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.