Buying new self hosted licence - how to choose few applications?

[Marc Stridgen]

I've done an new guide just for this process, if anyone needs extra guidance on this

 

[DawPi]

Hm, I can't read that? It's intentional?

[Nathan Explosion]

Issue again with the download...

[Matt]

58 minutes ago, DawPi said:

Hm, I can't read that? It's intentional?

Oops, it was still set to hidden. Fixed!

8 minutes ago, Nathan Explosion said:

Issue again with the download...

When downloading Invision Community?

[Nathan Explosion]

3 minutes ago, Matt said:

When downloading Invision Community?

Yes...if it was something else, I really would have posted somewhere else 😉 (think it was Dawpi that had same issue yesterday)

Edited August 2, 2023 by Nathan Explosion

[Nathan Explosion]

8 minutes ago, Matt said:

Oops, it was still set to hidden. Fixed!

Ta muchly!

[Joel R]

Are clubs included in Classic? 

[Charles]

32 minutes ago, Joel R said:

Are clubs included in Classic? 

Yes

[Driven 2 Services]

On 7/29/2023 at 1:36 PM, Charles said:

That is right and we recognize that's a change but we had to make this change. One huge area of abuse on the old way was people not renewing for 3 years, paying $50, and then getting 3 years worth of new software.

The monthly option is a payment plan for the yearly. You can of course switch to yearly at any time.

I hear you but they are totally separate systems for business and tax purposes so that's... hard 🙂 

This "then getting 3 years worth of new software" is a non-sequitur. They weren't using and the benefitting from the new features during those three years, so no "abuse" exists except in the management team's minds. 

Imagine someone someone who left their car uninsured for 3 years, and decided to re-insure being told they must pay the 3 years back insurance because new policies have additional features. Or Microsoft making everyone upgrading to a newer Windows version pay the upgrade fees for all the versions between.

Retroactive update charging frankly, comes across as petty. It is one of the most restrictive licensing terms I've run across in 30+ years of working in the software world.

I hope this post doesn't disappear as other critical posts about the new licensing model have.

[Ryan Ashbrook]

5 hours ago, Nathan Explosion said:

Issue again with the download...

Fixed.

[Charles]

1 hour ago, Driven 2 Services said:

This "then getting 3 years worth of new software" is a non-sequitur. They weren't using and the benefitting from the new features during those three years, so no "abuse" exists except in the management team's minds. 

Imagine someone someone who left their car uninsured for 3 years, and decided to re-insure being told they must pay the 3 years back insurance because new policies have additional features. Or Microsoft making everyone upgrading to a newer Windows version pay the upgrade fees for all the versions between.

Retroactive update charging frankly, comes across as petty. It is one of the most restrictive licensing terms I've run across in 30+ years of working in the software world.

I hope this post doesn't disappear as other critical posts about the new licensing model have.

I can see how you might look at it that way in terms of saving money. But we spent a lot of time, resources, and money in development of those 3 years of features and other clients have an expectation from us.

The only way to make self-hosted viable for the future is to ensure people are paying for the effort put into developing it. Otherwise we really should just get rid of it. If you are not willing to do that, there are cheap or low cost alternatives out there but you don't get the owners of the company replying to you and you most certainly do not get monthly updates and constant improvements. Look at literally any other community platform and you will see many are at worst dead and at best barely supported.

It is also very, very common. I'm not sure where you have been living in 30+ years of the software world. It's very normal for software to require a subscription fee or to require a re-purchase at major versions. I get emails all the time from software I own that says "new version pay up!"

We are not requiring people to re-purchase for v5 as other platforms would. The "catch up" renewals only apply to the monthly option as it is basically a finance version of the annual fee. You may wish to review the new terms in the client area as you seem incorrect here.

We are growing and, if you are actually serious about your community, a few more dollars a year to get a platform that is actually alive must be worth it. If having something that is actively developed is not worth it to you, then your community will probably suffer with another platform.

But, as has been said a lot already in this topic, you don't have to do anything. You can stick right where you are on your current terms.

 

TL;DR: We are committed to our clients using Classic, self-hosted who are committed to their communities being a success. It is a joint venture.

 

And to your examples:

1. Insurance companies actually do charge you more if you have a huge gap in coverage. They see you as a greater risk. Same idea here.

2. Microsoft does not do upgrade fees they just make you buy the new version outright. If you would prefer that, I would be HAPPY to do that as it would make our software cost way more.

[Miss_B]

13 minutes ago, Charles said:

there are cheap or low cost alternatives out there but you don't get the owners of the company replying to you and you most certainly do not get monthly updates and constant improvements. Look at literally any other community platform and you will see many are at worst dead and at best barely supported.

I couldn't like this post enough and I completely agree 100% with the above.

Personally, I truly appreciate the way that Ips management keeps their customers in the loop, listens to us and interacts with us. 

You don't see this at other community platforms, where there is only silence from the management, and indeed, bad and barely support. 

Ips is and will remain the best and leading community platform in the market.

[Charles]

Just now, Miss_B said:

I couldn't like this post enough and I completely agree 100% with the above.

Personally, I truly appreciate the way that Ips management keeps their customers in the loop, listens to us and interacts with us. 

You don't see this at other community platforms, where there is only silence from the management, and indeed, bad and barely support. 

Ips is and will remain the best and leading community platform in the market.

Thanks for your reply! I know some people get all worked up if costs go up even a tiny bit but we really tried to balance this.

All with the eye toward making Classic, self-hosted viable for the future, we:

1. Took feedback from a private group of clients for month to refine the new terms
2. Lowered the initial purchase price.
3. Include all the apps with the new terms.
4. Gave people the option to stay on old terms if they want.
5. Give you several months of free time when you switch.

I am actually very proud of our ability to keep Classic around in a world where people just do not use self-hosted as much anymore. And, again, I thank our private client feedback group for helping us shape this in a way that is beneficial to most clients.

[DawPi]

I assume you can't tell us who are these mysterious private clients? 🙂

[Charles]

Just now, DawPi said:

I assume you can't tell us who are these mysterious private clients? 🙂

It's up to them if they want to reveal themselves 🙂 

[CheersnGears]

1 hour ago, Driven 2 Services said:

Or Microsoft making everyone upgrading to a newer Windows version pay the upgrade fees for all the versions between.

Microsoft does exactly that. You can't buy new copies of Win10 anymore, which would give you a free upgrade to Win11. They also made it so that if by chance you started on Win7 and upgraded to Win10, that it is extremely unlikely you'll be able to upgrade to Win11 on the same hardware. It's possible, but the sliver of hardware that is eligible to go to Win11 that started on Win7 is so narrow, that it is likely less than half a percent of all computers out there.   They've effectively made it so that you buy one version and get one version upgrade (not counting service packs) before you have to pay full price again. 

[Kirill Gromov]

It's great that you guys managed to keep the classic version viable, I thought it was unrealistic! Thank you.

[Miss_B]

16 minutes ago, Charles said:

Thanks for your reply! I know some people get all worked up if costs go up even a tiny bit but we really tried to balance this.

All with the eye toward making Classic, self-hosted viable for the future, we:

1. Took feedback from a private group of clients for month to refine the new terms
2. Lowered the initial purchase price.
3. Include all the apps with the new terms.
4. Gave people the option to stay on old terms if they want.
5. Give you several months of free time when you switch.

I am actually very proud of our ability to keep Classic around in a world where people just do not use self-hosted as much anymore. And, again, I thank our private client feedback group for helping us shape this in a way that is beneficial to most clients.

The new pricing structure is very fair imho. People will get their money's worth and then some, no questions about that. Personally I find it a very good deal. But unfortunately, no matter what you do, you can't please everyone.

 

 

[Dean_]

On 7/31/2023 at 9:54 PM, Charles said:

We’re not sure yet 😀 This is just rolling out to new purchases which is why we haven’t done any formal announcements for existing clients. 

 

On 7/31/2023 at 9:37 PM, Charles said:

If you choose to change to the new pricing, it depends in you go with monthly or annual renewals. If annual is your choice and you don’t renew, you can pick up your annual renewal later. If monthly is your choice and you don’t renew, you can either switch to annual or catch up your missed monthly payments. 

That's fair. And, and I see how that works for monthly payers. But, please don't punish us too harshly for gaps with yearly renewals. I have a couple of licences as you see and while these are hobby sites, I do try to renew when I can, but it's very dependent on the amount I make with advertisements.

[Charles]

4 minutes ago, Dean_ said:

But, please don't punish us too harshly for gaps with yearly renewals.

No punishment at all! In fact, there is no "catch up" on annual renewals. If you let an annual renewal expire for example for 6 months, you can just pay the normal annual fee 6 months later.

There is only a catch up on the monthly because it's kind of like a finance plan for the annual. If that makes sense 🙂 

[CheersnGears]

8 minutes ago, DawPi said:

I assume you can't tell us who are these mysterious private clients? 🙂

Honestly, the process was fantastic, and the discussions were numerous. While IPS does want the CIC product to be their primary product, they see the value in being the best self-hosted product on the market as well.

But as they've said for a while, the self-hosted market is changing.  Sites that are "just forums" are not likely to survive long going forward, which is a position I've held for years back when I added IP.Content/Pages as the article management system on my site.  As such, it doesn't make sense to keep the apps as individual products anymore and instead sell the suite as a whole.  It allows IPS to integrate the apps even tighter. 

In my view, site owners who run "just a forum" need to sit back and reflect on where the world is today and if such a site makes sense to continue self-host, or just migrate it to Reddit instead. If you are a "just forums" site owner, I would encourage you to look at this change as a chance to grow in new ways with the new apps that you didn't have access to before.  The only limit is your imagination.

IPS published several drafts of the upgrade language to us in the group and we all took turns making suggestions and modifying the language.  While IPS certainly set the guidelines, it was a very collaborative effort between IPS and those of us in the customer focus group. I think every person in the focus group submitted a modification suggestion to IPS and IPS was very receptive towards them. 

With regard to how the licensing changes work, especially regarding renewals, it's clear that in order to make sure the self-hosted product is a viable, ongoing product, people who use the software need to chip in. The pool of self-hosted customers has shrunk dramatically over the last years. Making the renewals and catch up fees mandatory was the only way to do that in a fair manner but IPS counters that with lower renewal fees for any site with 2 or more apps.

My relationship with IPS over the last 20-ish years has been strained from time to time, but I have to say that this has been a fantastic experience for me personally.

[Dean_]

29 minutes ago, Charles said:

No punishment at all! In fact, there is no "catch up" on annual renewals. If you let an annual renewal expire for example for 6 months, you can just pay the normal annual fee 6 months later.

There is only a catch up on the monthly because it's kind of like a finance plan for the annual. If that makes sense 🙂 

Perfect! Thank you Charles. 🥰

[Daddy]

I'll be honest when I saw this thread, I almost went for the popcorn, but this is actually a pretty big W for self-hosted licenses.

Removing the ability to select apps is actually smart. While it may greatly restrict your ability to budget on smaller orgs, it kind of pushes you into trying them and finding ways to monetize.

Both of my licenses were missing apps, so having access to them all while still paying less kind of blows my mind. This was not on my "what will IPS do next" bingo card. A step in the right direction and much appreciated by us self-hosted customers!

Edited August 2, 2023 by Daddy

[Cedric V]

I think a lot is just misunderstood. But it's a bit confusion as well, so it was bound to happen. Some will say it's a bad thing, without realizing it's in their best interest and gain. 

 

Keep it up Invision Community.

[Matt]

As always, keep calm and talk to us if it’s unclear. We are here every day.