AlexWebsites

"Zapier is the first smart community enhancement available for Cloud and Enterprise Community customers exclusively."
Not liking this direction...

Why the exclusivity? If you think any of us are going to consider switching to your cloud hosting for these features you're insane. You charge $330 a month for 50 GB of storage. lol

This is a bit of a slap in the face to self hosted clients. Nothing to celebrate here. 👎

This is a bit of a slap in the face to self hosted clients. Nothing to celebrate here. 👎

WAIT! Before you try it, is that Wordpress website self hosted? Because if it is, you can't. 
I'm sorry, couldn't help myself. Yes, I know, that was mean.
But also preventing us from getting features because we want to have control over the experience our site's visitors have. OK, that's it. I'll stop now 😄 

This is a bit of a slap in the face to self hosted clients. Nothing to celebrate here. 👎

This is a bit of a slap in the face to self hosted clients. Nothing to celebrate here. 👎

This is a bit of a slap in the face to self hosted clients. Nothing to celebrate here. 👎

I've been with you since the days of Ikonboard, so you I love you. However, I'm starting to grow concerned after reading that IPS have made a specific, conscious decision to start restricting features (albeit with the first) to cloud-hosted SAAS customers. It's perhaps akin the to the controversial Marketplace changes. As a multi-license customer, I'm saddened that there is a visible "It's our way, or the highway" style approach that seems to be increasing these days.
This statement feels like it could be the start of a paradigm shift, and if so, one that I'm concerned is edging gradually towards a pretty slippery slope. I'm concerned that a moment of realisation will inevitably follow such a shift, where more of the latest, long awaited or most requested features could no longer be available to self-hosted clients.
I realise with SAAS you have more or even total overall control of the environment which is good from a support perspective, and it's been stated that if you could have a do-over with today's tech, SAAS would be the way to go from the outset.
SAAS certainly has its benefits, to both sides of the provider/customer fence, don't get me wrong, but I still find the cloud-hosted IPS on offer here (which as your main showcase, it should be super slick, speedier than The Flash using a bathroom and instantly responsive), to be more sluggish and generally slower than many self-hosted sites I come across; even though I'm using a 40Mbps fibre connection (thanks rip off, overselling BT, I'm still paying for that 80Mbps Infinity 2 connection, you know... yeah, that's right, you hear me!).
And then there's this risk, it does happen...

On the way to the point where more features are restricted, how many restricted features will it take before self-hosted clients begin to feel like they are getting the light version or feel less valued. The software is expensive (aside from a couple of the recurring add-ons which a fairly priced), self-hosted clients money is of course just as good as that of SAAS clients, and after all, wasn't it the self-hosted user base that helped get IPS to where it is today? So I would ask IPS to at least consider this approach and also, if you propose removing lesser used large features from products (like Commerce) that's fine but please don't forget to reduce the price accordingly.
Thanks for listening.

We most likely won't use Zapier, but I really look forward to THIS reaching self-hosted customers!   Its the only barrier for us to upgrade from 4.4.x to 4.5+!

This is a bit of a slap in the face to self hosted clients. Nothing to celebrate here. 👎

This is a bit of a slap in the face to self hosted clients. Nothing to celebrate here. 👎

This is a bit of a slap in the face to self hosted clients. Nothing to celebrate here. 👎

This is a bit of a slap in the face to self hosted clients. Nothing to celebrate here. 👎

I like the changes and specifically the help & support section. Sharing support topics could help others who would normally create a ticket for the same issue.

I like the changes and specifically the help & support section. Sharing support topics could help others who would normally create a ticket for the same issue.

This is a bit of a slap in the face to self hosted clients. Nothing to celebrate here. 👎

This is a bit of a slap in the face to self hosted clients. Nothing to celebrate here. 👎

This is a bit of a slap in the face to self hosted clients. Nothing to celebrate here. 👎

This would definitely be a good use for reaction -1.

Why not offer the new features as an option for self hosted instances? I'm sure for those of us with dedicated servers it would not be an issue.
It sounds more like a way to push people to your cloud. Can't imagine which features would be so resource intensive to prevent them from being offered to self hosted clients.

I can see this being an option for paid subscriptions/memberships for those who want to upgrade to have an option to post anonymously.
I'm assuming a user will have a choice on whether to post anonymously or not and topics/posts that are not anonymous will show on their profile pages? Hopefully they can edit their post to make it public should they decide to.

Happy to report, it works. On one of my sites I rarely sell any VIP memberships. It can takes months to sell a single one. I turned on free trials this morning and got the first person signing up almost instantly. Within a few hours more the person moved over to a full paid membership. 

What I am really, really looking for is a bulk product import via csv... Etc.  Functionality. 

Unfortunately, building a “community” nowadays is tough as most of that type of user engagement has shifted towards Facebook and other social networks. Even with s good niche, Facebook groups gets a lot of traction because the users are already on the platform. I find the “support” type of forum, where people come to get help, is the way to go.