LiquidFractal

I like this idea.
Stares at Commerce. Pours a stiff drink.
Oh, no - sorry! I was merely building on your post to illustrate that our staffed community support area is pretty customised now so we can leave notes (that may or may not trigger additional icons in the topic list to alert devs), we can send to tickets and we can log follow ups.

Thank you for listening to the community, it's a step in the right direction.  Most of us have mentioned that we're okay with the price increase - it's part of life and we're willing to support IPS, because your product supports us.  But we were not okay with the bombardment of changes all at once with no notice. That being said, I was 100% ready to jump ship and not re-up.  Now, I think I can revisit the changes and probably be okay with making my payment in the next week.  

I want to thank you all for your feedback. I appreciate everyone who took the time to leave their thoughts and concerns. I've read every single one and replied to almost all of them.
Firstly, I want to say that I understand that the messaging that went out ahead of this update fell short of what you deserve, and I want to apologise for that.
After spending two days reading every single post, almost all concerns fall into these three areas:
1) The future of support
I've seen many people use the phrase 'no more support', which isn't true. I know the change from ticket support to staffed community support is a significant change, but I genuinely believe that it will benefit customers. I believe that we can create a living knowledge base of solved issues just like many brands do. For example, when I have a problem with my iPhone, I google it and invariably end up with a link to a topic within their support forums with a solved answer. I don't need to raise a ticket with them and wait for a reply.
There are many "what about" concerns mixed in, and I ask you to try the new staffed community support areas and give us your feedback once you've used it regularly. We will work with you based on that feedback and make improvements where it is needed.
We have custom functionality that shows our team links to your client accounts, including license keys, etc., so we know who you are and have all your information right next to the topic. You will never need to divulge personal information, or even your site URL if you do not want to.
If your support issue is complex or needs developer intervention, with a click of a button, our technicians can convert this into a ticket for you and we will continue to resolve the issue with you in that ticket.
You will be in safe hands.
2) Price Rises
We have not raised our prices for well over a decade. We've always been reluctant to do it and held off for too long, resulting in a large jump to make up for a lost time.
We can't reduce the prices to their pre-September levels, but we will be much more mindful of price rises in the future.
3) Annual Renewals
We want to simplify billing and reduce the number of invoices we need to send, and you need to pay. An annual invoice seemed logical to achieve this.
However, you have made it clear that moving to annual renewals affects your budgeting, and we have listened to that.
We have reverted this decision and have restored 6-month renewals in your client area. This is not a temporary one-off offer; it's a permanent change.
Again, I want to thank you all for being so vocal and passionate about Invision Community. We want to keep offering you the very best community platform to help your communities succeed.

There was a recent announcement that Zapier will be available for self-hosted customers as well.  Just FYI.
LOL....I was just asking because you said you were no longer going to support Gallery, and I assumed that LMS would be making some use of Gallery, seeing as (if I remember correctly) it involved Clubs, which in turn could involve Gallery.  Not to mention (potentially) Blogs.

Done and done.  Problem fixed.  Thanks Marc!

Except that there are those of us who rely on this functionality as part of our business structure, and not necessarily standalone blogs or galleries but as part of other modules such as Clubs.

Done and done.  Problem fixed.  Thanks Marc!

Heh...yeah, I think Jordan's job is much more difficult than it appears.  He has to deal with complainers (including me, who really knows how to complain about select things when he feels it's warranted! 😄), and I bet has to repeat the same things over and over again in different ways so that people understand.  The wonderful world of PR!

I'm certainly not trying to tell you what to do; I don't like price increases either, but taken in context it has been the first price increase for some time now.  It's an old story; prices rise across the board while income typically doesn't.  But this also tells me that Invision probably won't be increasing their prices for another long(ish?) while.  Don't get me wrong - if there's another price increase in a year or three I will be having serious second thoughts, but that's not the impression I'm getting.
You make a very good point re: devs, though.  Leaving aside the fact that it's a decision every dev must make on their own: if they shed apps from their own websites, that will also limit the sorts of apps they can develop in the future.
I do, also, take issue with the fact that this really was sprung on everybody without giving them time to adjust their finances - especially during a pandemic, and let's remember: many of us might have our businesses online, but that doesn't make them COVID-proof.  And, like many others, I wonder about what the reality on the ground will be re: having a forum for first-response troubleshooting (I know several other sites do it, but how it actually plays out remains to be seen).
I'm not planning to go anywhere anytime soon, and I'm still dedicated to the Invision platform (even if I can no longer afford the second license I was considering).  But what worries me is how this price increase will reverberate through the Marketplace and influence the frequency and quality of developer projects.  Over time one learns who the reliable developers are, and I for one see some legitimate grievances.  And while Invision's software never personally struck me as much of a "hobbyist" platform, that market is there and obviously stands to be worst hit by such a sudden increase.
As for the skyrocketing premium Support price....whoa.  It seems like a very radical all-or-standard solution; what about a more tiered selection of Support options?

Ahh, cool.  Now GET BACK TO WORK ON IT [cracks whip] 😄

Actually it supports any app in Clubs. It’s enough to use its ClubContainer trait and it does. 

Have you applied the latest patch within your support area? If not, please apply that and test again. There was a patch release directly related to custom profile fields.

LMS isn’t from IPS, is it? 😀

I am not sure where to start with all this. I cant believe you guys did all this along with a site redesign at the same time and no notice period, I am speechless!
I cant believe I will be losing email support while you increase the price at the same time. I paid for priority support and now that's an insane price per year for what is email support. It takes serious cahoonas to both increase the price and cripple email support at the same time. Email support pricing should be far far more reasonable, I honestly thought $1250 was a mistake when I saw the screenshot above, I could understand having an email support pricing tier and then a $1250 priority support tier but also renewals shouldnt be going up while we lose proper email support.
Then if we dont pay for support we cant use the market place and cant even save our prior purchases so if we need to reinstall an addon we are out of luck.
We are lucky, we can afford the support increase price wise but one of the HUGE reasons I liked IPB was the email support, it can be very curt at times but I valued it and if you had only increased the price and not removed email support I would have dealt with it as it has been a decade.
I am strongly considering renewing our Xenforo license to have a play and test viability after this.
Initial feedback:
Build the knowledge base publicly first before removing support
I understand the desire to have self support with a knowledge base, its a good thing for everyone if it gets populated but you should have been doing this months ago building the knowledge base publicly before doing any changes, that way you can point to the option and say its there and useful. Get a common ticket theme in, create a KB article then have the subject field for support request do a search as you type pointing you to articles that sounds similar before submitting the email request.
We need a reported/acknowledged bugs area
This needs to be along with the knowledge base really, a bug tracker would have cut your support requests because people would be able to see if it has been reported before, I know the support forum kinda does that but its not a bug tracker and its not clear if its an active bug with a fix pending or release or even workaround.
When I hit an issue on other software I always check to see if it has been reported first on bug trackers but because of the strange mantra of open a ticket you guys have we are blind to upcoming fixes usually until release, Jordon has at least been mentioning them but its still not a proper solution.
Both things above should have been done before these policy changes with support
That way your customers would have become familiar with them and you could have iterated through any issues with them before removing email support and you could actually see if this type of support works well before causing big issues for your customers, it seems so rushed.
You guys made the whole "tickets are similar" problem yourselves with the submit a ticket mantra that is here, you should have been correcting that before making sweeping changes to support. You have entered self support mantra with none of the real tools used by others to help aid people do this. You may have plans for these tools but you literally have not shown them to us which is crazy if they exist. Right now we have a sole forum for support, I have no idea why you have rushed this through.
I have more to say but I thought I would shoot out first.
Please get the knowledge base live and a bug tracker live asap to at least help and to be honest delay the email support changes past the renewal/January deadline until this mess is sorted and people are comfortable, this should be a much much slower transition.
 
Also contributors/devs need a discount/special license to prevent the massive bleed that will happen.
Its crazy you dont have a way of reducing their burden and its a major issue to the viability of the market place and IPB. Their are fewer addons here than other competitors and it will only get worse with dev's having to pay large amounts to renew AND customers of devs having to pay to even buy their addons or even install them. This is crazy crazy crazy and so hostile to developers. Its one of the main reasons no one wants a certain v5 of software out there, regularly people complain about the lack of addons.
You could get them to apply with the proviso the license isnt used to sell addons not on the marketplace and not run a full site on. Aka they can have a public site showcasing with the options etc and even getting support there but it cant be a way for a serious site that has nothing to do with the developer to get a cheap license. Hell they could apply after they have published an addon and the large discount applies to the renewals side of it.
I am really disappointed some of the best developers here are now looking at possibly removing addons to reduce their burden rather than developing for those addons and being able to test on those addons, its so opposite and harmful because of the increased costs.
 
And there was me thinking things had improved a lot when @Jordan Miller with communications and community activity, I actually could see things improving a lot with better engagement with end customers then this whole chaos happens.

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.

To be fair, consider support communities for paid software:
https://talk.plesk.com/ https://community.kaspersky.com/  https://communities.sas.com/ https://community.adobe.com/ Searching for already fixed issues can save time. 

No no no. Come on. You weren't minutes late, you're weeks late. You have clients who have renewals at the new price due in days (maybe hours), which due to the change to annual pricing and the increase will mean an outlay of more than double what they were expecting. Can you not see how giving a reasonable amount of notice is the least you should have done?

I feel that. It would have been a good call to get that email out first 👍  Upon release, everything ran pretty smoothly, but we ran into a couple of hiccups that the team needed to put all our attention on. In hindsight we could have sent that email out first - btw it's on its way as I type this. We were a few hours late with this and we apologize. It's not our intention to push people away. We want to offer better support and also grow. Hopefully in time you can see how we knock our next projects out of the park. Actions speak louder than words, so sit tight and we'll show you versus me telling 🙏 

Yes there was. The email should have landed first. Logging into a refreshed website to find out the prices have increased without so much as a whisper, especially when increasing as much as they have, is quite frankly appalling. If customers in the sector I work in found out about prices like that, we'd be fined by a regulator for treating customers unfairly.
In the years I've been an IPS customer I can count on one hand, with fingers to spare, how many times I have been upset about something IPS has done. I have truly been an advocate of IPS in all that time. This is a time I am really quite upset, because the feeling I am left with is simply that IPS no longer values me as a customer. If it did, it would have taken steps to communicate with me in a more proactive way. An email landing tomorrow is like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted... Pointless.
I've gone from a $140 renewal split across two 6-month periods to a single $205.00 renewal every year.
Firstly, that's a 68% price increase in one go and it's an inflation-busting one at that. I do not expect a business to holds its prices forever, but I do expect to have price increases communicated before they're made effective, and I do expect them to be reasonable. Secondly, and this is leaves a far more bitter taste in my mouth, it's a great way of increasing IPS's cash flow whilst simultaneously hurting mine. IPS benefits from a big chunk of renewal cost all in one go, while I'm left trying to desperately plug a short-term financial gap that was not planned for. Thirdly, it's due in November so I am left with little time to deal with this situation. It may not be as short notice as some, and I really feel for those people, but a small hobbyist website like mine can't just muster those kind of funds in that short space of time.
This entire fiasco really is a piss-poor show towards a long-time loyal customer.
I'm afraid that suggestion falls flat as soon as this happens:

To not renew, and risk running unpatched software, simply puts my users' data at risk. That is the reason I renew religiously every 6 months, and have always done so. I know that technically we can do this, but I do not believe it to be sensible to do so.

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?

Could anyone explain how to not buy Blogs and Gallery in the marketplace? It is not so popular on my site.
I understand the price-increase and I do not have a problem with that personally on my two sites. But I don't like the way IPS communicate news like this. It is kind of hidden in a sort of "Hump day" stuff that suppose to be good mood humour? I don't get that part.

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. 
 
 

Kind of sort of. We are going to be shifting our support resources from tickets to community support in a BIG way. We want to further build a resource library / knowledge base, so if people in the future have a similar issue, we'll have a big answer library ready to pull from. We are definitely going to be on our A-game in the community in terms of support. 
This frees us up for more future support. I know that sounds like a bit of a PR spin, and I guess it is, but it's also the truth. Community support is something we have strategized about a LOT in the past few months and are eager to be more connected to everyone. 

We are sending an email to everyone now with all the details (may take through tomorrow for all to send) but short version:
Existing active, self-hosted licenses will have email support until 1 January 2022 or their current renewal date, whichever is later. After that, it will be community support only.
We will of course still always help you and if we cannot sort out issue here on our community, we will take your post to email and work with you in private. You have probably seen a lot of us saying "I will submit a ticket for you." We have an integration between our community here and our help desk (via our Zapier integration) so we can quickly do that.
So think of it as support starts on the community but email support is still there if we cannot help you in public. Of course billing/account questions can always be done in private by email.
Actually you went from $85/6 months or $170/year to $250/year. That's an increase of $6.67/month.
As you can see from the other post I quoted here, 6-month renewals sort of confuse people 🙂. Annual is pretty industry standard. Many clients will add account credits regularly throughout the year to smooth out the costs if they like.