I really don’t understand what is going on.
For the last several years I had a $30/month package covering the entire software suite.
It was discontinued and I looked at a $54 plan, but it introduced new limitations like “no external apps”.
Just months later, that plan is gone as well, and it’s at least a $99 plan. But that again removed crucial features. So just to keep the existing site going as it was, I would have needed to go from $30 to $169 now. That’s a price increase of over 560%! That is insane.
To be clear: I fully understand that private companies choose their market segment. They don’t owe it to the public to be cheaper, offer free service or anything like that. Not even if other products in the same field are cheaper or free.
But a company does owe something to their existing client base, especially with a company like IPS where 100% of the revenue comes from one product and therefore entirely from the existing client base.
There needs to be some kind of trust that both business partners are in a win-win partnership and that there is a willingness to keep it this way. We are your existing clients. We pay for the product, so it should be built for us and around our needs and at least somewhat around our financial abilities.
Because, at the moment, I honestly feel like an idiot if my license fees pay for the development of features today, which I will not be able to use tomorrow, because they are reserved for some higher plan for a future big corporation client. I should at least be able to keep using the product I know with roughly the same features and roughly with the same price I knew and accepted when I made the original purchase. Otherwise there is no reason to have any trust in the software provider. And even if I try to stick with the software, how am I supposed to plan for the future of current and new licenses, when price increases of over 500% can happen at any time? It’s easy to say one cares about their customers, but everything that happened since last year regarding plans and pricing betrays any such promises.