Jurgis

In my case IPS Community Suite renewal price increased by 57%.
It is mistake, or that's how we celebrate 20 years?

My last order was at September 6, 2021. I assume it was right before increase.
I checked all emails from Invision Power Services and i don't see anything about it.
 
What can i say... perfect timing guys. Let's wait for pandemic to increase price on ~50%. Ahhh...

In my case IPS Community Suite renewal price increased by 57%.
It is mistake, or that's how we celebrate 20 years?

Thanks. It was interesting to read.
My two cents...
Company already makes millions and millions every year, so there was no need to increase price in one go (and definitely not in covid time).
Why not do it right way... set new price for new clients and inform old clients that price will be increased on 60% over next 2-3 years and increase by 10% every 6 months? It's too slow for you? Someone can't wait to buy new car, or something?
We are not against increase, but nobody likes so drastic increase. I'm sure you know what reaction will follow... and you still decided to go this way.

I have question about license.
What happens with license if i will skip one payment (55$/6 months)?
1) i can continue pay 55$ after 6 months? will i have to pay also for 6 months i skipped (110$ in total)?
2) or i will lose license?

Thanks. It was interesting to read.
My two cents...
Company already makes millions and millions every year, so there was no need to increase price in one go (and definitely not in covid time).
Why not do it right way... set new price for new clients and inform old clients that price will be increased on 60% over next 2-3 years and increase by 10% every 6 months? It's too slow for you? Someone can't wait to buy new car, or something?
We are not against increase, but nobody likes so drastic increase. I'm sure you know what reaction will follow... and you still decided to go this way.

I have question about license.
What happens with license if i will skip one payment (55$/6 months)?
1) i can continue pay 55$ after 6 months? will i have to pay also for 6 months i skipped (110$ in total)?
2) or i will lose license?

You have 27,256 active paying clients and only 15 staff (that we know of). Let's not pretend you're struggling here.
Just for fun... Let's assume all 27,256 (All clients who have renewed in the past 6 months) are paying the lowest possible, self hosted, forum license only. $80 a year / 12 equals $6.66 a month x 27,256 equals $181,524.96 a month and $2,178.299.52 a year before expenses. Enough to give 21 employees a 6 figure salary a year.
This of course is the lowest possible income for all current clients and assumes all of them only have a single license. I am pretty confident your income is twice, if not triple that.

Yes. We have already decided to leave and not renew the licenses. 6 projects.

The quick fix here for all is for IPS to halt the switch to annual renewals up front. I get that some people might like to switch to annual renewal but at least give us a choice, please.
Looking at my Client Centre earlier, I'm shocked.
Next month October 1st, I have about 2 weeks to find $155 then another $30.

 

 
Then November, I now have to find another $185.

 
Then the final kick in the nuts, a week before Christmas, I have to find $310.
 

 
$680 in the next 3 months without any notice. Great, thanks IPS.

There is no great way of sharing the news? Maybe not, but there is an absolute disastrous way of doing it, and naturally, that's the option Invision went for. You can't defend that.
I am not annoyed about the price increase - the writing has been on the wall for that for a long time, it's been a long time coming, I think most of us see that. Although I think that 55% increase more is a bit much in one go, but that's my problem and I will have to deal with it. Unexpected price increases with no advanced warning or even notice what-so-ever has just gone and dissolved a good chunk of confidence I have in IPS as a company.
This is what I'm really annoyed about. This came out of the blue! There was no prior announcement (Before the fact) and only came after the fact after people started noticing which is an absolutely appalling way to deal with it.
ANY form of notice after a good period of time say - 6 months (One renewal period) before the fact would have been a much better way of dealing with it. It would have given people a chance to be prepared for what was coming, to make arrangements thusly. 
Also the email calling this "Not bad news" - you're having a laugh, aren't you? You're right; it's not bad. It's terrible. Also not a fan of posting my problems publically, as my site is NSFW. I'm not a fan of that - at all. If most of your support tickets are "How to do X", or "How do I set X up" then you should make it clear that those questions could be asked in whatever forum you have set up. But quite often my problems, for example, are actual problems, not me asking how to do X. 
There was a better way of sharing the news, and as usual you picked the worst option imaginable. Your "Good-Feels Corporate Speak" doesn't change any of that. I will be seriously considering my future with IPS software, I'm not happy with being reliant on Invision Software for my site, and haven't been for a long time, this is yet another nail in the coffin for me.

In all seriousness Matt. If you / the rest of the management at invision think that sort of timescale is acceptable when communicating such a big jump in price, then I really do recommend you hire someone with more knowledge and skills in communication and customer care. You needed to be weeks ahead of this, to give people reasonable notice. 

He most likely can but you won't get the positive answer you want.
I've had time to sleep on this and my conclusion is this:
You say you haven't increased prices in a decade. Who's fault is this?  A small annual increase is easier to swallow than a massive increase in one fell swoop.
Such a large increase for your corporate clients will be less than chicken feed and they will most likely offset this against tax. Us hobbyists can't do that and such an increase of these proportions is ridiculous if expect us to buy into it.
In a declining hobbyist market you would be best placed to split your business into two - one catering for corporates who you can charge whatever big bucks they're willing to part with, and one more affordable option for hobbyists; the two are mutually incompatible and you can't expect hobbyists to pay corporate prices.
You need to take a look at what your competition is charging and price yourselves competitively.  You can argue that you have the better product, but when priced way above competitors it doesn't look so attractive from the ground up.
A small number of your clients who are used to being on this (and I say this loosely) community platform have probably voiced the concerns of many and who are now leaving the fold.  How big a number do you have to lose, silently, before you realise you made a huge blunder? A number 'we' will never know.
It's like you have taken a big stick and beaten us with it and then in come the pacifiers with, "well, you know" as though that is some kind of ointment to soothe the pain.
I just bought my second licence this year, that was bought with faith and trust in you as business, which incidentally has grown because of the grassroots support of your hobbyist clients over many years; that has flown the nest with this latest announcement.
So you should be aware that whilst your costs are rising, just the same as ours, your income is about to take a dive.
I am fully aware that prices rise constantly and it's a pain we all have to bear, but imagine if you went into your local grocery store and when you get through the checkout and have to pay the bill, you find that it's 50% more than last year.  How happy would you be with that?
Small increases over a period of time hurt less and it's YOUR fault that you didn't do this over the last decade and now you want us to swallow the sob story - no way.  Am I angry, you bet - I wasted good money buying that second licence and there's no way I'm throwing any more at it. Your loss, my gain.
You may be great at developing software, but you suck as looking after your clients, especially those who have walked this path with you since the beginning.

The announcement of a price hike combined with no more ticket support is reason enough for me to reconsider my business strategy.

I rarely need ticket support, I usually solve the problems myself. But having no ticket support for a software is simply a no-go for me. And having a newsletter that tries to sell a drastically price hike from $50 to $80 as "increase of $2.50/month" is more cynicism than I need from a provider. If I need cynicism or sales speech I will do that myself.

I worked for more than 20 years as a developer, team leader and divisional head in the software industry and I think I have a sixth sense for software companies and how they work and think internally. In the last year I have got too many bad signals from Invision: maybe in the future cloud only? Zapier not until protests? Price hike. No more ticket support.

I'm in the process of converting a bunch of Xenforo and Wordpress sites to Invision and today I've halted the process. Final decision how to proceed until end of the year. In the end, its all about trust.

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. 

I have the same feeling  . Don’t worry, it’s not bad news, but there is a price increase. 😞
It is just like the IPB Android / iPhone application... Do i need to say more? https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/462640-invision-community-mobile-apps-iosandroid-update/
This time i like to choose as a customer. Ill renew if the new features or security patch is needed on my community. Is that a possibility? Can i download my applications and plugins i bought from the marketplace when i stop renewing the IPB licence?
Don't forget, happy hump day....

Hello,
I just got up, read this email and I am absolutely furious.
I am told that I will get a "small" increase of 90$ every 6 months, that is 180$ per year, which is more than a 30% increase, but it is a small increase! 
Also, no more support by ticket, but by the forum, a good way to tell your customers to take care of themselves, but on the other hand, they can pay to open a ticket.
But frankly, are you kidding us? Is this a joke? And you justify this with "We feel that Invision Community offers exceptional value for money with its rich functionality and power at your fingertips." ? No, we use Ipboard out of habit, nowadays there are other solutions.
Moreover, I'm still waiting for a proper integration of Webp with conversation, an update of elasticsearch, a real mobile application, a real mobile optimization (IPB is completely lacking in this area), an evolution of the api, and that for years! 
Oh and I forgot, the ponpon, features that are not present on our self-hosted versions but on your versions that we don't want!
We are users and contributors of mediawiki and they have a real update tracker, yet it is an open-source solution (like Discourse, Phpbb, SMF, etc...) and we almost get a faster response from them than by opening a "ticket".
Frankly, what advantage do you think you have today? I tell you, none, we pay a licence (and other users too I think) for the convenience, but we will clearly review our strategy, especially as we are informed at the last moment.
 
 

These news are nonsense. From what they are to the way they are being communicated.
"It's not bad news" - yeah, that's right. It's not bad news, it's terrible news. You can't call a 50% price increase "modest" while removing e-mail support and pricing it 1250$ annually. 
By doing that you effectively cut hobby sites like mine. Paying 215$ for software that isn't making money in a country where median salary is 400$ is not a good idea at all.
But what's even worse is that you lack honesty in this. Instead of communicating this like "guys, there's a huge change in our business model, we now want medium and large businesses as our clients" you say something about "modest" price increasing and "strong community" that will help with bugs how? Why would I want to pay 215$ annually for not being able to deal with bugs at all? And I've found many before, which I was able to resolve thanks to your now gone support.

I won't be supporting this.

I'm really glad with all new features, but this new renewal pricing give me a serious pause here. sure there were discussions and decisions about this, but I really hoped Invision at least take developers to account on this. in a few month I have to renew my license with almost empty marketplace credit. no heads up no nothing, just pay renewal by year with this kind of price ups. I may decide not to renew for awhile, or remove some apps from my license and discontinue many of my resources in marketplace. my plan was to expand, create more resources, themes ... and not this. can IPS come up with better solutions for this?

"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. 
 
 

Sounds good, but if customers leave and addon sales drop, free licenses won't keep devs here.

Jesus Christ
The timing of this is just so uncanny to me. I was already doing the last app/plugin updates for what we have on our community with our current renewal, but we(staff) already silently decided to leave Invision behind going forward and I'd say we made this decision at the perfect time. 
When I joined back in 2017 this community was thriving. Now I come to check and it's quite dead when you take into consideration how many users it has and how many used to be active. I believe the final nail in the coffin for this was when the forum was reorganized and all community content was placed behind a paywall (needing an active license).  It's pretty much a ghost town unless you give someone something to argue about, but I've already given my opinions on this in the past so I won't waste time rehashing.
In the past year alone we have noticed a huge decline in the marketplace with numerous developers leaving and a lot of things becoming abandoned due to low sales and neglect from Invision's part for some of their own apps. I've been worried about this since 2018/19, and my concern just kept growing after each update and policy change. I've slowly realized that this may have not been the best software to use for my type of community, but I knew with the marketplace we could do our best to mold it the way we need it.  That clearly won't be an option for us now when there's only a few developers I trust to buy from and I see them posting about dropping support for apps that we use heavily. (An art site can't exist without a gallery, even though the gallery app is the most atrocious thing and we've spent so much money trying to improve it ourselves.)
I say good luck to those who didn't have plans of leaving before today and also to those who decide to stay due to whatever circumstances. We've put thousands of dollars into this software, but eventually you have to sit down and really think about whether or not taking the loss is worth it in the end if you can do better elsewhere. The lack of transparency while preaching about transparency, the cheesy community manager reply rhetoric, and the subtle gaslighting is just bonkers.

@Jurgis

Here it is:
 

In my case IPS Community Suite renewal price increased by 57%.
It is mistake, or that's how we celebrate 20 years?

It was discussed at length in one of the Humpday updates.  I don’t remember the exact date or even know if that thread is still around. 

Matt answered a lot of questions and let a lot of people deal with venting as you can imagine might happen. 

Originally renewals we’re going to be only done only annually. That decision was reversed and was left bi-annually. 

I went back and looked up my old email.  It was received on Tuesday September 14, 2021.   So your renewal happened about a week before the change!