If you don't renew for 2 years the licence is no longer renewable

[Paras]

Quote

if you don't renew for 2 years the licence is no longer renewable.

Is this valid?

Edited November 23 by Paras

[DawPi]

I think so. 🙂

[Hatsu]

IPS should really update their Standards of Service for those who have the new license. Even if you download the new package you are linked to the old license terms. I can't find the 2 year rule anywhere in my documents.

[Paras]

@Hatsu I just found this statement.

Quote

License Terms
The standard license term gives you access to upgrades to the software on one active licensed URL for the first six months of your license. After six months, if you choose not to renew at the prices listed, your software will continue to operate however you will lose access to upgrades, downloads, technical support and hosted services such as spam mitigation.

It is not stated that after 2 years the license cannot be renewed anymore. In fact, I got that statement from a discussion on XF.

[Marc]

If you switch to the new terms, you are given what your renewal terms are, including this. 

[Paras]

I'm a new customer (self-hosted), so I don't fully understand what you mean yet.

What I understand from your statement is that if I move to the Cloud then those terms apply. Am I understanding your statement correctly?

[Marc]

5 minutes ago, Paras said:

I'm a new customer (self-hosted), so I don't fully understand what you mean yet.

What I understand from your statement is that if I move to the Cloud then those terms apply. Am I understanding your statement correctly?

Thank you for the clarification. I will check this with our team to ensure its added, if its not already present. We do however state a renewal of $199 per year to renew the platform. There isnt actually a mention that you can renew at all if you allow that to lapse. We do, of course. You can let it lapse for up to 2 years, before we will not allow renewal 

[Adriano Faria]

8 minutes ago, Marc said:

You can let it lapse for up to 2 years, before we will not allow renewal 

Just to confirm: we’ll also have to pay for the months we lapsed to renew, right? Not sure, but somehow I remember having read this somewhere.

[Paras]

35 minutes ago, Marc said:

Thank you for the clarification. I will check this with our team to ensure its added, if its not already present. We do however state a renewal of $199 per year to renew the platform. There isnt actually a mention that you can renew at all if you allow that to lapse. We do, of course. You can let it lapse for up to 2 years, before we will not allow renewal 

Now it's clear to me. If I don't renew my license for two years, my license will be canceled.

That's a shame. For others, it might not be a problem. But for me, it's a problem because the site isn't a business entity, but an educational one. Fortunately, we serve adsense, but even so, the income from Adsense still isn't enough to renew the license for a year.

You're the seller/service provider, and I'm the buyer. You can set any terms. If I agree, I buy. If not, I look for other options. But being fair between both parties is a good thing in business. I think canceling the license because I'm unable (or choose not to) renew the license is unfair. Not receiving renewals updates because I didn't renew the license is a 'punishment' that makes me suffer enough. But canceling the license is unfair.

I'm not teaching you how to do business. But the willingness of both parties will be the pillar of a long-term business relationship.

🙂

Edited November 24 by Paras

[Marc]

10 hours ago, Adriano Faria said:

Just to confirm: we’ll also have to pay for the months we lapsed to renew, right? Not sure, but somehow I remember having read this somewhere.

This was the monthly, in which we no longer have

9 hours ago, Paras said:

Now it's clear to me. If I don't renew my license for two years, my license will be canceled.

That's a shame. For others, it might not be a problem. But for me, it's a problem because the site isn't a business entity, but an educational one. Fortunately, we serve adsense, but even so, the income from Adsense still isn't enough to renew the license for a year.

You're the seller/service provider, and I'm the buyer. You can set any terms. If I agree, I buy. If not, I look for other options. But being fair between both parties is a good thing in business. I think canceling the license because I'm unable (or choose not to) renew the license is unfair. Not receiving renewals updates because I didn't renew the license is a 'punishment' that makes me suffer enough. But canceling the license is unfair.

I'm not teaching you how to do business. But the willingness of both parties will be the pillar of a long-term business relationship.

🙂

I'm unsure where you have read the license will be cancelled. They will be 'expired' so they cannot then be renewed. You could certainly use what you already have, if you wished to do so, but you would no longer be able to renew the product to obtain updates, support etc.

[Paras]

Example case:
Purchased 11/13/2024
Expires 11/13/2025

If I can't renew by 11/13/2025 for any reason, such as a natural disaster, can I still renew on 11/15/2025?

or

If I can't renew by 11/13/2026 for any reason, can I still renew on 11/15/2026?

[Marc]

The latter, as that is 2 years. the former is only 1 year

[Paras]

Okay, here is my final conclusion:
I can't renew my license if I don't renew it for two years. This also means that my license is only valid for a maximum of two years. In the third year I have to buy it at full price.

[Matt]

There seems to be a lot of confusion and speculation around this, so I'll do my best to clear it up.

When you switch to the Classic license, you are presented with a lot of information, and in the footer it says "Licenses left expired for more than 24 months will be expired permanently and cannot be renewed, but you may purchase a new license for full price."

I have also added this to the "Standards of service" document for new purchases.

That's the technical language, so let's look at the reasoning.

Invision Community is a pretty big bit of software with a lot of functionality. We have an active development team, and over a two year period we have made 17 releases, fixed hundreds of bugs and introduced new features and updates including: the large calendar to events revamp, the gallery revamp, GraphQL API addition, a UI polish, Downloads revamp, added iPhone notifications and a web app, updated the stats engine in the ACP, added new spam prevention features, made it possible to have Pages Databases in clubs, added new report centre tools, added SEO improvements and dormant account notifications. During this time we have released three important security updates.

Oh and it gets you access to a major new version, Invision Community 5.

That's a lot over two years. Actually, it's a huge amount of development work, totalling hundreds of development hours, costing us as a company well into seven figures.

We presume you are running an active community with your license. I don't see a reason you wouldn't want to keep it up to date to ensure you have all the security updates, bug fixes and latest features. If you are serious about running your community, why make a conscious choice to effectively stop paying for the service and no longer keep your community platform updated. It seems at odds with any sensible management plan.

Of course, the best reason to stop paying for the service is to save on costs. However, if enough chose to do that, we'd be locked in a doom loop of lower revenue, fewer staff, fewer releases and less chance for our platform to remain competitive and deliver a toolset you and your members expect as we fall further and further behind the competition.

Likewise, if one customer choose to keep paying for their service, potentially spending $597 over a three year period and you do not, spending $199 over three years (two years of $0, one renewal of $199), would it be fair that you both get the same updates and end up with the same product? I'll leave that for others to decide.

Ultimately we don't think it's unfair to ask for $16.58 a month to be able to get a constant stream of new features, hundreds of bug fixes, important security fixes and access to a major new version which is almost an entirely new platform.

The final note is that licenses are not cancelled. If you choose to not renew for over two years, we will not cancel the license and demand you stop using our product. Your license remains exactly as purchased. It just means that you are not legible for upgrades on that license.

But as always, if you have a very good reason for not being able to renew, then just get in touch and we may make an exception. We're human too, and realise that sometimes life takes us in an unexpected direction.