Lindy

We would like to take this opportunity to inform you of an important decision we've made with regard to the Invision Community Marketplace. After careful evaluation and consideration, we have decided to discontinue the Invision Community Marketplace, effective October 30, 2023.
 
Over the past several years, we have noticed a decrease in usage of the Marketplace, with a staggering 75% decline in sales. In addition, we have observed a growing trend away from off the shelf customizations towards bespoke tailoring of a community by working more closely with developers. While it has been a platform for many dedicated and talented contributors to share their work, we believe it is time to re-focus our efforts and resources to better serve your present and future needs.
 
We understand that change can be unsettling, but we are excited to share with you our new direction. We are putting our efforts into enhancing the newly introduced Providers Directory, a platform that will enable you to connect with third-party providers for a wide range of services, including custom development, community management/support, conversion services, and other valuable resources. Additionally, many providers will have independent websites you will be able to visit to explore and obtain existing and new premade resources.
 
More details are to follow soon, but we would like to highlight a few key points:
     • Marketplace renewals will cease effective immediately
     • New purchases will end September 15, 2023
     • The Marketplace will be removed in the October release and disabled on October 30, 2023
     • You will continue to be able to install and manage existing and new resources via the methods provided by their respective authors
     • You will be able to obtain a key for each of your current Marketplace purchases and provide that key to authors to transfer your purchases directly to the author
We invite you to visit the Providers Directory and start exploring the opportunities it offers. This will allow you to familiarize yourself with the database and the resources it will provide in greater depth. Many of the current Marketplace contributors have already created their profiles – please check them out!
Of course, this does not mean the end of aftermarket development with Invision Community. We are currently building new development tools for Invision Community 5 which have easier ways to add new functionality.
 
We want to express our sincere gratitude for your ongoing support and trust in Invision Community. We believe these changes will enable us to better position ourselves to continue moving forward in meeting the present and future needs of our customer base.
 
If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out.
 
Thank you for being a part of the Invision Community family.
 
Update
We have posted our next blog covering the next steps for obtaining purchases from 3rd party developers.
 

View full blog entry

you really should just put +MX in your SPF instead of zoho.com

Ryan and the team have done a fantastic job with these new tools and I'm really keen to see how they help in the current spam wave we're all experiencing.

We did that three years ago in a genuine attempt to increase sales and viability. It helped for a short while but the trend didn’t hold. 

Yes, you'll be able to transfer after the closure as well. 

I understand where you're coming from; it was indeed a tough decision. There is also, however, the side of the Marketplace that we've kept largely to ourselves and that is the costs associated with operating it. Many assume this has been an additional revenue stream for IPS, but the reality is, it has never even broken even. To explain why and in the spirit of transparency, let's use the example of a basic $5 plugin purchase; with our 10% commission, minus transaction fees, etc. we net virtually nothing, but we assume all the risk. This means, if someone decides they're unhappy with a resource (even though we have an all sales final policy), or uses a fraudulent payment method and a chargeback is performed resulting in us losing that dispute, we pay a $15-20 fee--the author is not charged this fee and usually retains the proceeds from the original sale. It takes dozens and dozens of sales of that single resource to break even on that one transaction. Multiply that by countless chargebacks and incidents of fraud in addition to the immense development time required to review resources, the administrative time to handle customer vs developer disputes, support overhead, payout fees, etc. the Marketplace actually costs us a significant amount to provide and maintain.
The costs have actually exponentially increased as the use of the Marketplace has decreased. Previously, there were more good sales to help lessen the blow of the bad sales, however, with a 75% decline in usage over recent years, the volume is simply no longer there, so the losses are subsequently no longer sustainable, even if we were to triple our commission rates, which would only hurt us and the resource authors. On a scale of full app stores such as Apple, Google, Steam, etc. you have enough volume to chase the bad with good and the numbers add up. We are, of course, not Apple. 
As has been said, the vast majority of our customers today appear to either prefer their installation to be "stock" or to have custom development performed by third party providers. The top three Marketplace resources are currently installed on only 2% of communities (that report statistics to us, to be clear). I know how easy we've made it for those who like lots of tweaks and resources and we hope you will continue to enjoy these resources, but unfortunately, we can no longer prop up and absorb the losses of a declining ecosystem. I fully meant what I said in the original announcement - we are excited to be able to redirecting the resources expended in supporting the Marketplace towards improving the platform on the whole and creating new opportunities for motivated third party developers to connect with interested customers for custom development, integrations, services and yes, premade resources. 
For those that are active in third party resource utilization, I'm very encouraged by and grateful to @Joel R for his interest and commitment to bringing our loyal third party contributor community together again in a way that provides them more freedom and opportunities.

I understand where you're coming from; it was indeed a tough decision. There is also, however, the side of the Marketplace that we've kept largely to ourselves and that is the costs associated with operating it. Many assume this has been an additional revenue stream for IPS, but the reality is, it has never even broken even. To explain why and in the spirit of transparency, let's use the example of a basic $5 plugin purchase; with our 10% commission, minus transaction fees, etc. we net virtually nothing, but we assume all the risk. This means, if someone decides they're unhappy with a resource (even though we have an all sales final policy), or uses a fraudulent payment method and a chargeback is performed resulting in us losing that dispute, we pay a $15-20 fee--the author is not charged this fee and usually retains the proceeds from the original sale. It takes dozens and dozens of sales of that single resource to break even on that one transaction. Multiply that by countless chargebacks and incidents of fraud in addition to the immense development time required to review resources, the administrative time to handle customer vs developer disputes, support overhead, payout fees, etc. the Marketplace actually costs us a significant amount to provide and maintain.
The costs have actually exponentially increased as the use of the Marketplace has decreased. Previously, there were more good sales to help lessen the blow of the bad sales, however, with a 75% decline in usage over recent years, the volume is simply no longer there, so the losses are subsequently no longer sustainable, even if we were to triple our commission rates, which would only hurt us and the resource authors. On a scale of full app stores such as Apple, Google, Steam, etc. you have enough volume to chase the bad with good and the numbers add up. We are, of course, not Apple. 
As has been said, the vast majority of our customers today appear to either prefer their installation to be "stock" or to have custom development performed by third party providers. The top three Marketplace resources are currently installed on only 2% of communities (that report statistics to us, to be clear). I know how easy we've made it for those who like lots of tweaks and resources and we hope you will continue to enjoy these resources, but unfortunately, we can no longer prop up and absorb the losses of a declining ecosystem. I fully meant what I said in the original announcement - we are excited to be able to redirecting the resources expended in supporting the Marketplace towards improving the platform on the whole and creating new opportunities for motivated third party developers to connect with interested customers for custom development, integrations, services and yes, premade resources. 
For those that are active in third party resource utilization, I'm very encouraged by and grateful to @Joel R for his interest and commitment to bringing our loyal third party contributor community together again in a way that provides them more freedom and opportunities.

I understand where you're coming from; it was indeed a tough decision. There is also, however, the side of the Marketplace that we've kept largely to ourselves and that is the costs associated with operating it. Many assume this has been an additional revenue stream for IPS, but the reality is, it has never even broken even. To explain why and in the spirit of transparency, let's use the example of a basic $5 plugin purchase; with our 10% commission, minus transaction fees, etc. we net virtually nothing, but we assume all the risk. This means, if someone decides they're unhappy with a resource (even though we have an all sales final policy), or uses a fraudulent payment method and a chargeback is performed resulting in us losing that dispute, we pay a $15-20 fee--the author is not charged this fee and usually retains the proceeds from the original sale. It takes dozens and dozens of sales of that single resource to break even on that one transaction. Multiply that by countless chargebacks and incidents of fraud in addition to the immense development time required to review resources, the administrative time to handle customer vs developer disputes, support overhead, payout fees, etc. the Marketplace actually costs us a significant amount to provide and maintain.
The costs have actually exponentially increased as the use of the Marketplace has decreased. Previously, there were more good sales to help lessen the blow of the bad sales, however, with a 75% decline in usage over recent years, the volume is simply no longer there, so the losses are subsequently no longer sustainable, even if we were to triple our commission rates, which would only hurt us and the resource authors. On a scale of full app stores such as Apple, Google, Steam, etc. you have enough volume to chase the bad with good and the numbers add up. We are, of course, not Apple. 
As has been said, the vast majority of our customers today appear to either prefer their installation to be "stock" or to have custom development performed by third party providers. The top three Marketplace resources are currently installed on only 2% of communities (that report statistics to us, to be clear). I know how easy we've made it for those who like lots of tweaks and resources and we hope you will continue to enjoy these resources, but unfortunately, we can no longer prop up and absorb the losses of a declining ecosystem. I fully meant what I said in the original announcement - we are excited to be able to redirecting the resources expended in supporting the Marketplace towards improving the platform on the whole and creating new opportunities for motivated third party developers to connect with interested customers for custom development, integrations, services and yes, premade resources. 
For those that are active in third party resource utilization, I'm very encouraged by and grateful to @Joel R for his interest and commitment to bringing our loyal third party contributor community together again in a way that provides them more freedom and opportunities.

I understand where you're coming from; it was indeed a tough decision. There is also, however, the side of the Marketplace that we've kept largely to ourselves and that is the costs associated with operating it. Many assume this has been an additional revenue stream for IPS, but the reality is, it has never even broken even. To explain why and in the spirit of transparency, let's use the example of a basic $5 plugin purchase; with our 10% commission, minus transaction fees, etc. we net virtually nothing, but we assume all the risk. This means, if someone decides they're unhappy with a resource (even though we have an all sales final policy), or uses a fraudulent payment method and a chargeback is performed resulting in us losing that dispute, we pay a $15-20 fee--the author is not charged this fee and usually retains the proceeds from the original sale. It takes dozens and dozens of sales of that single resource to break even on that one transaction. Multiply that by countless chargebacks and incidents of fraud in addition to the immense development time required to review resources, the administrative time to handle customer vs developer disputes, support overhead, payout fees, etc. the Marketplace actually costs us a significant amount to provide and maintain.
The costs have actually exponentially increased as the use of the Marketplace has decreased. Previously, there were more good sales to help lessen the blow of the bad sales, however, with a 75% decline in usage over recent years, the volume is simply no longer there, so the losses are subsequently no longer sustainable, even if we were to triple our commission rates, which would only hurt us and the resource authors. On a scale of full app stores such as Apple, Google, Steam, etc. you have enough volume to chase the bad with good and the numbers add up. We are, of course, not Apple. 
As has been said, the vast majority of our customers today appear to either prefer their installation to be "stock" or to have custom development performed by third party providers. The top three Marketplace resources are currently installed on only 2% of communities (that report statistics to us, to be clear). I know how easy we've made it for those who like lots of tweaks and resources and we hope you will continue to enjoy these resources, but unfortunately, we can no longer prop up and absorb the losses of a declining ecosystem. I fully meant what I said in the original announcement - we are excited to be able to redirecting the resources expended in supporting the Marketplace towards improving the platform on the whole and creating new opportunities for motivated third party developers to connect with interested customers for custom development, integrations, services and yes, premade resources. 
For those that are active in third party resource utilization, I'm very encouraged by and grateful to @Joel R for his interest and commitment to bringing our loyal third party contributor community together again in a way that provides them more freedom and opportunities.

This has been said already and answer will be still the same, if IPS decides to provide even a downloads with links forwarding to authors website, they put themselves in place where they still have to be some sort of middle man and people will hold them accountable if something goes wrong, or demanding removal of such file from downloads.
It's simply not worth it for them as a business and I fully understand that you should too.

So I just looked at the Provider Directory and visited their links. Some of them only do custom work. Some of them have some work to do on their sites. But your regular marketplace contributors like @opentype @Adriano Faria @Miss_B all have very well developed Marketplaces of their own on their respective sites. 
I could care less if I am getting a 3rd party app/plugin or theme from outside the marketplace, but it was nice to have a one stop shop to search for what's available.
I was thinking of the exact same thing but you beat me to it. 😉
 

Yes, I will corral all of the Marketplace devs together so we come to consensus on this project. I've been fortunate to have worked with many of them over my 10 years with the community.  They all know me (for better or for worse, ha 😆). 
My goal for this new Marketplace Directory  is simple: provide an independent directory using Downloads.  It will link you to the providers' own website for support. 
 
More broadly, to anyone who is hesitant about these changes, there are some pros and cons: 
- More independence, more variation, and total flexibility for developers and themers.   They can build their own core, their own gallery, their own package of plugins.  You can't do any of that in the current Marketplace.  I expect to see some truly experimental and innovative approaches to how developers and themers work with IPS 5. 
- More independence, more variation, and total flexibility in how they charge.  Providers can charge crypto, they can offer a bundled set, they can offer discounts, they can set their own policies for chargebacks and refunds. 
- Trust will be deeper, not wider. The IPS Marketplace gave a broad stamp of trust to all providers for meeting standard IPS coding. But for clients, this is an opportunity to deepen ties to one or two trusted developers and take our most important apps private and control our own development pipeline.  I do believe the biggest developers will still offer - and can make healthy income - off a broad portfolio of single purpose mods, but those by itself aren't going to dramatically fulfill your community's specific needs.  

My goal is to provide a listing directory to make it easy for developers to list their apps.
A directory will provide visibility, scale, and ease for everyone to visit.  
Developers will handle payments and support on their own.  

To be clear, you will still be able to visit independent websites to obtain premade resources if you wish. From our standpoint, the trend has simply moved more towards custom development or stock installations. 

Not at all; both apps are very popular outside of our own use. 

Not at all; both apps are very popular outside of our own use. 

I wasn't expecting this outcome. It's no secret it has been declining for years, so action was bound to be made. I like the Dev Directory, it's a very nicely made alternative and it gives more freedom to our Devs. Well done.

We would like to take this opportunity to inform you of an important decision we've made with regard to the Invision Community Marketplace. After careful evaluation and consideration, we have decided to discontinue the Invision Community Marketplace, effective October 30, 2023.
 
Over the past several years, we have noticed a decrease in usage of the Marketplace, with a staggering 75% decline in sales. In addition, we have observed a growing trend away from off the shelf customizations towards bespoke tailoring of a community by working more closely with developers. While it has been a platform for many dedicated and talented contributors to share their work, we believe it is time to re-focus our efforts and resources to better serve your present and future needs.
 
We understand that change can be unsettling, but we are excited to share with you our new direction. We are putting our efforts into enhancing the newly introduced Providers Directory, a platform that will enable you to connect with third-party providers for a wide range of services, including custom development, community management/support, conversion services, and other valuable resources. Additionally, many providers will have independent websites you will be able to visit to explore and obtain existing and new premade resources.
 
More details are to follow soon, but we would like to highlight a few key points:
     • Marketplace renewals will cease effective immediately
     • New purchases will end September 15, 2023
     • The Marketplace will be removed in the October release and disabled on October 30, 2023
     • You will continue to be able to install and manage existing and new resources via the methods provided by their respective authors
     • You will be able to obtain a key for each of your current Marketplace purchases and provide that key to authors to transfer your purchases directly to the author
We invite you to visit the Providers Directory and start exploring the opportunities it offers. This will allow you to familiarize yourself with the database and the resources it will provide in greater depth. Many of the current Marketplace contributors have already created their profiles – please check them out!
Of course, this does not mean the end of aftermarket development with Invision Community. We are currently building new development tools for Invision Community 5 which have easier ways to add new functionality.
 
We want to express our sincere gratitude for your ongoing support and trust in Invision Community. We believe these changes will enable us to better position ourselves to continue moving forward in meeting the present and future needs of our customer base.
 
If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out.
 
Thank you for being a part of the Invision Community family.
 
Update
We have posted our next blog covering the next steps for obtaining purchases from 3rd party developers.
 

View full blog entry

We would like to take this opportunity to inform you of an important decision we've made with regard to the Invision Community Marketplace. After careful evaluation and consideration, we have decided to discontinue the Invision Community Marketplace, effective October 30, 2023.
 
Over the past several years, we have noticed a decrease in usage of the Marketplace, with a staggering 75% decline in sales. In addition, we have observed a growing trend away from off the shelf customizations towards bespoke tailoring of a community by working more closely with developers. While it has been a platform for many dedicated and talented contributors to share their work, we believe it is time to re-focus our efforts and resources to better serve your present and future needs.
 
We understand that change can be unsettling, but we are excited to share with you our new direction. We are putting our efforts into enhancing the newly introduced Providers Directory, a platform that will enable you to connect with third-party providers for a wide range of services, including custom development, community management/support, conversion services, and other valuable resources. Additionally, many providers will have independent websites you will be able to visit to explore and obtain existing and new premade resources.
 
More details are to follow soon, but we would like to highlight a few key points:
     • Marketplace renewals will cease effective immediately
     • New purchases will end September 15, 2023
     • The Marketplace will be removed in the October release and disabled on October 30, 2023
     • You will continue to be able to install and manage existing and new resources via the methods provided by their respective authors
     • You will be able to obtain a key for each of your current Marketplace purchases and provide that key to authors to transfer your purchases directly to the author
We invite you to visit the Providers Directory and start exploring the opportunities it offers. This will allow you to familiarize yourself with the database and the resources it will provide in greater depth. Many of the current Marketplace contributors have already created their profiles – please check them out!
Of course, this does not mean the end of aftermarket development with Invision Community. We are currently building new development tools for Invision Community 5 which have easier ways to add new functionality.
 
We want to express our sincere gratitude for your ongoing support and trust in Invision Community. We believe these changes will enable us to better position ourselves to continue moving forward in meeting the present and future needs of our customer base.
 
If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out.
 
Thank you for being a part of the Invision Community family.
 
Update
We have posted our next blog covering the next steps for obtaining purchases from 3rd party developers.
 

View full blog entry

@usmf I'm sorry you're experiencing issues with email delivery. As has been mentioned, our team has confirmed email notifications are being sent. We understand you are having isolated issues with specific members. I've personally looked and it doesn't appear you have a DMARC record for your domain. This was mentioned elsewhere in this topic -- not having a DMARC record will most certainly lead to deliverability issues. 
I know you believe this is software related traced back to an update applied from October 22, but a quick cursory glance at your domain record indicates you updated DNS in October as well.
I would guess you made changes and a DMARC was not configured at that time. 
This kind of thing often happens in the self-hosted environment as not everyone has experience to manage servers, DNS, etc.... that is precisely why we offer Invision Community Cloud 🙂 
I think getting someone with some experience to help you resolve these technical issues will resolve your concern. If you still feel there is a software issue, we do offer advanced diagnostics and debugging services. This is $200 per hour with a one hour minimum. If the issue does in fact end up being directly software related, that fee is of course refunded in full. 
Good luck - I hope you're able to resolve this issue. 

We cannot guarantee v4 will be supported quite as long as Classic. One of the core advantages of cloud is that we are able to leverage the latest technologies to deliver a better experience than what can be had via the average self-hosted environment. There will likely be a time that updates to the cloud infrastructure will necessitate upgrading from v4, but there is nothing on the immediate horizon and we expect we'll be able to continue v4 support on cloud for some time. 
Please reach out to sales@invisionpower.com to see if there's anything we can do for you. 🙂 

We cannot guarantee v4 will be supported quite as long as Classic. One of the core advantages of cloud is that we are able to leverage the latest technologies to deliver a better experience than what can be had via the average self-hosted environment. There will likely be a time that updates to the cloud infrastructure will necessitate upgrading from v4, but there is nothing on the immediate horizon and we expect we'll be able to continue v4 support on cloud for some time. 
Please reach out to sales@invisionpower.com to see if there's anything we can do for you. 🙂 

We cannot guarantee v4 will be supported quite as long as Classic. One of the core advantages of cloud is that we are able to leverage the latest technologies to deliver a better experience than what can be had via the average self-hosted environment. There will likely be a time that updates to the cloud infrastructure will necessitate upgrading from v4, but there is nothing on the immediate horizon and we expect we'll be able to continue v4 support on cloud for some time. 
Please reach out to sales@invisionpower.com to see if there's anything we can do for you. 🙂 

As has been mentioned, you have a DNS issue.  Multiple DNS issues in fact.
@Lindy mentioned the DMARC problem already.  You also highly likely to have an SPF issue. 
You have 11 entries in your SPF records, none include your MX record which is Outlook/365, none include your webhost (if you're directly sending from your host, this can be the issue), and it doesn't appear you have any sort of mailing service like SendGrid set up for SPF either. I'm surprised you can get any e-mails to go out at all.
If it is allowed by IPS, I can look into this for you. My rates are slightly lower than IPSes, but I do not offer IPS support outside of configuring a mail service on your site(s). I only would handle the Mail Deliverability side.  Since I don't believe it is an IPS issue, I may be a better fit for you than IPS's services.

@usmf I'm sorry you're experiencing issues with email delivery. As has been mentioned, our team has confirmed email notifications are being sent. We understand you are having isolated issues with specific members. I've personally looked and it doesn't appear you have a DMARC record for your domain. This was mentioned elsewhere in this topic -- not having a DMARC record will most certainly lead to deliverability issues. 
I know you believe this is software related traced back to an update applied from October 22, but a quick cursory glance at your domain record indicates you updated DNS in October as well.
I would guess you made changes and a DMARC was not configured at that time. 
This kind of thing often happens in the self-hosted environment as not everyone has experience to manage servers, DNS, etc.... that is precisely why we offer Invision Community Cloud 🙂 
I think getting someone with some experience to help you resolve these technical issues will resolve your concern. If you still feel there is a software issue, we do offer advanced diagnostics and debugging services. This is $200 per hour with a one hour minimum. If the issue does in fact end up being directly software related, that fee is of course refunded in full. 
Good luck - I hope you're able to resolve this issue.