You know, I thought OP was just a... "confused" individual that had buyer's remorse after agreeing to very obvious and very big-letter V5 terms that they no doubt would have needed to read several times before confirming... but to find out they haven't even moved to V5 and are still on V4? That's crazy. So "you forced my bill [to increase]" was a total lie, then. 😂

 

We usually delete these things and speak to the person in private but what happens more often than not is that the customer decides to give us a 1 star review on TrustPilot (which is why we have a rating of 2.2/5), and post on competitor sites about how we're robbing people.

1. I know it's a necessary evil for a company like IPS, but personally TrustPilot is perhaps one of the least trustworthy sites out there, ironically enough.

2. I'm going to write a review too!

3. In today's world, I honestly think it's a better policy to publicly call this kind of stuff out (but only on rare/especially egregious cases like this where you feel it could damage your rep... otherwise you'd have a forum swamped with complaints and that doesn't look good either), as these days the internet tends to be judge, jury and executioner without prejudice as soon as they see someone being disingenuous like this. It's a shame that supposedly grown adults can't even be courteous online these days.

 

Yeah, I saw that. I linked back to this topic in the review so people can judge for themselves.

A smart move.

It got lost to me among the vitriol of his posts but ... he won't pay $199 a year for a community of 15 000 members? He'd kill it off rather than pay $4 a week for it? I get it if it's a wasteland we're talking about but I think most of us would love to swap positions!

 

You know, I thought OP was just a... "confused" individual that had buyer's remorse after agreeing to very obvious and very big-letter V5 terms that they no doubt would have needed to read several times before confirming... but to find out they haven't even moved to V5 and are still on V4? That's crazy. So "you forced my bill [to increase]" was a total lie, then. 😂

1. I know it's a necessary evil for a company like IPS, but personally TrustPilot is perhaps one of the least trustworthy sites out there, ironically enough.

2. I'm going to write a review too!

3. In today's world, I honestly think it's a better policy to publicly call this kind of stuff out (but only on rare/especially egregious cases like this where you feel it could damage your rep... otherwise you'd have a forum swamped with complaints and that doesn't look good either), as these days the internet tends to be judge, jury and executioner without prejudice as soon as they see someone being disingenuous like this. It's a shame that supposedly grown adults can't even be courteous online these days.

I agree. I am not a fan of Trustpilot and from a business point of view, it's a tiny bit shady in that there is no recourse to have reviews removed; which is understandable given brands would just remove all negative reviews, but there is no real fact checking so people can say what they like and others will accept it as truth.

We do Ok on Capterra and other review sites, Trustpilot seems to be the place to go to leave a negative review and unfortunately if you are perhaps creating a short list of community platforms, you're likely to search for something like "PRODUCT reviews" and there's Trustpilot showing 2.2/5 with pages of really bad reviews. I'm not after 5/5, I'll happily take 3/5 if there are good mixed with bad.

I tend to agree to a point about letting things like this sit and allow people to judge the veracity of the complaint because in this case I was confident that most would see that the content of the post was disproportionate to the core complaint.

 

A smart move.

It got lost to me among the vitriol of his posts but ... he won't pay $199 a year for a community of 15 000 members? He'd kill it off rather than pay $4 a week for it? I get it if it's a wasteland we're talking about but I think most of us would love to swap positions!

Money is an emotive subject and it's so tied up with notions of avarice that consumers are hawk eyed about costs and when they increase, so I know that the new license structure is not going to be welcome for those with just a forum. Going from $80 a year to $199 is a huge psychological jump especially if the community is for the fun of a hobby. I say that not to denigrate the customer or anyone else with a community in that niche, but I can see that asking for another $119 a year can be a stretch on something that doesn't return anything other than the fun of doing it.

But on the other side, $4/week for the potential that Invision Community 5 brings is incredible value. Ultimately I'll accept with some sadness that the cost will push people to more affordable options and that is fine. Ultimately though we're supposed to be adults and while unwelcome things happen, how we deal with them shows our character.

One thought on allowing topics like this to be public is that we have still have to safeguard the poster. Plenty of good people go through awful things in life and sometimes we don't meet them at their best. Allowing this topic is a risk because it could damage the topic starters reputation in this community. So far the replies have been positive and not attacking the author of the topic. If that happens, I'll lock it because it wouldn't be fair to let it remain open.

 

I can see that asking for another $119 a year can be a stretch on something that doesn't return anything other than the fun of doing it.

It's probably worth adding that the new terms get the buyer every app, and so they now have access to Commerce, through which they can easily solicit donations to contribute to the running costs, even incentivising members to do so through group promotions. Getting $119 dollars a year through these means to make up the difference doesn't seem entirely unfeasible to me, particularly if you've got a user base of 15 000!

 

I agree. I am not a fan of Trustpilot and from a business point of view, it's a tiny bit shady in that there is no recourse to have reviews removed; which is understandable given brands would just remove all negative reviews, but there is no real fact checking so people can say what they like and others will accept it as truth.

Well, it's the #1 thing people also accuse fora of which is your exact business😄

Joking apart, reviews should be approached statistically. Bad faith can exist sometimes but for good businesses it tends to be the minority.

 

Getting $119 dollars a year through these means to make up the difference doesn't seem entirely unfeasible to me, particularly if you've got a user base of 15 000!

How many of them are active, though? I don't remember how many we had before moving to new domain, but our neighbor community (around 19 year old, we almost 18 total, including almost 4 years on new domain) has slightly less than 7 000 users, and I guess only around 100 are actually active now, because we basically share mostly same active users (that's why I can't say rival community).

Anyway, I don't want to start a new topic, so I'll ask here, because it's relevant.

Sorry, I must have missed something. How long v4 will be supported?

Will you consider to split payment plan for v5 in the future? I mean like on other sites, which offer billing once a year, once in 2 years or in 6 months and once a month.

We were looking forward to a new version, but we literally have to stay on v4 until it dies, because in no way we can afford a $199 single bill. Even $80 a year is not great for a small non-commercial community (neighbor community uses free solution by your rival, for example!), but at least it was split, which actually was really, really helpful. We don't want to look to alternative solutions, because we had Invision since the beginning, back when community had a previous owner, so people got used to it (so much that most of them think that that shade of blue is our community's signature color, though it's just Invision's default color), and actually it's much better than alternatives I know. But if v4 will be discontinued and at some point we will start to get glitches like we had on v3 (I suppose? previous owner didn't update us for ages until one major update in 2018), then the community will have to either move to free solution (I doubt they have converters for it) or shut down (I'm afraid the latter is the most likely scenario).

I'm so glad I was so busy the last few months, that I didn't have enough free time to start converting statuses to topics and to make other adjustments necessary for v5! Would be a very big disappointment to make a Frankenstein topic out of our precious statuses only to find out later than it was all for nothing.

Edited February 26Feb 26 by Firelord Azula
Misspelled a word

 

Sorry, I must have missed something. How long v4 will be supported?

Sorry again, found the answer here. So 2025/2026 plus 2 years without payment until the license will expire permanently.

Still a sad news. We don't actually need new features, we just want to keep what was there and keep it working without bugs and glitches, and with $40 in half a year it was at least possible.

 

You've made my .. Day.

Seriously though, that's very kind and I'm very grateful. I may put a topic up in the Feedback forum to ask customers if they have a few minutes to offer their honest thoughts.

In the real world, my company regularly sends out customer surveys X days after the transaction where we solicit Trustpilot reviews. We have the highest ranked Trustpilot in our industry.

If you're going to be soliciting Trustpilot reviews, one strategy when sending out the email survey is to ask the client to click on 3 options within the email:

• We're doing great - This redirects the user to the company's Trustpilot

• We're doing okay - This redirects the user to an internal feedback form, which is then sent to management

• We could improve - This redirects the user to the internal feedback form, which is then sent to management

This allows you to curate positive Trustpilot reviews, not just cast a wide net at any reviews. The people who tend to publicly comment are the extremes - the extremely happy (aka Day) or the extremely unhappy (aka Mr. Redacted), so you do need to be careful when blindly asking for reviews.

Edited February 27Feb 27 by Joel R

 

Sorry again, found the answer here. So 2025/2026 plus 2 years without payment until the license will expire permanently.

You're mixing the 2 there. If you are using version 4, you dont need to switch to the new license type at all, so the "plus 2 years" part isn't relevant there. Its only relevant if you choose to switch to the new license type. Generally that will be because people want all the applications (therefore its a good deal), or they want v5 (therefore he 2025/26 isnt a thing) ☺️

 

In the real world, my company regularly sends out customer surveys X days after the transaction where we solicit Trustpilot reviews. We have the highest ranked Trustpilot in our industry.

If you're going to be soliciting Trustpilot reviews, one strategy when sending out the email survey is to ask the client to click on 3 options within the email:

• We're doing great - This redirects the user to the company's Trustpilot

• We're doing okay - This redirects the user to an internal feedback form, which is then sent to management

• We could improve - This redirects the user to the internal feedback form, which is then sent to management

This allows you to curate positive Trustpilot reviews, not just cast a wide net at any reviews. The people who tend to publicly comment are the extremes - the extremely happy (aka Day) or the extremely unhappy (aka Mr. Redacted), so you do need to be careful when blindly asking for reviews.

I see this strategy a lot. It's something we'll probably implement when we re-do our post purchase onboarding.

@Matt I just stumbled on this post while I was looking for some information about the new pricing of v5. I must say that I am GLAD you kept the post around. Every single one of us has had our experiences with frustrated customers. In this case you handled it well and I hope the guy was able to figure out a solution. I know how much development costs these days and I respect everything that Invision has to offer our communities. To the OP's point, I also experienced an automatic cost increase for the 'classic' license but mine wasn't as extreme (I have been paying for all modules for years). Honestly, $200 a year is a drop in a bucket compared to what Invision is providing. Keep up the good work and I can't wait to try out the upgrade from my v4 site.

A bit of feedback, I found it difficult to find pricing for the self-hosted version. After reading this thread, I know what it is now.. ;)

Mike

 

A bit of feedback, I found it difficult to find pricing for the self-hosted version. After reading this thread, I know what it is now.. ;)

Mike

Wanted to echo this point. I am fine with the price increase, but I admittedly did not know/overlooked it was coming for V5 for self-hosted (I am not a regular reader of the forums though).

I think self hosted is great value, cloud on the other hand is day light robbery. Id happily pay more if you merged features and had self hosted tiers like cloud, but the current pricing for that is yikes. Essentially a 10x for a few things that frankly are not remotely worth it. And this is coming from someone who doesn’t worry about money.

Edited March 1Mar 1 by h_ybrid

 

I think self hosted is great value, cloud on the other hand is day light robbery. Id happily pay more if you merged features and had self hosted tiers like cloud, but the current pricing for that is yikes. Essentially a 10x for a few things that frankly are not remotely worth it. And this is coming from someone who doesn’t worry about money.

While I do agree with you that self hosted is a great value especially considering now that you get all applications included. As far as the cost for cloud that is subjective and its value is dependent on what the customer thinks it’s worth. While it is costly some people can justify the cost by not having to worry about anything. They can focus their time and energy on growing their community and for some that peace of mind is priceless. I do wish it was cheaper no doubt but I’m in that group of wanting to just be able to worry about growing my community and not having to worry about hosting or anything like that. So again the worth is subjective to the individual.

IPS already said that without them offering their cloud package, there would be no self-host. Meaning: The profits they make from self-hosting customers alone are insufficient to keep their company alive. The vast support and updates we, the self-hosting customers, receive are maintained by the IPS cloud customers. The way I see it, even though it's not a free service, and I still have to pay for my self-hosting package. I am very grateful that IPS still offers it. Remember, it's their platform, and they can choose to terminate self-host at any time, and there is nothing anyone can say or do about it. 

Sometimes, people should stop complaining, be grateful for the little they have, and use the little they have to multiply what they already have into an Empire. It can be done. Many smart people have already done it.

My great grandfather, Wilfred Mullings, from Jamaica (God rest his soul), used to say this Phase: The cow didn't know the use of its tail until it lost it.

 

I am very grateful that IPS still offers it. Remember, it's their platform, and they can choose to terminate self-host at any time, and there is nothing anyone can say or do about it. 

That wouldn't be a smart business move imo. If they did that, they would loose a significant number of their clientele base. And I also think that there will be no third party developer left anymore here.

 

Sometimes, people should stop complaining, be grateful for the little they have

There is nothing to be grateful imo when you are 'forced' to pay more money for things that you don't want or need, such as the extra official apps that we are being told it's for our own community's good, when in fact that's not the case at all, but a money grab move as I see it. If you are happy with that and you are swimming in money so to speak, then good for you. Be grateful all day long, but don't belittle the concerns of those who feel differently.

I can partially agree. Unfortunately, we recently found out from this topic https://invisioncommunity.com/invision-community-5-bug-tracker/ajax-polling-for-new-replies-doesnt-work-r607/ (as usual, there was no official information) that outdated and non-optimal AJAX functions, which provided us with a semblance of a dynamic forum and somewhat facilitated interactions, are being removed.

Now, after their removal, in an active community and an active thread, we won’t receive notifications about new replies we have to refresh the page manually, which results in a very poor user experience.

You know very well what the community needs, so why are you making life so difficult for self-hosted clients? We're not even asking for much anymore just keep what worked well, for goodness' sake…

 

If they did that, they would loose a significant number of their clientele base. And I also think that there will be no third party developer left anymore here.

IPS already listed the percentage of customers who uses their self-hosted service and it was very small compared to the percentage for cloud customers.

They already remove the third-party marketplace, which signifies from a business standpoint third-party devs are not profitable for them. This was discussed on the forum.

 

'forced'

No one is “forced” it is your or they choice.

And must be grateful as it can be taken away, Just like your life.

Well done Matt on keeping calm, I had the hard choice of this but I paid for the Pages $50, Blogs $75, E-commerce $75 then I think it was $105 per 6 months, or year or whatever but this new price system you have moves you more inline with your competitors, with a lot more value for money because you get everything. So in my opinion this is better for us the consumer than your pocket.

 

I can partially agree. Unfortunately, we recently found out from this topic https://invisioncommunity.com/invision-community-5-bug-tracker/ajax-polling-for-new-replies-doesnt-work-r607/ (as usual, there was no official information) that outdated and non-optimal AJAX functions, which provided us with a semblance of a dynamic forum and somewhat facilitated interactions, are being removed.

Now, after their removal, in an active community and an active thread, we won’t receive notifications about new replies we have to refresh the page manually, which results in a very poor user experience.

You know very well what the community needs, so why are you making life so difficult for self-hosted clients? We're not even asking for much anymore just keep what worked well, for goodness' sake…

I think this feature has been replaced by this one.

 

I think this feature has been replaced by this one.

Yeah, but

I've hidden the arguments in here between people as its simply taking away from the conversation, and isn't really needed. Post moderation has also been switched on for now. Please try to keep discussion civil :)

 

I'm going to assume that you have had a pretty bad day before you came here and thought it was absolutely fine to be rude and abusive to strangers. Normally, we just delete this kind of topic because it doesn't meet our community guidelines in that it is aggressive, rude and full of language that we won't tolerate in a public space. Sadly, we get a lot of this via email and here on the forum from those who allow emotion to cloud fact.

However, I suspect at some point you'll decide to post on other sites how Invision Community is ripping you off and increasing your prices and so on, so I wanted to run you through some facts.

You currently have our version 4 "IPS Community Suite" license. Invision Community 4 allowed you to pick and choose what apps you wanted. In your case, you have a forum on its own. This makes your current renewal $80 a year as you have stated.

Before I continue, if you want to remain on Invision Community 4, which we have stated numerous times will remain supported for a long while yet, you are very welcome to do so. You do not need to do anything else and can remain on your current license and renewal price.

If you are still reading, then you must want our brand new version: Invision Community 5.

Invision Community 5 is a significant upgrade, with many new features and a significant change in how apps work. Starting with Invision Community 5 it is no longer possible to pick and choose apps; you get them all. This is based on how all our first party apps now interact with each other, and gives us scope in the very near future to build on those interactions without having to consider that some apps may be missing. Moving forwards, you will hear us talking about features more than apps which currently act as silos.

Now, if you wanted to think about upgrading to Invision Community 5, then you can visit your client centre and you'll see this:

This clearly states it's for the new version, and not something you need to do for your current version. Clicking this checks your existing license and gives you some information on what this optional change will make to your payments:

This page sets out what has changed. It explains that you will now get all the apps which would have taken your renewal to $300/year, but we have set the price for all apps to be $199/year and based on your renewal dates, we've given you two months free as a thank you. At this point, nothing has changed. Simply reading this information has not converted your license, you must agree to the terms before that happens.

Personally, I think this is excellent value and you will not get the kind of functionality Invision Community 5 brings with its Theme Editor, drag and drop Page Editor and more for less than our asking price of just under $17 a month.

However, if you do not want to do this then you do not have to do this. You can remain on Invision Community 4 and nothing changes.

Accusations of us being greedy and immoral are wide of the mark. We ran these license changes past a focus group made up of Invision Community customers and while we accept that for some the price increase is significant, they felt it offered good value for what you get. Some customers with all our apps will save money.

Change is never easy but as adults we should be able to have a civil discussion about it and if you eventually want to migrate to a free or low-cost forum only platform then we will thank you for your business and understand your choice with no ill will.

Finally, I'm happy to say that our management team has not changed in the 22 years we've been in business but I thank you for your concern.

And this ladies and gentlemen… is why Matt is the GOAT!