Missing features in version 5

[EliasM]

I can't see some of the features that have been announced, is there a Mishkbeh or is it dedicated to cloud customers?

It's her:

 

 

[Marco Junior]

Not available for Sef-hosted for now !

I believe this only available for Cloud Customers.

Edited November 27 by Marco Junior

[Matt]

Not all features we've announced will come to all package levels. We'll have more information on that later this year.

[bearback]

What’s the reason why some features are NOT available for self hosted customers but are available for cloud customers ??

[Marc]

1 minute ago, bearback said:

What’s the reason why some features are NOT available for self hosted customers but are available for cloud customers ??

This is actually a little misleading. Its that some features are not available on all packages (some wont be available on some cloud levels either). Quite simply, a business decision for some, and technical boundary for others. As with most software however, we sell different packages. The higher your package, the more features you will get. This is certainly not something unusual

[bearback]

Admittedly have not looked at cloud packages structure, so did not know customers might have to pay more for those features. just keep reading only available for cloud customers. Hence my comment. 

[Matt]

52 minutes ago, bearback said:

Admittedly have not looked at cloud packages structure, so did not know customers might have to pay more for those features. just keep reading only available for cloud customers. Hence my comment. 

If you look at our current pricing page, you'll notice some features only appear on certain package levels, so we're just clarifying when people say "self hosted or cloud only" it's not an accurate question. 

As Marc said, some are a technical limit (node, etc) and some are a business decision.

[beats23]

The plan is to put all the best new features in the more expensive cloud package. 

[Jim M]

4 minutes ago, beats23 said:

The plan is to put all the best new features in the more expensive cloud package. 

Features will be put into plans accordingly to what the plan is, the cost, the technology feasibility/cost, etc...Think of it like a car, you're not going to purchase a base trim economy sedan and expect a luxury/tech rich experience 🙂 . The same is true with any business.

 

[beats23]

42 minutes ago, Jim M said:

Think of it like a car, you're not going to purchase a base trim economy sedan and expect a luxury/tech rich experience 🙂 . The same is true with any business.

 

The car I bought and will drive until it expires is the classic bright red self-hosting convertible. I used to want every new paintbrush on the scene, but over the years, I realised I didn't need them, as all my old paintbrushes can still do an excellent job of creating beautiful paintings 🙂.

[Marco Junior]

51 minutes ago, Jim M said:

Features will be put into plans accordingly to what the plan is, the cost, the technology feasibility/cost, etc...Think of it like a car, you're not going to purchase a base trim economy sedan and expect a luxury/tech rich experience 🙂 . The same is true with any business.

 

I'm also not going to buy caramelized popcorn advertised by the seller and receive salted popcorn! Think about it.

I believe that the biggest question for all of us (self-hosted) is not the issue of resources.

But the impossibility of having these resources just because we are (self-hosted).

I see you responding and arguing that they are resources and packages.

So why cancel the existence of packages for self-hosted? Creating a sub-product of a product and in a way "Forcing" customers to be able to enjoy certain resources only if they buy a sub-product of a product from you.

If only this were really a package!

As when buying a car, the argument you used above, there are optional extras to be paid for separately.

But the real situation here is different, we customers (self-hosted) do not have the option of including new resources in our "PACKAGE or product" as we see fit.

We are limited to what you offer and nothing more.

There is no option for an optional extra.

These packages are all available in package levels, one better and larger than the other, only for customers of another product of yours.

I'm sure that if we (self-hosted) really had this category of "PACKAGES" there would be the possibility of extending our resources even if it required additional payments.
But that doesn't exist.
At least since these resources were announced, they have all been included exclusively in the "CLOUD" product!

[EliasM]

4 hours ago, Matt said:

Not all features we've announced will come to all package levels. We'll have more information on that later this year.

You clearly stated that it will be available in version 5., It is also not mentioned that it is intended for cloud customers

[Jim M]

1 minute ago, Marco Junior said:

As when buying a car, the argument you used above, there are optional extras to be paid for separately.

But the real situation here is different, we customers (self-hosted) do not have the option of including new resources in our "PACKAGE or product" as we see fit.

Car manufacturers have long abandoned the ala carte individual option featuring 😉 . Like us, they only offer trim-levels and limited packages to those individual trim levels. Buying my last car, I wanted a V6 engine with blue paint and it was only available on the highest 2 packages of the SUV I wanted. Very similar here, if you want the new real-time features, you have to be on our Cloud and certain packages. Like us, the car manufacturer is very likely a business and technical decision to offer these at the level they do. It may only make sense to offer the Blue at that level because it may cost them extra to do so as that paint may take extra cure time, require special materials, etc... The V6 may require different equipment, etc... as well. Ultimately, simply because something seems surface-level easy to offer at any package, doesn't mean it makes sense from a business or technological standpoint.

12 minutes ago, Marco Junior said:

But the real situation here is different, we customers (self-hosted) do not have the option of including new resources in our "PACKAGE or product" as we see fit.

This goes back to the car analogy. Often trim levels or packages don't have the option of being added onto. That is very much a business and technology decision in of itself.

 

Just now, EliasM said:

You clearly stated that it will be available in version 5., It is also not mentioned that it is intended for cloud customers

Confused by the statement. Matt stated that it will be in version 5. However, not what package as that is still being determined.

[Dll]

On 11/27/2024 at 7:24 PM, Jim M said:

This goes back to the car analogy.

If we want to stick with that analagy, I think it's probably reasonable to say that most car manufacturers communicate the specs and differences between models some way in advance of launching them.

But regardless, the analagy is actually inappropriate because this is software and is totally different to new cars. People already have licenses and packages are highly likely to be planning to move to the new version which has been trailed for over a year now, and is apparently only a matter of weeks or a couple of months away. Now is the point many want to plan, discuss things with their teams, their communities etc, but they can't because there's no clarity over which of the newer, more exciting features they may or may not have access to. 

The irony never escapes me that Invision, a community building company are so bad at actually communicating - you'd think that would be a prerequisite in this business. I'm sure Invision are trying to create as much buzz as possible about the upcoming version, yet here we are across several threads where confusion reigns (again) due to the lack of transparency. 

If Invision really haven't figured out what package will have what features at this point, then that's a failure of organisation on top of the failure in communication. But anyway, it's only been 20 odd years, there's still time to learn how to communicate yet - maybe v10 will have a perfect launch.  🫣

Edited November 29 by Dll

[Jim M]

21 minutes ago, Dll said:

If we want to stick with that analagy, I think it's probably reasonable to say that most car manufacturers communicate the specs and differences between models some way in advance of launching them.

It's worth stating we have this publicized on our pricing page or blogs, very few features are still being decided on or not included in the core software. I would not blow this out of proportion here as that will confuse people.

Those features being decided on will be publicized what package before version 5 is released. Just like car features 😉 

[SeNioR-]

16 minutes ago, Dll said:

The irony never escapes me that Invision, a community building company are so bad at actually communicating - you'd think that would be a prerequisite in this business. I'm sure Invision are trying to create as much buzz as possible about the upcoming version, yet here we are across several threads where confusion reigns (again) due to the lack of transparency. 

If Invision really haven't figured out what package will have what features at this point, then that's a failure of organisation on top of the failure in communication. But anyway, it's only been 20 odd years, there's still time to learn how to communicate yet - maybe v10 will have a perfect launch.  🫣

I don't want to share this narrative, but I have to admit you're right to some extent. Here we can mention the Marketplace closure or the new Classic license terms, which we accidentally learned about from concerned customers.

Communication has never been IPS's strongest point, but I understand that they have to make these decisions because of their business.

I also think that by setting this tone, you're giving IPS yet another reason to completely abandon the Classic license and stay solely in the Cloud. I can only imagine that this change would have a quite positive impact on the entire team, because then they could focus more on developing the software and not "waste time" on solving problems that mainly concern the wrong version of PHP and incompatible third-party applications/themes.

[Marc]

2 hours ago, Dll said:

I'm sure Invision are trying to create as much buzz as possible about the upcoming version, yet here we are across several threads where confusion reigns (again) due to the lack of transparency. 

I have to honestly wonder just how much more transparent we can be. We have stated we havent decided which are available at which levels. We have stated that items will not be available on all packages. We have been open about item that we have removed from the product, and even the reasons as to why. I cant figure out what it is that you feel we are not transparent about. We were transparent about the self hosted market reducing in numbers (even to the degree of sharing detail on the market share that entailed). We have changed the pricing structure on that and been transparent about why we changed it, and how it will help keep self hosted going into the future.

 

2 hours ago, Dll said:

If Invision really haven't figured out what package will have what features at this point, then that's a failure of organisation on top of the failure in communication.

We're unable to communicate something we havent made a final decision on. This is not to say we dont have thoughts on what will belong in different packages. We do. However we have not finalised those, so it would be inappropriate to state "yes this will be in x package" or "No, this will not be". Again, we have been quite transparent about this.

[Dll]

3 minutes ago, Marc said:

I have to honestly wonder just how much more transparent we can be.

You're of course welcome to your opinion, but have a read of the posts in this thread, is there confusion due to a lack of transparency or not?

[Randy Calvert]

It’s situations like this that actually makes companies communicate LESS.  When you expect every decision to be made before talking about something, it takes much longer to get out as you can’t really start sharing till the end. 

In this case, Invision is sharing info as they have it. They are giving customers longer runways to plan for big changes so there is less problems long term. But at the same time that means not everything can be perfectly and fully articulated because not everything has been decided yet. 

To say it’s a failure of organization is patently wrong.  It would be IF they actually released the product without decisions being made. Instead you are being given info as it’s decided and have had a much fuller insight into what has been happening throughout the entire development process. 

[Marco Junior]

53 minutes ago, Marc said:

I have to honestly wonder just how much more transparent we can be. We have stated we havent decided which are available at which levels. We have stated that items will not be available on all packages. We have been open about item that we have removed from the product, and even the reasons as to why. I cant figure out what it is that you feel we are not transparent about. We were transparent about the self hosted market reducing in numbers (even to the degree of sharing detail on the market share that entailed). We have changed the pricing structure on that and been transparent about why we changed it, and how it will help keep self hosted going into the future.

 

We're unable to communicate something we havent made a final decision on. This is not to say we dont have thoughts on what will belong in different packages. We do. However we have not finalised those, so it would be inappropriate to state "yes this will be in x package" or "No, this will not be". Again, we have been quite transparent about this.

Sorry, but your transparency doesn't mention anything about the new features in v5!

As mentioned before, I went back to using IPS after some time as a customer of another software (VB).
I only return here because for a specific feature.

This feature I clearly won't have access to unless I become a "Cloud" customer with a fat package of features.

Which unfortunately I won't choose to do, the cost of doing so is unfeasible.

When I signed up for IPS and purchased the software, I thought - I found the perfect solution for my community, a few years later the announcement about the cloud service appeared and the cool features that came with it.

I went back to the origin, tried to convince my community to get used to the idea of staying with VB, especially after the removal of the marketplace, where it was already clear that major changes would affect us customers (Self-Hosted). It's not about cars or other types of products, it's about the marketing you did in favor of the launch of the new version, which brought about the change in licensing prices (Self-Hosted) and everything else. Even with these changes, I once again believed that it would be possible to have something really different and new. I am a customer of yours with 2 licenses, I renewed only 1 because it was in the testing period and the disappointment was huge, not because of the software, your work is beautiful, but your communication unfortunately left something to be desired. You could have announced this several times in several topics. I'm sure that many of your customers have a community in live mode, just like me, and many chose to participate in this BETA stage because of these new features. Not even during the BETA period did you allow us to have access to these features. We have not received any information, there has been no decision as you are saying.
But being very transparent with you, I doubt that any of these new features will reach the customers of (SELF-HOSTING). If this were the plan, it would be available, even to help us report possible problems with it.
Analyzing all this history and history, it is regrettable to think that we will have to look for another software in the future, or perhaps soon?

[Omri Amos]

All this talk about "packages" is really weird, considering we were just got forced to give up on our cheaper classic license (in order to install V5) and move to the new type of license - with the promise that this new license type includes all the packages (all in one) - with a technical reason that did make some sense - but now, this new "full license" is still "not enough"? now we need the "special package" (only available for cloud customers) in order to get all the features?

The cloud plans are EXTREMELY expensive, considering I can get a dedicated server, strong enough for all these features and more, at less than 10% cost of these cloud plans...

I totally get why you would want to attract customers to the (very expensive) cloud plans, but limiting some software features (for customers that are paying full price for the SOFTWARE) and making them availabing only for people who are also paying for your storage service - is not cool.

[Sunrex]

The cost of self hosted went up by a factor of five for me.

i was told the reason for this was that all the extra features (like blogs) were included as one package.

but when im on the v5 forum its clear the features could have been disabled as they are modular.

anyway, my point is if im going to pay five times the cost you could include all features and not segregate based on the cloud market.

[Jim M]

19 hours ago, Omri Amos said:

All this talk about "packages" is really weird, considering we were just got forced to give up on our cheaper classic license (in order to install V5) and move to the new type of license - with the promise that this new license type includes all the packages (all in one) - with a technical reason that did make some sense - but now, this new "full license" is still "not enough"? now we need the "special package" (only available for cloud customers) in order to get all the features?

Believe there is confusion here between applications and packages. Applications are like Forums, Blogs, Gallery, Pages, Commerce, Downloads, etc... Your license comes with all applications with the Classic self-hosted, however, it does not come with all package benefits. Packages are like Classic (self-hosted), Beginner, Creator, Creator Plus, etc... Packages on our Cloud come with select benefits which can be read on the pricing page.

Even Cloud clients do not get the benefits of all packages. As mentioned in this topic a few times, this isn't a self-hosted vs cloud thing.

19 hours ago, Omri Amos said:

The cloud plans are EXTREMELY expensive, considering I can get a dedicated server, strong enough for all these features and more, at less than 10% cost of these cloud plans...

Would encourage you to read up on our Cloud. It is much more than a server 😉 .

[Omri Amos]

3 hours ago, Jim M said:

As mentioned in this topic a few times, this isn't a self-hosted vs cloud thing.

but it is, because these features are not available for self hosted customers no matter what, not even if they are willing to pay for these extra packages...

 

[Matt]

I’ll do my best to address the points raised.

”I thought the Classic license meant I got everything?”
The Classic license no longer allows a “pick and mix” kind of approach to our apps. It now means that there is only one purchase option, and that comes with all apps (Pages, Commerce, etc). In the past, we allowed the purchase of, for example, forum and blogs at a cheaper rate that purchasing all apps together.

“Why are you removing features?”
I think the key point here, and the source for some confusion is that in the past we’ve sold blocks of features as ‘apps’ and charged more for those apps. Now we’re selling blocks of features as package tiers. With Invision Community 5, we won’t create a new app, but rather introduce new features and consider where they go on the package tier.

We do consider the Classic license as part of that tier, and when you consider the cost gap between the Classic license over the course of the year, and the price of the higher tiers, it should be the case that there is a feature disparity between them. We are no different from almost every other vendor. For example, Ahrefs offer a ‘lite’ package at $99/month and an advanced package at $359/month which offers much more.

It would be disingenuous to wrap up all the concerns as merely not understanding pricing tiers because the real friction comes from our legacy of being a self-hosted first company and “them versus us” feeling between self-hosted and cloud packages.

It’s something we continue to juggle.

In terms of transparency, I feel that we are as much as possible. At this point we genuinely do not have a fixed idea of where some of the newer features will sit, but we are talking about a very small percentage of features (topic assignments, topic summaries, etc) when you consider the significant update that v5 is with it’s new theme editor, page editor, updated UI, etc. None of that is being moved to higher product tiers.

We’ll get you a full list as soon as we can.