We would like to take this opportunity to inform you of an important decision we've made with regard to the Invision Community Marketplace. After careful evaluation and consideration, we have decided to discontinue the Invision Community Marketplace, effective October 30, 2023.
 
Over the past several years, we have noticed a decrease in usage of the Marketplace, with a staggering 75% decline in sales. In addition, we have observed a growing trend away from off the shelf customizations towards bespoke tailoring of a community by working more closely with developers. While it has been a platform for many dedicated and talented contributors to share their work, we believe it is time to re-focus our efforts and resources to better serve your present and future needs.
 
We understand that change can be unsettling, but we are excited to share with you our new direction. We are putting our efforts into enhancing the newly introduced Providers Directory, a platform that will enable you to connect with third-party providers for a wide range of services, including custom development, community management/support, conversion services, and other valuable resources. Additionally, many providers will have independent websites you will be able to visit to explore and obtain existing and new premade resources.
 
More details are to follow soon, but we would like to highlight a few key points:

     • Marketplace renewals will cease effective immediately
     • New purchases will end September 15, 2023
     • The Marketplace will be removed in the October release and disabled on October 30, 2023
     • You will continue to be able to install and manage existing and new resources via the methods provided by their respective authors
     • You will be able to obtain a key for each of your current Marketplace purchases and provide that key to authors to transfer your purchases directly to the author

We invite you to visit the Providers Directory and start exploring the opportunities it offers. This will allow you to familiarize yourself with the database and the resources it will provide in greater depth. Many of the current Marketplace contributors have already created their profiles – please check them out!

Of course, this does not mean the end of aftermarket development with Invision Community. We are currently building new development tools for Invision Community 5 which have easier ways to add new functionality.
 
We want to express our sincere gratitude for your ongoing support and trust in Invision Community. We believe these changes will enable us to better position ourselves to continue moving forward in meeting the present and future needs of our customer base.
 
If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out.
 
Thank you for being a part of the Invision Community family.

 

Update

We have posted our next blog covering the next steps for obtaining purchases from 3rd party developers.

 

View full blog entry

No offence but this is crazy.

what will happen for people hosting in the cloud? No mods?

Edited August 15, 20231 yr by sudo

 

There will be a means to 'prove' your existing ownership to them on their own sites so you can continue to receive updates and renew the purchase

So basically if the author doesnt put another way for us to get it up we lose our purchases.

I mean the timeline and warning should have been a bit longer. Losing the ability (an ability we had in the past) to download a copy thus losing our purchases for good is a bit nuts.

I dont know why foot keeps meeting mouth with some of these changes.

 

Losing the ability (an ability we had in the past) to download a copy thus losing our purchases for good is a bit nuts.

Why instead of talking about this here, won't you contact authors of apps/plugins you use to find a solution that fits both parties?

I understand that this isn't something you are happy about but until October there is more than enough time to transfer your purchases from MP to Author's website.

Edited August 15, 20231 yr by CodePixel

I think this is the best decision IPS has made in years. The only thing customers will lose is some comfort, but the bottom line is that it is the best for all. 

What you are suggesting is that developers have to release 2 versions. Means a lot more work and then have to pay to release a free version. Why should someone do that?

  Quote

Many of these resources are made with good heart and are freely available in the market, such as translations that connect people all over the world, and all of these will be "lost".

I promise you nothing will be lost, there will be even more. More applications, more translations... more freedom. Not on this website, just on another one.

 

Really?  I'm no expert but I find the last part of this sentence hard to believe given that there are many gaps in IPB functionality which necessitated the Marketplace community in the first place.

Luckily we are the experts in seeing usage trends 😉

 

I'm not sure what you mean here.  As far as I know IPS never "validated" the "safety" of any third-party app; they only checked to make sure that devs weren't using existing code contra IPS rules.  The "safety" of 3rd-party apps has never been Invision's responsibility (and for good reason!).

Trust me. You have no idea how many problematic things we prevented from being published in the Marketplace over the years.

PSA: you might want to use multi-quote when doing many replies 🙂 

I think it's OK if IPS wants to do this, but there is a better way. It's anonying to remove everything at once. You don't want to manage the marketplace, that's ok, but why do this unprofessionally?

You didn't think about how much the customers and providers depend on this method, you just decided that there should be no more Marketplace and announced it, and did!?,  But you didn't think about the solution to this crisis that is happening to the customers and providers.

I recently updated an app that took me about a few days to review. I received a message from a customer that it is not possible to renew. Well, if this possibility has been removed, then why did you allow me to upload the new version?
I'm currently working on setting up my own marketplace to even allow users to install directly, but with this message I've received, now I have to think about how users can download the new file now and within the next two months before setting up my marketplace. It has messed up my schedule and priorities.

In my opinion, the way out of this decision should not have been this way. With respect to all customers, giving the file directly to customers is a very wrong thing to do, and I don't think the providers are okay with it. They only announced that this was going to happen, but did not consider any plan or tools for it. It's good that you list the apps, but does it help with these problems? an instruction should have been prepared for customers and providers so that they can go through it in the best way and with the least worries and continue this way. I think they were in a hurry. My concern is that another decision will be made in the future that will destroy the efforts we are currently making to adapt to it. What is really the guarantee for it?

 

Sadly, it will also mean some developers will simply not bother continuing. This was perhaps supposed to be something easy enough to do on the side for them. They are not interested in making life more complex for themselves nor interested in starting their own webshops.

I can already see some devs abandoning things even now...

I think that you're right overall, but at least some parts will be easier for them - they can publish updates when they want, don't need approval, etc.

 

"Every night in my dreams.. I see you.. I feeel you.."

 

Hi,

No, we're not going to distribute other developers IP through a method they did not agree to.

If you have the app installed, you already have the files on your server. A competent developer would know where to look to get those and build whatever changes you want on top of that.

Thank you, I was not aware of that.