It’s been a busy start to the year here at Invision Community, and we wanted to share a few updates on what’s coming next.

We’re always evolving alongside the needs of modern communities, and we’re really excited about where things are heading in 2026.

Invision Community 4

Invision Community 4 has had a great run since launching back in 2015, and it played a big part in getting us to where we are today.

With Invision Community 5 now established for well over a year, it’s become the clear path forward for the platform. With that in mind, we’ll be bringing v4 to the end of its lifecycle.

After December 31, 2026, v4 will no longer receive updates or support. Until then, we’ll continue providing critical fixes and security updates.

If you haven’t upgraded yet, now’s a great time to start planning your move to v5. We’re here if you need help along the way.

You can see most of the bigger features here.

Providers Directory

We’ll also be closing the Providers Directory at the end of the month.

The way people connect with third-party developers has changed quite a bit, and the platform itself now covers more out of the box than ever before. Because of that, the directory is no longer something we need to maintain.

Profiles will stay visible until the end of May so you have time to grab anything you need.

New Website

Behind the scenes, we’ve been working on a refreshed website that better reflects what you can actually build and achieve with Invision Community.

While v5 has been out for a while now, our current site still feels rooted in an earlier version of the platform. This update brings everything in line with where we are today.

It also includes a long-awaited documentation refresh.

You can expect to see this go live next week.

Community Restructure

As the platform has grown, so have the different ways people use it. Cloud customers often have very different needs from those running self-hosted environments, and we want to make sure each group has a space that makes sense for them.

We’re updating the community structure to better reflect that. You’ll see clearer separation between different types of discussions, along with a better balance between technical topics and broader community management conversations.

The goal is to make it easier to find what you need and have more relevant conversations.

New Features

Our development team is busy working on a major new release due later this year.

I can’t say too much, but it’s already shaping up to be a great update with lots of new features that will give more flexibility in what you build your community around and improvements to essentials such as retention.

Invision Community Classic

We know many of you are still using Invision Community Classic, and while usage now represents a small percentage of our overall business, that doesn’t mean we’re going to pull the plug.

We’ll continue supporting Classic with ongoing updates, including bug fixes and new features.

And if you’re ever curious about what’s possible with our cloud platform, it’s there when you’re ready, with more functionality and no worries of hardware, environments and configurations.

We’ve got a lot planned for this year, and really we’re looking forward to sharing more with you soon.

I for one am looking forward to all of this, especially the major new release later this year, but also the documentation and new site. :)

I'm quite disappointed. IPS previously shut down the Marketplace and introduced the Provider page. Now also shutting down Provider, and there’s nothing guaranteeing the future of Community Classic.

Matt, do you no longer need third-party modifications to your products?

Our development team is busy working on a major new release due later this year.

When I hear "major", I think 6.x
I'd imagine you mean some new "major features" (significant), not a new major version already right? 😀
Looking forward to the website and doc updates and great idea to delineate Cloud from Classic to improve discovery/usability for those customers!

I do really wish you would reconsider closing the provider directory. As a customer, I find it very useful and can't imagine it takes much effort to maintain.

Whether intended or not, it feels like the custom developers are being "disappeared" in an attempt to shoehorn everyone into using only the core software. Sometimes customization is necessary, and making it easier to find providers (and reviews of providers) is a valuable service to customers and developers alike.

Edited April 9Apr 9 by PrettyPixels

3 hours ago, Matt said:

Providers Directory

We’ll also be closing the Providers Directory at the end of the month.

The way people connect with third-party developers has changed quite a bit, and the platform itself now covers more out of the box than ever before. Because of that, the directory is no longer something we need to maintain.

Profiles will stay visible until the end of May so you have time to grab anything you need.

I am struggling to understand the rationale for closing the Providers Directory page. It is already not enough, but it is better than nothing.

Bummer, I've invested heavily in apps for IC lately to get my site where I needed it to be, so I will remain successful.

IC no longer needs or wants my business.

I guess it's time to look elsewhere and move on.

I almost made it 20 years, but it's felt clear as a customer that self-hosted is not in IC's business plans, and that day is coming sooner than we thought. Release a "major" update labeled 6.x, then let us know they fulfilled their promise to support 5.x for self-hosted.

I feel sad.

2 hours ago, Kirill Gromov said:

Matt, do you no longer need third-party modifications to your products?

It’s largely down to where the community market is going.

1 hour ago, PrettyPixels said:

I do really wish you would reconsider closing the provider directory. As a customer, I find it very useful and can't imagine it takes much effort to maintain.

Whether intended or not, it feels like the custom developers are being "disappeared" in an attempt to shoehorn everyone into using only the core software. Sometimes customization is necessary, and making it easier to find providers (and reviews of providers) is a valuable service to customers and developers alike.

There is nothing stopping developers from launching their own site and marketing it.

We are not blocking developers from building custom experiences.

2 hours ago, Clover13 said:

When I hear "major", I think 6.x
I'd imagine you mean some new "major features" (significant), not a new major version already right? 😀
Looking forward to the website and doc updates and great idea to delineate Cloud from Classic to improve discovery/usability for those customers!

5.1 will be our next release.

18 minutes ago, Square Wheels said:

Bummer, I've invested heavily in apps for IC lately to get my site where I needed it to be, so I will remain successful.

IC no longer needs or wants my business.

I guess it's time to look elsewhere and move on.

I almost made it 20 years, but it's felt clear as a customer that self-hosted is not in IC's business plans, and that day is coming sooner than we thought. Release a "major" update labeled 6.x, then let us know they fulfilled their promise to support 5.x for self-hosted.

I feel sad.

I made it clear that Invision Community Classic is still part of our future.

Very few customers have any modifications. The two things are not linked.

3 minutes ago, Matt said:

I made it clear that Invision Community Classic is still a part of our future.

Very few customers have any modifications.

I'll have to ride it out while I can and as long as you support Classic. I am very heavily invested and extremely modified - or added on to.

I know more than one developer is giving up because of IC's direction on third-party apps. First, closing the Marketplace; then not considering adding a link to the unofficial one; and now removing the Providers page. As someone who's been around for almost two decades, I can find some of the prior developers; a new user cannot. As a new user, I would find it less appealing that I cannot make my site my own, and I would not be able to stand out. My site would look just like every other site made by IC.

4 hours ago, Matt said:

We know many of you are still using Invision Community Classic, and while usage now represents a small percentage of our overall business, that doesn’t mean we’re going to pull the plug.

I don’t think that’s true when it comes to the number of users choosing cloud vs self-hosted - unless you’re referring to revenue from cloud compared to self-hosted. Let me clarify - what I mean is that, in my humble opinion, the majority of users still prefer self-hosted solutions over cloud. You can clearly see this reflected in the discussions on the forum.

Edited April 9Apr 9 by DracoBlue

4 hours ago, Matt said:

We’ll also be closing the Providers Directory at the end of the month.

The way people connect with third-party developers has changed quite a bit, and the platform itself now covers more out of the box than ever before. Because of that, the directory is no longer something we need to maintain.

Profiles will stay visible until the end of May so you have time to grab anything you need.

8 minutes ago, Matt said:

Very few customers have any modifications.

Does Invision envisage a future where there is no ability to add third-party apps? Because that's the same kind of argument made when deprecating features.

Edited April 9Apr 9 by Como

14 minutes ago, Como said:

Does Invision envisage a future where there is no ability to add third-party apps? Because that's the same kind of argument made when deprecating features.

No. Extensibility is a big part of our strength.

56 minutes ago, DracoBlue said:

I don’t think that’s true when it comes to the number of users choosing cloud vs self-hosted - unless you’re referring to revenue from cloud compared to self-hosted. Let me clarify - what I mean is that, in my humble opinion, the majority of users still prefer self-hosted solutions over cloud. You can clearly see this reflected in the discussions on the forum.

That’s not accurate. Classic (self-hosting) actually makes up less than 10% of our business. There’s a relatively small segment of customers who still want to deal with hosting, deployments, and maintaining their own environment.

What you’re seeing on the forums isn’t representative of the customer base at large, it’s a support bias. Self-hosted environments inherently generate significantly more issues (85-90% in fact) due to hosting quality, server configuration, database management, and so on, which naturally drives a disproportionate amount of discussion (and is part of the reason behind the forum restructuring).

Cloud customers, by contrast, require far less support... which is exactly the point of the platform.

It's only logical to be extensible.

Almost every client will want to have customization capabilities and the strong majority will want truly bespoke features to stand out in their own marketability (even as hobbyist sites). Whether they are created internally or via a third party is irrelevant, the need for that ability remains and there's no escaping that. There will be more common use cases where many communities seek out the same features/apps, and that is where a marketplace has value to those communities. The same pattern we have now, but we have less visibility here on Invision Community once marketplace was removed and even less here once Providers Directory is gone.

In trying to understand the value of removing the marketplace and Providers Directory for Invision Community as a company, IMHO its one or both of these things

1. Their market is increasingly enterprise and hosting/promoting a marketplace or Providers Directory is inferior optics for their own marketing. It doesn't evoke enterprise solution grade features with a directory of independent freelance developers. That's not to say the solutions aren't high quality, it's just the optics as seen by an enterprise coming in to review the IC software and finding that level of feature enhancement support being promoted by the vendor. This is much different than being partnered with a large scale tech company that has strong brand awareness and marketability, which is high value to enterprise clients and immediately recognized when reviewing software for adoption within your enterprise.

2. Promoting a marketplace or Providers Directory directly competes with their own custom services and costs them revenue if clients seek out those developers instead of IC developers. Doesn't really make sense for their bottom line to promote competitors of their own services, and lets face it, they're evolving IC and growing their own assets, they don't NEED third party developers for their core emerging client market.

I can't blame them if those two points are accurate. They're a company, they're growing, they've been resilient in this market.
With that said, it puts the responsibility on third party developers to make their own way. That's what we've seen already and will continue to see, again IMHO.

Edited April 9Apr 9 by Clover13

2 minutes ago, Lindy said:

That’s not accurate. Classic (self-hosting) actually makes up less than 10% of our business. There’s a relatively small segment of customers who still want to deal with hosting, deployments, and maintaining their own environment.

What you’re seeing on the forums isn’t representative of the customer base at large, it’s a support bias. Self-hosted environments inherently generate significantly more issues (85-90% in fact) due to hosting quality, server configuration, database management, and so on, which naturally drives a disproportionate amount of discussion (and is part of the reason behind the forum restructuring).

Cloud customers, by contrast, require far less support... which is exactly the point of the platform.

Are you counting users who are only on Classic V5, or also those using V4? Because there are still quite a lot of forums running on V4.

Edited April 9Apr 9 by DracoBlue

4 minutes ago, DracoBlue said:

Are you counting users who are only on Classic V5, or also those using V4? Because there are still quite a lot of forums running on V4.

There is no exclusion in the numbers there.

The reality is, this is where the market is going. The majority simply don’t want to deal with server infrastructure these days, and the majority don’t actually modify the software at all. You are, that works for you, and that’s honestly great.

I understand that IPS Cloud is the future for IPS.

But as for me, I was a little disappointed, because of the price (Creator pro) which is higher than renting a dedicated server, and also because I want IPS Cloud to allow :

• SSH access.

• access to an administration panel.

• set up of my own tools, and setup an email newsletter for instance.

• backup my data when I need it and the way I want it.

• choose my server, the drive type and the number of drives.

• choose my server location (my country).

• choose the amount of RAM.

• configure everything myself, etc.

In a few words : I want to be free.

But by 2030, I will move to IPS Cloud instead of using my own server, mostly because those who will go on managing my community in my stead won't have the skills to manage a server.

This is quite annoying... removing the providers directory does not need removing.. the providers are the ones who maintain the directory, not the staff. They only approve new providers. Other than that, staff do not necessarily maintain the directory.. This proves a point where the Invision staff just do not want to promote third party developers anymore or encourage more to come to Invision and develop on their platform. This is sad on their part, and unlike other platforms, they encourage it and promote it on their platforms. Your thoughts and insights into developers is not helping anyone anymore. You are effectively killing off new and current developers and discouraging us from Invision Community to move to another platform. This is not right and this is wrong on your part.

You also keep saying that Classic is not a big part of your usage anymore... well I tend to disagree and alot more here do as well.. as we have all stated before in the past.. a lot of us here prefer the classic over the cloud because you are charging an arm and a leg for your cloud platform and hosting services.... thousands of dollars a year... Classic is better for the "average" end user because using your cloud platform is like adding a new monthly bill none of us can afford on a monthly or yearly basis. Who here has the thousands of dollars to spend each year just to keep your platform than an enterprise or company customer?

You really need to rethink your strategies, because they clearly are not working at all.... You are effectively killing off potential new and current customers... this is so wrong on so many different levels.

Edited April 9Apr 9 by Nuclear General

Thanks everyone for the feedback and discussion.

This topic was intended as an announcement to share upcoming changes and direction, rather than an open debate. We understand that not every decision will align with every individual preference.

To clarify a few key points:

Self-hosted (Classic) remains part of our offering, and we will continue to support it. However, it represents a relatively small portion of our overall customer base, and our product direction reflects broader market trends and the needs of the majority of customers.

Regarding the Providers Directory, the way people connect with third-party developers and extend the platform has evolved significantly over time. At the same time, many listed providers are no longer active, and we regularly receive complaints about unanswered inquiries and outdated information. Maintaining an accurate and reliable directory requires ongoing oversight, which is not something we can reasonably dedicate resources to.

Additionally, inclusion in such a directory can be perceived as an endorsement, which introduces expectations we are not in a position to meet or guarantee.

Our key focus is on continuing to improve the platform as a whole in a way that is sustainable and forward-looking.

We’ll be closing this now. If you have specific questions or need assistance, please reach out in the appropriate area. Thank you again.