RevengeFNF

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.

I didn't even noticed this one in the email.
So, for us to have the normal ticket system back, we just need to pay even more. Ok...

Hmm so my 6 monthly fee of $60 has now gone to an annual fee of $235.  $5 short of doubling in cost. 
I've been here since moving across from Ikon and supported IPS in early days financially, paid for lifetime licences which I've begrudgingly accepted would not help IPS survive further down the line. 
My boss will be on me like a ton of bricks with that increase and with no email support (are you kidding me?) - I am, after 19 years, having to think can we continue.   I've always had first rate support from IPS, coupled with a friendly relationship with Matt who's helped me out plenty of times, but I've also let them use my server to test MSSQL drivers and IIS issues when they hosted/worked with the likes of AMD.  To turn around to that degree is a proper kick in the nuts.
I understand they have to pay the bills, but we all do.
A doubling of my licence fee would be a hard one to take on its own but the removal of email support as well?  That is not just a small issue. 

Generally speaking, after so many years I feel I can say that invision is a company that thinks well about the choices it makes. But this time, as others have already written, I am very concerned about the collapse of the Marketplace. It is quite clear to me that the new pricing policy and the type of support offered for a fee is aimed exclusively at the business sector. This means that hundreds of hobby forums will be looking for alternative software solutions and this also means less appeal for me and many other developers to develop app and plugins.
Although I don't know the reasons for a series of "blows" thrown at the customer at the same time, I find some of the choices made by Invision risky.
Even if I accept the price increase, which is something I can live with, I think it was a mistake to remove the possibility to pay every 6 months. This has disoriented customers even more, even giving a perception of a heavier increase than it really is.
Furthermore, it must be acknowledged that one of invision's greatest assets has always been its ticket support. 
In short, I'm a bit worried, I'm sure I'll be one of the last to abandon ship... I've been here for 20 years... but I confess that I've been looking for alternatives for the first time in many years.
The problem is not the price, I am more concerned about the choice to let the hobby communities go.
Unfortunately I don't think the the fresh new green buttons can turn this into good news.

Let's see, I understand that even the pandemic period is not the best but let's try to give confidence to Invision as Jordan asks. Instead I would ask invision to review at least the possibility of returning to payment every six months, not for me, but I think it would help many.

I can only imagine these price changes will be reverted soon. Otherwise, whoever is in charge of this should consider retiring soon before it's too late.
Went from $80 every 6 months, to $250 every year. $110 increase AND I no longer get basic support? I don't see the logic in that. Seems the very few who will stick around will just not renew that often anymore. So in the end you aren't really gaining anything, just losing the respect of your entire customer base.

Strange, after more than 21 years now using IPB forums, now I have to consider switching to another forum platform.

"Don’t worry, it’s not bad news".
Going from $190.- a year to $280 a year is not bad news?
Cutting email support while hiking up the price like this is not bad news?
Cutting email support while having a terribly lacking documentation (since day 1) is not bad news?
Keeping innovations away from those who self host then when that dust settles, hiking up the price is not bad  news?
 
I dread the day you do come with what you consider "bad news".
Going to have think this over. Might going to cut this chord.
 
Looking at your pricing structure I get the feeling you are in the process of driving those who self host away. I can be wrong but it would make sense to just have medium to large businesses as your clients. 
 
 

Hello,
I haven't dared go look at my Client Centre yet! The few groats I've earned from the Marketplace are all I've had as income since 2017 since being made redundant due to UK austerity cuts. So it's a scary prospect.
Honestly... Nobody likes change. It's rarely good. Someone always gets the pointy end of the stick. It's usually me or the little guy, but rarely the enterprise corporations who can afford the change.
However I appreciate that prices haven't increased for a decade, and a reasonable increase would be understandable, we know this, it's overdue but it needs to be said these significant changes are sadly once again being poorly implemented and probably compounded by an almost total lack of notice, no dialogue, a lack of communication, causing major headaches and increasing uncertainty.
Yes, of course you don't have to consult or engage, but in my experience, just like change between employers, managers and employees, if you do, you'll often find it makes change a lot more smooth and easier to swallow. Both company and customer may come to appreciate things they were unaware of, and/or offer suggestions or alternatives.
A few points of feedback for what they may be worth...
Re the price changes...
I think there has been an obvious failure to give fair and reasonable notice of the financial changes, in particular to those needing to renew in the real short term (meaning days, weeks) but especially to everyone who needs to renew in the next few months. Hopefully Lindy and Charles will realise this oversight, take ownership of the situation from a customer service perspective and immediately ensure no financial impacting changes until the next 6 month renewal period for all non-enterprise clients has expired. After all IPS says it's all about supporting communities. So do the right thing.  This is a decision that will strike at the heart of IPS communities that were already struggling even before COVID impacted, and those under significant financial pressure. For many, having to find more than double the funds up front for a year in advance, is not an easy sell, but for many is not easy to accommodate either especially with short notice. The lack of a small discount for multiple license holders is disappointing. Don't compound things, please space them out and easier to swallow!  
Re the Support changes:
Removing Support Ticket facility is a seriously poor and frankly ridiculous decision. Increasing the license costs at the same time is pretty terrible and almost ridiculous. IPS Support should make better use of the Support Forums, absolutely, but in addition to Support Tickets, not instead of them. Many I suspect are fed up already with being to create a ticket for most Support Topics they create reporting problems. You tell us it's because you need site access to investigate or fix things, so how will this help? I don't want to name my website communities that be having problems in a public forum, my clients wouldn't appreciate it but also I like many are reluctant to post links and references to specific communities mainly because those topics appear on search results, it's unprofessional and gives a poor impression aside from anything else. Others may not appreciate doing so because of privacy or sensitivity considerations. If you don't use your own ticket system, I can see a time coming when you drop it entirely from Commerce. Maybe even move it to a separate app or module for Commerce. "Our enterprise clients use dedicated solutions like Zendesk, so we're dropping it" sort of thing.

Holy crap, I missed the no more support part.
So, just so I understand.
Improvements and substantial releases will likely continue at the snail's pace we've seen over the past few year.
I like the six-month plan because of the lack of updates.  Why do I want to pay when there's nothing to upgrade?  Now I can't do that any longer.
Everything costs a lot more, more than hobby sites can afford.
Developers are already telling us (after only a few hours) that they are bailing out.  Add ons (sometimes for things you remove) will dry up.
If I need support, I have the honor of paying for it.
Seems like you helped your small customers make up their minds.
What a mess.

Sorry, but "support" from the community on forums is inherent in free software. When a client pays money, he wants to have a private communication with the support (there can be many reasons for this).

I honestly think I'm done here.

Thanks for support us / me the last years... But now it's time for me to check new possibilities.
310 $ a year are bad news. 

Just got the email. It starts funny, I must say:
”Don’t worry, it’s not bad news, but there is a price increase”
Yes, it’s bad!

Bottom line: You didn't communicate these changes effectively at all, and you didn't learn from the last time(s) you didn't communicate effectively.
What will the next surprise be that you don't communicate effectively to your customers be?

I've been wondering for a few hours whether to leave an opinion or not ...
I can accept new prices - it is clear that you have an argument for this.
But!?!
Even 4.6.6 does not offer a performance boost, especially for mobile.
Too many sites that allow Google ads - Web Vitals have desperately bad results - I don't see anything in this direction in your work, developers.
And what should owners of these sites do? Google lowers their revenue, you increase their license!
Apart from your own budget, don't you have an interest in performance improvements for your clients?
You have good enough developers and you can easily solve all the requirements for Web Vitals. Why don't you do it?
I wonder if I'm wondering, but your new site is also performing poorly

 
Your FCP and LCP results for the last few hours are deteriorating.
You have also allowed duplication ID of "elSigninButton_mobile".
https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Finvisioncommunity.com%2Fforums
In short - nothing new, but more expensive.
 

The higher prices will have a big impact on the Marketplace too.
- Many ppl will leave IPS -> less sales in the MP.
- The ones that don't leave won't invest as much as before in addons.
- Less addon sales will make devs switch to other platforms.
- Less and bad supported addons will frighten new customers
(that and the high prices for the basic backage of course).

Again, change comes very slow, and often we get things we never asked for.  "Pay us lots of money and wait to see what you get..."  I don't think so.
I am not a happy customer at this time and still feel this was done to suit the big customers.
Moving to your online plan is not an option for me.
Like others have said, we have options, and it looks like many of us will exercise those options.

In advance would have been a start. 

I knew the prices would rise with this site relaunch, but I expected more a generous correction for inflation for new orders (not renewals). But the changes are far from slight. And for people like me who have many licenses, it actually threatens my entire business, because the price change is multiplied by the number of licenses. And the new terms make it all even worse. For my oldest license, I had an upcoming renewal of $85 as the last payment in this financial year. Now that jumped to $310—well over 300%! Yes, it’s for 12 months, but I still need to pay it NOW without having earned this money through the site or even planned for it. And even if would manage with this one site, I certainly can’t manage it for 5 self-hosted licenses and their upcoming renewals. 
And it didn’t had to be this way. There is the established system of grandfathering existing prices while only charging more for new customers for example. Or it could be a slow transition that is announced a year or two in advance, so we could have prepared for it someone. Dropping these drastic price and terms changes on us like a bomb, effective and possibly charged immediately, was a bad move. 
 
 

"we want to be as transparent as possible"
So springing a wild price increase out of the blue is being as transparent as possible, is it? What utter nonsense.

I've gone from $85.00, to $250.00 / year?

Sorry. I can't afford that. Again, like others I only run hobby websites in my spare time (for fun).
I really think, that's me done with Invision. 20 years later. I fear, we will just all drop like flies...

Wow, are we allowed to sell our licenses?  If yes, I suspect there will be many available.
It's cheaper to buy new XenForo licenses than to renew.  
I run three hobby sites, I don't think I can afford this any longer.  To be honest, it feels like this is your market plan.  Over the years changes are made and we're told many people asked fox xyz, when there are no posts ever made about xyz.  Likely it's your high paying corporate accounts asking to add or remove these features.  I fear us small site aren't worth it any longer for you.
I recently renewed so I will be here a while longer, but I can't say I'll renew again.

As a long time user of approaching 20 years who has been a customer since the Ikonboard days and has a first recorded invoice here in 2005 for "Purchase: Invision Power Board Perpetual License".
For what it is worth, here is my feedback on the e-mail I received about the price hike and reduction in support levels.
Six years ago you contacted me as a "lifetime" member to tell me that the lifetime agreement I signed up for, which helped set the the financial foundation of these forums, was to be replaced with an annual fee. It was nice to get a little credit on account by way of apology, however, I bought a lifetime licence and it should have been for lifetime. Offering a lifetime licence is a marketing incentive, and not something that should be reneged on further down the line once a company has reaped the benefits of the marketing drive. Telling customers its one payment for lifetime access, then changing the goal posts to an annual fee is not the type of thing that reflects well.  
Onto the new e-mail....
Forums: was $50, now $80 (increase of $2.50/month) The marketing team really earned their wage this campaign as $2.50 doesn't sound like much, however this represents a 60% price hike from $50 to $80.
A 60% price hike needs to be backed up with some serious upsides.... however...
For most customers, support is simply “how do I do this?” and these questions tend to be quite similar. Rarely, support questions are “this went wrong” Not my experience. My support experience is basically the same every year - my forums go offline with errors every time I do an upgrade. It fills me with dread every year or so, and true enough I need to submit a ticket to try and get the forums back online. To think that that base line support for a quick turnaround on outages is either now reliant on an additional payment for a support plan, or posting in publicly accessible forums is not a sustainable proposition for me.
Creating a strong support community backed by our support technicians will result in a more detailed and richer set of answers For "how to I customise this" or "how does this feature work", the above statement is true. For critical board offline situations, the above sets alarm bells ringing loudly. Critical issues need a formal support ticketing system - which is included in the licence fee. Come to think of it, no other service I use has separate support and licence fees.
For those that wish to retain ticket support longer term, we will be unveiling a premium support option soon. No, just no.
 
I already discontinued my other IPB forums as the cost/benefit ratio slid off the scale.
A 60% price hike means I will now have to look at other options for my final licence, it would be easier if I felt any degree of trust or loyalty to Invision as I would just pony up and pay the money, however - and sadly for such a long time customer, this is far from the case. I cannot trust you as evidenced through the lifetime licence fiasco, and I feel absolutely no loyalty due to this 60% price while reducing access to critical support.
Very disappointed.
What I would like to see?
Cancel premium support plans and retain this as part and parcel of customers licences. Maintain current pricing plans for existing customers and roll out new price structure for new customers.  
 

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.

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.