but to me it doesn't. It could be $100 and still few would do it, same result for Invision advertising-wise and affordable for those who hate it.

I’ve been looking at houses lately… there are quite a few that I would like, but I can’t afford $10M USD. Those owners could be much more reasonable and sell it to me for $1M USD.  In fact some of them bought their house for under $500K so since I can’t afford $10M, I should get it for what I want it to be?  (That seller could still make money!) 😄

I personally don’t find value in the price IPS has assigned to Copyright removal. But it’s their price to assign and that price was known before purchase. 

They don’t want to be selling copyright removals. It’s not how they build their business model around. It’s intentionally priced to prevent people from doing it.  And it looks like it’s doing its job. (It’s not gotten a price raise when the core platform cost went up… just be glad they’re not scaling it up as well!)

49 minutes ago, Randy Calvert said:

I personally don’t find value in the price IPS has assigned to Copyright removal. But it’s their price to assign and that price was known before purchase. 

I agree and leave all my sites branded. Most people know that when they visit a niche forum, it’s IPS, Xenforo, vbulletin, phpbb or other. If it would help my traffic or other to remove, I would pay to have it removed. I don’t think it does.

$500 is a bit steep but it’s their hill to put out there. Xenforo is $350 so not much less. Vbulletin is $289. So everyone charges something!

I don’t have an issue and want IPS to have more clients (self-hosted selfishly) so they prosper and continue on.. 

Edited June 7, 2024Jun 7 by AlexWebsites

If they're intentionally pricing too high so we won't buy it, they it's expected that we complain it's too high 😁

In any case, people should have the freedom to ask for better pricing. Don't be too defensive about it.

9 minutes ago, Andreas Grace said:

If they're intentionally pricing too high so we won't buy it, they it's expected that we complain it's too high 😁

In any case, people should have the freedom to ask for better pricing. Don't be too defensive about it.

The forums here are not the place to ask that however. Jim and Mark in support can’t make that decision and it’s not related to support.  While Matt and members of management may browse the topics, it’s not the correct place to make the request.  

If you want to actually ask, there is a contact us link at the bottom footer that will allow you to submit a request to the accounts department. 

Just don’t be upset if the answer is “no”.  🙂 Like you’re free to make the ask, they’re free to choose if the ask is accommodated or not. 

Edited June 7, 2024Jun 7 by Randy Calvert

No need to, management also read my opinion!