Perhaps I wasn't clear. We all paid $250 years ago for an IPS software license which we are all throwing in the garbage because they can't be sold. We also paid roughly $80/yr to maintain that software license and future development, or roughly $1,600 or so for me, for the 20 years.

Some of us are paying IPS $588 annually for the cloud infrastructure including IPS software as a service and to support future development.

The migration fee has nothing to do with software.

Edited March 22, 20251 yr by Jeffrey Roberts

As someone who has done a migration to cloud, I know first hand the time and effort is much more than “15 minutes” of work. All in on migration day itself was around 4-5 hours of work by Marc and the planning part was another 2-3 hours with Olivia. Any migration fee is not a profit center by any means.

At the end of the day, you have to look at the TCO of the service including the migration costs. If it’s not worth it for you, stay self hosted. IPS has committed to having that option for v5.

I found the service to be well worth it overall.

@Randy Calvert I completely respect your experience. It's the "Beginner" cloud offering and not with any additional products. I just can't imagine what could possibly take 4-5 hours for a migration as simple as mine. There's a single database, some folders and a vanilla install and theme.

It's the same identical cost for me to self host versus use the cloud except for this migration fee hence why I'm questioning it for those in the "Beginner" category.

Edited March 22, 20251 yr by Jeffrey Roberts

18 minutes ago, Jeffrey Roberts said:

@Randy Calvert I completely respect your experience. It's the "Beginner" cloud offering and not with any additional products. I just can't imagine what could possibly take 4-5 hours for a migration as simple as mine. There's a single database, some folders and a vanilla install and theme.

You're not accounting for things such as SSL setup, or setting up the CDN, configuration of mail delivery and a bunch of other things that are required as part of the process. That also does not include the time to test or handle DNS setup, etc. But that's the value of having IPS handle everything... you don't have to worry about all of that. That cost you're paying covers them doing all of the things that need done.

And the size itself of the database itself does not really change the time it takes. The database import time is basically wall time, but the majority of tasks are things that have to be done regardless if the site has 1 post or 1 billion posts.

Again, I totally respect your experience with IPS. I actually was a UNIX / Linux / Open Source IT guy for 25 years and managed many dev and operations teams for large media and software development orgs. The forum is my side gig. So, I agree that IPS could do everything. I still don't understand the 4-5 hours since I could do this myself.

Free migration is advertised in my Client Area, on the IPS website, etc.. The catch is you have to spend more annually to get that. That's the issue here gentlemen. It's not to minimize the work IPS does or the effort it took to release v5 and continue to be a viable business.

You've helped make up my mind. I will stay self hosted and deal with it myself. Not what I hoped for, but so be it.

Cheers!

Edited March 23, 20251 yr by Jeffrey Roberts

Hi, I am considering upgrading but I need to agree to switch licences, could someone please explain or point me in the right direction to see the differences? (Change your license to new Invision Community Classic terms).

The biggest change is if you let your license expire for more than X time it can’t be renewed anymore and needs to be bought again.

This is to stop those that might say wait 3 years to renew and expect to keep the same price. The software is meant to be a subscription renewed regularly not at random intervals whenever someone decides they want to.

On 3/23/2025 at 10:42 PM, Jamer said:

Hi, I am considering upgrading but I need to agree to switch licences, could someone please explain or point me in the right direction to see the differences? (Change your license to new Invision Community Classic terms).

There are a few discussions about this already if you perform a search on Invision Community, but in a nutshell (and as explained by @teraßyte, if you click the Change your license to new Invision Community Classic terms title, you'll get a summary of your situation. Clicking that button won't change anything just yet, you have to confirm again on the page that loads, and only after choosing either the month or year renewal option.

Be aware that after clicking the button it might take a while to load all your data to calculate your new terms.

8 hours ago, Gary said:

There are a few discussions about this already if you perform a search on Invision Community, but in a nutshell (and as explained by @teraßyte, if you click the Change your license to new Invision Community Classic terms title, you'll get a summary of your situation. Clicking that button won't change anything just yet, you have to confirm again on the page that loads, and only after choosing either the month or year renewal option.

Be aware that after clicking the button it might take a while to load all your data to calculate your new terms.

Thank you,

You're welcome! 👌

On 3/21/2025 at 2:16 PM, Jeffrey Roberts said:

@Lindy I am ready to move to the cloud and was told with only a "Beginner" plan (that's all I need) there would be a $250 charge to migrate. Since I've self-hosted and looked after all my needs since the dinosaurs were roaming, I'm happy to give you $588 per year for the beginner plan which is considerably more than the $80 I was paying per year; however, paying a one-time $250 charge to migrate, which is something I could do myself, is bit of a deal breaker.

Thoughts?

Relatively speaking, that is a very cost effective price point for a migration. They are providing a service for you where the responsibility of uptime etc will fall on them. $250 is a chunk of change, I get it, but in the long run you will be making a smart investment for yourself and your community. Just my unsolicited two cents :)

Guys, you're all missing the point...

The Switch to Cloud page says the migration is free but then he was asked for a $250 fee: https://invisioncommunity.com/services/switch-to-invision/

Edited March 29, 20251 yr by teraßyte

47 minutes ago, teraßyte said:

Guys, you're all missing the point...

Just out of curiosity, who is missing the point?

Edited March 29, 20251 yr by Miss_B

I'm about to upgrade from v4.7.23 on a hosted server. What "gotcha's" do I need to know about? Manually updating makes me nervous. I don't want anything to go sideways.

btw, yes, I've already fixed/changed all of the unsupported features. For example, changing the logins to use email-only.

9 hours ago, bassangler said:

I'm about to upgrade from v4.7.23 on a hosted server. What "gotcha's" do I need to know about? Manually updating makes me nervous. I don't want anything to go sideways.

The biggest ones are

• Not backing up to have something to revert to if needed

• Having applications that are incompatible which you mentioned you already covered

• Not backing up to have something to revert to if needed

• People going for a PHP version over what we support, like switching to 8.5 for example (which was released only 15 days go). I would stick to whatever you are using now, since you are on 4.7.23

• In case I didnt mention this one, not backing up to have something to revert to if needed

On 3/22/2025 at 5:02 PM, Jeffrey Roberts said:

Perhaps I wasn't clear. We all paid $250 years ago for an IPS software license which we are all throwing in the garbage because they can't be sold

I got 5 IPS licenses. For single users, it doesn't matter but in a grand scheme, I 100% agree with you. This are free hobby sites and that was the beauty about the IPS back in the days i.e. hobby, pro, commercial, etc. folks can use it. Now it's all geared towards commercial users. I would like to sell my other 2 licenses and use sale proceedings towards IPS renewals. Sadly, we just can't.

The renewal terms are what's stopping me i.e. miss one renewal and you loose 500$. Even the M$ doesn't do that with their subscription based model for Office 365, Github, etc.

11 hours ago, AlexJ said:

The renewal terms are what's stopping me i.e. miss one renewal and you loose 500$

Not sure what loss you are referring to there? Assuming its classic, this is not the case. You would have to miss 2 renewals there.

10 hours ago, Marc said:

Not sure what loss you are referring to there? Assuming its classic, this is not the case. You would have to miss 2 renewals there.

For IPS 5, I was told, you can't use Classic and you have to use new one. I had good balance on my minimal (less then 5 user) forum. My other sites, I upgrade on regular basis and have active IPS renewals.

I would like everything on IPS 5 but in some case, it's renewals and for some it's awaiting updated on addons.

It's god send news, if you tell me, IPS 5 can be used with Classic terms. Thanks and Happy New Year.

Edited January 5Jan 5 by AlexJ

36 minutes ago, AlexJ said:

For IPS 5, I was told, you can't use Classic and you have to use new one. I had good balance on my minimal (less then 5 user) forum. My other sites, I upgrade on regular basis and have active IPS renewals.

I would like everything on IPS 5 but in some case, it's renewals and for some it's awaiting updated on addons.

It's god send news, if you tell me, IPS 5 can be used with Classic terms. Thanks and Happy New Year.

IPS is great software — arguably the leading community platform. If it wasn’t, most of us would be elsewhere.

Is it really fair to long-term clients and to the IPS team if someone can skip several renewals, then jump back in later and get all the latest features for a fraction of what everyone else has paid over time? Especially when developers spend years building and maintaining those features.

Development isn’t cheap, so that ongoing income has to be secured in one way or another. I’m speaking generally here — I’m not implying that this applies to you personally.

59 minutes ago, AlexJ said:

For IPS 5, I was told, you can't use Classic and you have to use new one.

Believe there is confusion, the "Classic" terms are the newest terms we have issued for our self-hosted customers.

5 hours ago, Jim M said:

Believe there is confusion, the "Classic" terms are the newest terms we have issued for our self-hosted customers.

So, if I understand correctly, missing one renewal means losing the license and having to repurchase it for $500? I just want to confirm my understanding. Thanks.

Edited January 6Jan 6 by AlexJ

6 hours ago, AlexJ said:

So, if I understand correctly, missing one renewal means losing the license and having to repurchase it for $500? I just want to confirm my understanding. Thanks.

No, its non-renewal for 2 years. So that would be if you miss the second

Quickly question

Would the Subscriptions renewals is the url paypal pings to confirmed renewed still the same?? Will the renewals all work seamlessly?

On 1/11/2026 at 9:56 AM, loccom said:

Quickly question

Would the Subscriptions renewals is the url paypal pings to confirmed renewed still the same?? Will the renewals all work seamlessly?

Assuming you are referring to payment methods remaining the same when you upgrade from 4-5? If thats the case, then yes.