Ramsesx

It's not our fault that IPS chose to be competitive and not raise the prices in line with cost of inflation each year. I'm very grateful they didn't, but that's honestly on them. They just can't come along out of the blue and ramp up the costs for whatever reason is behind this and expect people to embrace it.
Whatever it is that's causing the company to dismiss the feedback of their loyal core community customer base and steadfastly refuse all requests for some reasonable compromise, like retaining 6 month renewals.
It's very difficult justifying the cost of IPS 4.6. Since we're paying over and over again for it, we lose all our investment if we our cancel renewals, but I'm not willing to pay a year up front. I couldn't do it anyway. It's been the most problematic buggy release for quite some time.
Honestly, I've been with you since Ikonboard and I've never felt so disillusioned.
I'm also so tired of the all the patronising 'Fam' and bizarre hump day rubbish, please grow up already especially if you're being so corporate. It's a shame to see what this forum community has become in the last year.

In 2017 I paid 550$ for this:

Now it's increased near 50%, the renewal went from 190$ to 280$ / year.
For me, the price increase is still bearable, as long as my income from the forum does not drop significantly. But for hobby communities, such prices are probably harder to bear. By the way, these hobbyists are free advertising media for Invision, as they promote their product. Ultimately, new forum operators orientate themselves on the platforms in which they themselves are active. If they disappear from the market, this advertising also disappears. Another very important aspect is the existing add-ons of a forum platform provider, these are and always have been a driving force for a successful community, see vBulletin. Some developers have already spoken out about the price increases. If this price increase causes them to turn away from Invision, this will also lead to lower licence sales in the long term. So this new development could lead to a downward spiral.
I don't understand why developers as important as openfont and Adriano have to pay licence fees at all, because without them Invision would certainly not be where it is now. Without developers, without high quality addons, no customers, to put it bluntly. Just because of a few hundred dollars more revenue you risk losing everything you have built up over the years. This is not a wise decision because the developers are the be-all and end-all of any successful forum platform. 
(translated by DeepL)

Couldn't this be an idea?:

Or put it into the username dropdown as a menu item

https://invisionify.com/files/file/25-who-was-online-hours/

It just moved here.

After a quick and dirty calculation, you even win if you lose 30% of your customers. So, from a financially viewpoint it's a good business decision. And another plus, your support effort will be reduced too Congrats.

After a quick and dirty calculation, you even win if you lose 30% of your customers. So, from a financially viewpoint it's a good business decision. And another plus, your support effort will be reduced too Congrats.

Here in lies a pretty controversial policy.
You make a professional grade product, we choose it over free software like SMF because it's more secure and coded by professional certified developers, but we don't buy it, we never own it, it's still yours and we pay a license to make use of it.
Then the inevitable security flaws are identified and we must ensure we renew our licences to obtain the fix for what are problems that weren't created by us, if only to conform with GDPR and other legislation to keep our members data and personal information secure, never mind the inconvenience of cleaning and recovering from hacked sites.
So really we have no choice, once a self hosted forum community is installed, put aside anti-spam, IP lookups, forget Marketplace niceties, forget new feature temptations and nice to haves, the only 100% real reason is because of this.
Charging for access to security patches is just plain wrong. They should be free for at least 5 years if only as a mark of quality and pride.
Can you imagine if Microsoft charged for ongoing access to Windows security fixes and flaws?
 
UPDATED to add:
"We are looking to increase the speed of releases to a monthly release schedule so everyone gets bug fixes and new features regularly."
This a bad news for theme and app developers. More work. More time consuming localdev updates. Please improve the process of updating localdev installs so they are more robust.

Answered elsewhere:

I dont think devs need a free license as such, they should pay the initial fee for the licenses but I do think you can work some magic for renewals.
I know you wont be able to move fast on this as it will require thought but I did suggest a few approaches earlier in this thread.
You could get dev's apply for reduced renewals based on the agreement the install wont be used to run a non-related purpose. They can have a public site but its for marketing/demo the addons, testing and direct support, that would mean even though they are selling lots of addons its adding value to your platform and allowing them to continue.
In addition (or as a different approach) to this you could tier the commission for sales, they get a big discount on renewals but they have a higher tier of sales commissions for addons sold. Then if they hit a certain sales point they can pony up full renewal but reduce the commission they are charged by yourselves. This approach would allow people who make a lot of free addons to continue and feel hopefully more valued and it would make the whole product stronger.
I dont expect a big in depth reply to this, I am more throwing suggestions to you so that it can be discussed behind the scenes as losing developers is one of the huge concerns I have and is a major issue for us. Its very conerning when some of the best devs on here have voiced concerns and also said they will be removing ipb addons from their package removing the ability for them to develop and expand those addons.
I am considering releasing a few addons I have made privately but they would be free and our license would be used for a full separate site so I would not be eligible for the discount above which I would have no issue with.
Man this is sad to read, I love your work and to see you doing math about its future.
IPB try harder to help developers, they may not be your bread and butter with commission profits but they are so so important to the platform. They should get a very generous discount to continue to make addons
 
Also I still think you could have done the price increase, kept everyone's next period 6 months (aka yearly switch happens 7 months from this date, 7 months to allow people to find out) and kept email support while steering people to the forum more. The price increase + losing direct email support is a big deal.

After a quick and dirty calculation, you even win if you lose 30% of your customers. So, from a financially viewpoint it's a good business decision. And another plus, your support effort will be reduced too Congrats.

After a quick and dirty calculation, you even win if you lose 30% of your customers. So, from a financially viewpoint it's a good business decision. And another plus, your support effort will be reduced too Congrats.

After a quick and dirty calculation, you even win if you lose 30% of your customers. So, from a financially viewpoint it's a good business decision. And another plus, your support effort will be reduced too Congrats.

After a quick and dirty calculation, you even win if you lose 30% of your customers. So, from a financially viewpoint it's a good business decision. And another plus, your support effort will be reduced too Congrats.

After a quick and dirty calculation, you even win if you lose 30% of your customers. So, from a financially viewpoint it's a good business decision. And another plus, your support effort will be reduced too Congrats.

My summary after diving into this some hours ago:
Price change: I can live with that as I run my forum commercially successful. But I know a lot of small communities which would switch software oder stop operation when facing such an increase in costs. Annual payment: Again no big deal for me, but psychologically not a smart move – next payment is about 3 times higher than the last. Support via forum: I'll wait and see if you can convince me. Developer support: This is crucial.  When I switched from vBulletin I had a short list of options, IPBoard one of them. The active developer community and some special add-ons where for me the nudge to switch to Invision. Without it (marketplace) and them (developers like DawPI and Adriano) my decision would have been a different one.
Andreas

In 2017 I paid 550$ for this:

Now it's increased near 50%, the renewal went from 190$ to 280$ / year.
For me, the price increase is still bearable, as long as my income from the forum does not drop significantly. But for hobby communities, such prices are probably harder to bear. By the way, these hobbyists are free advertising media for Invision, as they promote their product. Ultimately, new forum operators orientate themselves on the platforms in which they themselves are active. If they disappear from the market, this advertising also disappears. Another very important aspect is the existing add-ons of a forum platform provider, these are and always have been a driving force for a successful community, see vBulletin. Some developers have already spoken out about the price increases. If this price increase causes them to turn away from Invision, this will also lead to lower licence sales in the long term. So this new development could lead to a downward spiral.
I don't understand why developers as important as openfont and Adriano have to pay licence fees at all, because without them Invision would certainly not be where it is now. Without developers, without high quality addons, no customers, to put it bluntly. Just because of a few hundred dollars more revenue you risk losing everything you have built up over the years. This is not a wise decision because the developers are the be-all and end-all of any successful forum platform. 
(translated by DeepL)

@Mattwhat would you say if your barber would tell you that your haircut costs now 50% more just before they finish it, but then tell you that it's not a big deal because they didn't want to be the cheapest, just the best? I bet you would be furious and rightfully so.

Not my case. This is my only source of income for a couple of years or so (yes, I’m not crazy to have 200 resources for nothing) but honestly, this is becoming a pain more and more at every “new thing” IPS does.
IPS don’t listen. Just read. Try to justify things and that’s it. Nothing will change.
So for the rest (of us) stop wasting your time debating here. That’s how it will be from now on. 

Of course it should be a fair system, I agree with you. But that can't be so difficult, I think. Surely we also agree that good add-ons are a powerful draw for your company? At least it was a reason for me to choose you over your competitors. For developers who offer countless add-ons or whose add-ons are very popular, I would personally even pay a little extra to keep them happy. It is already the case that many good add-ons have disappeared because the developers have left. I don't want to have to explain to my customers on a regular basis why one feature or another is no longer there.

Of course it should be a fair system, I agree with you. But that can't be so difficult, I think. Surely we also agree that good add-ons are a powerful draw for your company? At least it was a reason for me to choose you over your competitors. For developers who offer countless add-ons or whose add-ons are very popular, I would personally even pay a little extra to keep them happy. It is already the case that many good add-ons have disappeared because the developers have left. I don't want to have to explain to my customers on a regular basis why one feature or another is no longer there.

You have 27,256 active paying clients and only 15 staff (that we know of). Let's not pretend you're struggling here.
Just for fun... Let's assume all 27,256 (All clients who have renewed in the past 6 months) are paying the lowest possible, self hosted, forum license only. $80 a year / 12 equals $6.66 a month x 27,256 equals $181,524.96 a month and $2,178.299.52 a year before expenses. Enough to give 21 employees a 6 figure salary a year.
This of course is the lowest possible income for all current clients and assumes all of them only have a single license. I am pretty confident your income is twice, if not triple that.

Three of the most active third party devs have been active on this very discussion. At least two of them clearly stating this would impact their future projects.
Honestly, how many active devs is there ? what would-it cost to give free licenses to developper having more than xx downloads/intalls of their apps/themes/plugins ?

There are some parts of the site now really slow, is this known too?

I know I've contributed well enough to this thread, so I'll end on this note. You're very clearly out of touch with your customer base. If you think we're just going to "get over it" while you're mocking us by advertising cloud hosting, you're mistaken.
You're going to lose the majority of clients that kept the marketplace alive, and following that the developers you've repeatedly hurt by your radical changes to the marketplace over the last several months.
I hope it was worth it.
</end rant>