IC5 - Last Version for Self-Hosters? What’s Next for Self-Hosted Users?

[PanSevence]

Dear Invision Community Team,

As a user of the self-hosted version of Invsion Community, I want to express some concerns regarding recent changes in the platform’s development direction. IC5 introduces a number of new features, but some of them are exclusively available to cloud customers. It appears that IC's strategy is increasingly focused on the cloud and business clients, raising questions about the future of the self-hosted option.

I’d like to ask what IC’s long-term plan is for self-hosted customers. Recent information from the team suggests that self-hosted users now make up only a small part of your business. Many are concerned that in a few years, with the release of future versions – such as IC6 – we might see a product that’s only available in the cloud offering.

Will IC5 be the last version with support for self-hosters? Should we expect that in the future, support for self-hosted installations may be completely phased out? As a community, we are considering whether it’s worth switching to the new licensing terms or if we should start looking into alternatives now.

Thank you in advance for any clarity you can provide regarding future plans for self-hosted customers, which will help us make informed decisions about our forums.

[Marc]

24 minutes ago, PanSevence said:

As a user of the self-hosted version of Invsion Community, I want to express some concerns regarding recent changes in the platform’s development direction. IC5 introduces a number of new features, but some of them are exclusively available to cloud customers. It appears that IC's strategy is increasingly focused on the cloud and business clients, raising questions about the future of the self-hosted option.

There are some items which are only available to some packages. As mentioned a few times, the "Cloud only" thing, is actually a little misleading. Some of the items you will be looking at will also not be available to all cloud packages either.

26 minutes ago, PanSevence said:

I’d like to ask what IC’s long-term plan is for self-hosted customers. Recent information from the team suggests that self-hosted users now make up only a small part of your business. Many are concerned that in a few years, with the release of future versions – such as IC6 – we might see a product that’s only available in the cloud offering.

You are correct in that self hosting makes up a very small amount of the business. However we have, relatively recently, change the terms for self hosting going into the future. This was done specifically to allow us to maintain the self hosted product

28 minutes ago, PanSevence said:

Will IC5 be the last version with support for self-hosters? Should we expect that in the future, support for self-hosted installations may be completely phased out? As a community, we are considering whether it’s worth switching to the new licensing terms or if we should start looking into alternatives now.

This is, quite honestly, an impossible question. All we can tell you is what I have already said. We changed the license structure in order to secure its future. The reason its an impossible question to answer, is that version 4 was released a decade ago. So on that basis, you are effectively asking me to see 10 years into the future. If you find a way to do that, please let me know the lottery numbers.

[Marco Junior]

I actually understand the concern of the friend above.

I don't see any reason or benefit in migrating my services to the cloud, considering that I have enough knowledge to manage a hosting server.

The expense I would have to have access to my community does not bring me any financial benefits, since it is not an e-commerce or a community that uses sales as a means of sustaining itself.

Let's see, a basic package would cost me around 89 dollars per month, without the new features and limited hosting! On the other hand, if I wanted the new features and better hosting, I would have to spend approximately $249 to $549 per month. Keep in mind that this would be the cost of my community only. Cloud services can be used to host other features such as:

MSSQL connection

DDoS attack protection (My business is a major target for DDoS attacks, since I work with games)

Now, so you can understand a little bit of what I'm saying with the value of $350 per month, I have a dedicated server with a robust structure and DDoS protection. Through this server, I can enjoy virtualization, create my own VM for a cPanel server (Alma Linux) with all the necessary features for both my community and my website, which use different features from each other.

I can't be discarded as a customer because I have the knowledge necessary to manage my own network, or I can't simply be completely limited to a point where I have to buy another product to enjoy the features offered by the CMS.

It's okay to live without some resources, it's part of Invision's financial gain mechanism and I understand that, but does Invision understand that many communities are built on a non-profit basis?
And that even without a return we keep our licenses active?
This is a feature to be considered!
The price of CLOUD services today for my business model is unthinkable, with much less I have a robust and secure enough infrastructure.

In an old topic I saw a member mentioning that the idea of cloud services is to reduce the number of problems in reports, the problem with this is that this comment encompasses an entire community of customers, including those who have the knowledge to manage their own servers and that's not cool.

[Marc]

14 minutes ago, Marco Junior said:

In an old topic I saw a member mentioning that the idea of cloud services is to reduce the number of problems in reports, the problem with this is that this comment encompasses an entire community of customers, including those who have the knowledge to manage their own servers and that's not cool.

We have not built cloud to reduce the number of problems in reports. That just happens to be a by product of running a cloud environment that we mould to be specifically suited to the product. We built cloud because we had customers asking for it. It grew to be the majority of our business because more and more users were moving to it. And we still move customers to our cloud on a daily basis.

We get it. The cloud platform does not suit your purposes. Thats fine, and is what the classic platform is for. 

[PanSevence]

At the moment, guaranteed access to self-hosting however, the future remains uncertain. Your recent steps clearly indicate a shift towards cloud solutions, which brings my primary concern: despite the recent increase in prices for traditional licenses, there is a risk that you might ultimately deem this model unprofitable and decide to discontinue it entirely in favor of a cloud-only model.

I understand the need to raise license prices to improve profitability, which is reasonable. However, the greatest concern remains the uncertainty regarding the platform's future. I believe many people, like myself, are questioning whether it makes sense to invest time and resources in building communities if, in the future, the only way to maintain them with Invision Community will be to switch to the cloud package.

I understand that at this point, it may be challenging for you to provide a definitive answer regarding future version support, especially as your focus is currently on releasing IC5, which promises exceptional experiences. However, the uncertainty surrounding the platform's direction raises concerns about the long-term viability of self-hosting.

I accept that some features are exclusive to the cloud package that is understandable. The remaining question, though, is whether support for self-hosting will eventually be abandoned in the distant future. These are merely considerations I wanted to express.

Edited November 4 by PanSevence

[Marco Junior]

If the intention here is profitability.
Create a system of alternative plugins, take these resources that are theoretically only offered in the CLOUD and make them available as extra resources for any and all types of licenses.
It is up to the client to decide whether to purchase it as an additional resource (plugin) or whether it is viable for them to migrate to cloud services.
You will have another source of income for those who have the knowledge to manage their own servers and cannot see the benefits of contracting cloud services together with IPS just because of the community.
A business community is important, but it is not as important as other resources.
A system of extra plugins, in addition to increasing your profit margin, brings the advantage of covering the portfolio of new resources. Once available in the store, you define how the payment terms would be.

• Monthly
• Yearly

3 products
Important solutions and we have not reached the point of discontinuing a product because of cloud services, I am not concerned about that at this time.
I don't believe that IPS would do something drastic like getting rid of self-hosted customers. It would be crazy. Maybe the guy above is exaggerating.

Or is he right? Is IPS thinking about discontinuing us?

[Jim M]

5 minutes ago, PanSevence said:

At the moment, guaranteed access to self-hosting however, the future remains uncertain. Your recent steps clearly indicate a shift towards cloud solutions, which brings my primary concern: despite the recent increase in prices for traditional licenses, there is a risk that you might ultimately deem this model unprofitable and decide to discontinue it entirely in favor of a cloud-only model.

The whole change in the self-hosted license new terms is to ensure that it remains viable in the future for us to continue to develop it. We want to support self-hosted as long as it is a viable option for us. As Marc already mentioned, we can't see into the future so don't know what it may bring and that is about as a concrete statement as we can provide you. 

It could be that self-hosted sustains product vitality for many major versions to come. It could also be that many people flock to Cloud and 5 is the last one, we just simply can't tell you right now or provide you a guarantee.

14 minutes ago, PanSevence said:

I understand the need to raise license prices to improve profitability, which is reasonable. However, the greatest concern remains the uncertainty regarding the platform's future. I believe many people, like myself, are questioning whether it makes sense to invest time and resources in building communities if, in the future, the only way to maintain them with Invision Community will be to switch to the cloud package.

We have stated that version 5 will remain available for the Classic license. That is some time around (give or take) 10 years of that software version. Many, many communities will rise and fall during that period of simply natural selection beyond the software's doing. I think it is a naive notion to state that you wouldn't start a community on our software, if you think it is right for your community, simply because we can't guarantee ~10 years from now it may not be available on self-hosted.

As a hypothetical, if we do decide to drop self-hosting, there is nothing stopping you from continuing to run version 5, switch to cloud, or switch to another community software provider. Again, this is a completely hypothetical because there is nothing right now saying we will or will not continue providing self-hosted.

Ultimately, my point is that if you see our software as the #1 option for creating a community, the ~10 years of version 5 is so far in the future, why not give your community the best chance to start? Maybe in 10 years your community is successful enough that Cloud is a completely viable option. Maybe your standpoint on running a server changes and Cloud is a much-appreciated option. Much can change in 10 years, keep an open mind 🙂 .

[PanSevence]

I understand, your response gives me a broader perspective and partially confirms my assumptions. Currently, I have a community on IPS4, and I’m planning to transition to IC5. I know this is a long-term plan, but as the community grows and data accumulates, managing a potential migration, should it become necessary, would be more complex. That’s why I'm considering it from this angle.

Nevertheless, thank you for the precise information as much as possibl I appreciate it!

[Jim M]

5 minutes ago, Marco Junior said:

If the intention here is profitability.
Create a system of alternative plugins, take these resources that are theoretically only offered in the CLOUD and make them available as extra resources for any and all types of licenses.

A lot of our Cloud-only features are limited to Cloud because they run on our Cloud resources. You could say that anyone could set these resources up but a lot of the simplicity of offering these on our Cloud is we only need to configure/develop them for 1 environment. The cost to develop these to be parted out and any related support would be astronomical that Cloud would look cheap 😉 .

4 minutes ago, PanSevence said:

I know this is a long-term plan, but as the community grows and data accumulates, managing a potential migration, should it become necessary, would be more complex.

Can respect that. However, there is no guarantee that any other provider is going to do the same or even be in business in ~10 years either. Just food for thought 🙂 .

[2TonWaffle]

The one thing I tend to say about any service or product is whether it provides you with the necessary services or features you or your community needs. We can go around and around wondering if some unknown feature will be a godsend for our community in the future, and we will end up not building a community at all. Will IC6 be cloud-only? I don't know, and as has been mentioned a few times already, that is roughly 10 years from now. Who knows how your community will look then or if it will even be around? I know for myself that I'm perfectly content with IC4 and even more so with IC5. If my community is still around in the next decade and the next version of IC isn't something I could use or want, I can make the decision then to migrate to a different service or infrastructure.

Basically, make your decisions for your community's needs on the information in the present. Have a plan for a possible migration in the future if IC doesn't meet your needs in the future.