Yamamura

Sorry, but "support" from the community on forums is inherent in free software. When a client pays money, he wants to have a private communication with the support (there can be many reasons for this).

Oh but you are forcing me out because in one fell swoop you have taken what was affordable to unaffordable.  Instead of making excuses for the rest of the team (who are noticeable by their absence in this discussion) and just admit you all read the potential outcome wrongly and actually do something positive to mitigate the appalling mess that this huge error has caused (possibly damaging the reputation of IPS irreversibly), instead you are attempting to defend the indefensible.   
When I was running my own website development business (for 20 years until I retired last year) I wanted to be the cheapest so I could gain business from potential competitors, but I never lowered standards and had hundreds of highly satisfied clients over that period of time.  When one of them asked me why I was so cheap compared to the rest my reply was two-fold:
1. I wanted their business so I offered them lower prices than my competitors
2. I wanted to be the best that I could be so that they would be happy with my endeavours and recommend me
I also pointed out that 'something is better than nothing' if I wanted to pay my bills and live a comfortable life. Without that philosophy of giving good value for money I would not have survived for the 20 years I did and I gained clients who would otherwise have moved on and not had what they could afford.
Cheap doesn't always equate to being crap, and expensive doesn't always equate to being great, or even the best.
I often use this tactic when I negotiate with utilities and I ask them "would you rather have something, or nothing". When you're dealing with your clients you have to understand the affordability equation and if you price yourself out of a market that has sustained you throughout the early years, then it's understandable that you will lose them.
You really should consider giving your clients some breathing room and not lumber them with a lump sum they had no time to plan for or even decide whether it was affordable or not.  We all realise that prices rise, but your team decided not to implement yearly rises for a decade, and you survived and grew, but now it's all OK to just make sweeping changes without warning and you expect everything to be rosy and everyone will be happy campers.
IPS made a huge blunder by leaving price increases for ten years or more and then just hit everyone out of the blue with patronising PR babble as a defence.  You need to negotiate with your clients, not dictate.
I've waded through the years of complaints railed against IPS for some blunders made in the past, this is not the first toxic topic, but man it has quickly become the one to beat.
 

Tu vas me dire, moi j'ai rarement trouvé ce que je cherchais dans les erreurs, du coup, à 99% j'ai toujours réglé mes bugs et problèmes par moi même et je m'auto héberge, du coup, je n'arrive pas à savoir ce que je gagne de payer autant, en 20 ans j'ai pas vu non plus de très gros changement exceptionnels et si on compte ce que j'ai versé à IPS depuis tout ce temps, j'aurais peut être une belle Mercedes à la place d'un forum presque vide qui me coûte un bras.
You will tell me, I have rarely found what I was looking for in errors, suddenly, at 99% I always fixed my bugs and problems by myself and I self-host, suddenly, I do not can't figure out what I earn from paying so much, in 20 years I haven't seen any really big exceptional changes either and if you count what I have paid to IPS over all this time, I might have a beautiful Mercedes instead of an almost empty forum which costs me an arm and a leg.
 

You should know after so many years in this business that people DO NOT search. You will have repeated topics with same matters in same day/week.  People don’t like to waste time checking a huge list of topics.

I understand that, but most of your users probably want a balance between the cheapest and the best.
I also understand that IPS will probably be safe, because most of them will not take the risk of doing a migration. Doing that it's not easy, not at all. But some might take the risk.
I would understand an increase to 55$ or even 60$. But an increase to 80$ is completely out of market.
Just my 2 cents.

Matt, either I was unclear or you missed my point entirely. I run a couple of non-profit, small communities for both sentimental reasons and for some loyalty to those who enjoy it. And when there are problems, one of the users will hit me up on Skype to let me know something is wrong. I confirm the issue and then login to the admin of the forum, click get support, describe the issue and then IPB looks after it (admin user for IPB is auto created, et al). Having direct support is why I kept an active IPB Subscription. And this was an efficient method as I am much too busy to deal with it.
What you are introducing is a "triage" step which requires users to first take time to come here, publicly justify they need a ticket, no doubt have it publicly disseminated asking to explain the problem first, do the back and forth, have it finally deemed worthy of a proper support ticket, then having to explain the issue. It's reminiscent of an call center before you get actual support. I just don't have the time to do it. I absolutely won't be posting support information for others to disseminate. When I request support, I expect it directly with the company, and only the company, with whom I have a business relationship.
The price increase will not affect me, and in fact it's something I understand. But the method of support all but ensures I will be looking for alternatives.
Like I said, I wish you well. I followed you over from Iko, and have been with IPB through it's various iterations. And throughout that time there's always been a means of direct support. I'm just too busy to have to justify getting a ticket.
Prices attract customers. Support keeps them. It's been a good run. I wish you well in future.

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.

I learn by the years when IPS setup something, they never change it, only Matt here to explain their view that all, then Charles will reply later 🙂 
Which is a good thing tho.
Also Matt offer to help with customers to pay 6 month, that also good thing as well.
I am not here regarding the price, support is the most important, since that gone, software gone as well (Please Matt do not reply and explain more about forum support, since I reject that "simply that me").
Good thing this happens now and my renew still 2 months away, that give me time see what best software to switch too.
All in all, it was a good run for more than 20 years 🙂

Three of the most active third party devs have been active on this very discussion. At least two of them clearly stating this would impact their future projects.
Honestly, how many active devs is there ? what would-it cost to give free licenses to developper having more than xx downloads/intalls of their apps/themes/plugins ?

I don't have any kind of monetization on my forum, so it survives with donations from my users.
I already told them that the price increased, and the overall reaction from them was: "It's possible to migrate to another forum software?"
Just to let you guys know that many people will have this kind of reaction, because we are talking about an increase of 60% just in the forums app.
I don't want to tell names, but your biggest competitor costs 55$ for the forum app, which is now a lot less than the 80$ from IPS.

I know I've contributed well enough to this thread, so I'll end on this note. You're very clearly out of touch with your customer base. If you think we're just going to "get over it" while you're mocking us by advertising cloud hosting, you're mistaken.
You're going to lose the majority of clients that kept the marketplace alive, and following that the developers you've repeatedly hurt by your radical changes to the marketplace over the last several months.
I hope it was worth it.
</end rant>

Pourquoi je vais payer 110$, alors que je n’ai jamais ouvert un ticket! Faites plutôt payer les tickets...
En plus il y a de moins en moins de choses, et moi les clubs, il me serve à rien.
De plus si en 2005/2006 je faisais 1.800.000 de pages vues par mois, aujourd’hui à cause des réseaux sociaux je dépasse à peine les 10.000.
J’ai de la chance d’avoir un forum de passionnés par le foot, car l’autre que j’avais sur ma ville, lui je suis passé de 1.800.000 par mois à moins de 1.000 pages vues par mois, donc je n’ai aucune raison de payer si cher, un service qui n’intéresse plus les internautes.
Du coup, ça me donne l’occasion de tout arrêter et passer à 100% sur les réseaux sociaux 100% gratuits.
Et je finirais par dire, heureusement, que Microsoft ne facture pas toutes ses mises à jour majeures ou de sécurités, voilà une entreprise qui pense différemment et à trouver des ressources ailleurs que de couper la tête à ses clients.
En 2005/2006 j’aurais accepté l’augmentation, en 2021, non !
Why am I going to pay $ 110, when I have never opened a ticket! Rather, charge the tickets ...
In addition there are less and less things, and me the clubs, it serves me for nothing.
In addition, if in 2005/2006 I had 1,800,000 page views per month, today because of social networks I barely exceed 10,000.
I'm lucky to have a forum of football enthusiasts, because the other one I had in my city, I went from 1,800,000 per month to less than 1,000 page views per month, so I have no reason to pay so much, a service that no longer interests Internet users.
Suddenly, it gives me the opportunity to stop everything and go 100% on social networks 100% free.
And I would end up saying, thankfully, that Microsoft doesn't charge for all of its major or security updates, this is a company that thinks differently and finds resources somewhere other than chopping off its customers.
In 2005/2006 I would have accepted the increase, in 2021, no!

You should really make politics, we pay our hosting 42€ per month with a plesk license that allows us to change your PHP in one click and that hosts other sites with medium traffic without difficulty.
We would have no interest in switching to a proprietary cloud hosting at 129$ without any access to the machine and its configuration and without the possibility to install anything else from ipboard.

Clarification: We're going to make self hosting licenses so inconvenient to make cloud hosting more appealing. Scummmmmmmmy.

You mean this? So I have to use the same form guests use to send spam and pre-sale questions to get private support?? The only way I can even see responses from this is by checking the email manually. What kind of BS is this?

@Matt Your current stance on support makes absolutely no sense. Speaking for myself, majority of my inquires are private, and not something I want to post publicly. Why do I have to make a thread that says "make me private" only to wait for it to be so; so I can then state my problem.. Where's the logic in that?
No matter how you sugar coat it, you're eliminating basic support. The whole "well, you may get a quicker response if anyone can reply" isn't something people like myself who pay a premium price for premium software wants to hear.
With platforms like Discord making forums irrelevant, this seems like a step in the wrong direction. You should be making the software more accessible, rather than limiting your audience to established communities.
Big tech companies you seem to cater to aren't using the marketplace, it's the hobby websites and small timers that do, which so happens to be the same group you just cut off at the knees.
I feel like you should be focused on the marketplace for residual revenue, instead of squeezing all the expense from your clients. Though, I can't imagine many devs stuck around after the drastic changes made previously.
With the recent and questionable changes to the marketplace, exclusive cloud-only features, and now this.. Seems like an intentional move to coax people into switching to cloud hosting.
Also, where is Zapier support for self hosted?

It is especially a new proof of total contempt of its customers, we are forced to pay now once a year, but we speak in monthly increase, IPB should make politics.

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.

@Matt When you break down a large amount into a monthly amount and base it on the lowest denominator, it looks trivial, but we're not talking about a monthly payment.  To just drop this onto everyone without so much as mention is really bad karma. You just need to look at this topic and realise how toxic it is and there is no remorse, just excuses and rubbishy PR talk. Sorry mate, it just doesn't make sense and it doesn't sit well with your clients and that is something you need to address quickly before the floodgates open.  I really don't like have to post these replies and I don't like being forced out of the door after such a long time, but if that is the intent and there is no relenting then out of the door I will go, with great sadness.  The one solace is that there are alternatives out there that are more affordable.

BTW, regarding hobby project vs a business can swallow the costs easily:
My most expensive Invision license now has a renew price of $310 per year.
I have a few dozen websites that we intended to convert to Invision (some Xenforo, some Wordpress). If you multiply say 20 sites by $310 thats a maximum of $6.200 per year. Even if we dont need every component and try to minimize the costs, for a small business thats a considerable amount of money.
Technically, Invision is superior over other solutions like Xenforo, that was the reason for our project, but now has come the time to reevaluate if the few tech benefits outweigh the money and how we should deal with the lowered trust we now have.

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. 

Anyway, it's been some time that IPB pushes us to leave them (you plan to stop your activity?), they have absolutely no understanding of the current markets, the big boxes are moving more and more only to alternative solutions like Discord, facebook, ect ... to discuss with their community (the proof, even Bethesda closed its forums recently!)
The premium argument would be funny if it was a joke, but it seems that @Mattis serious.
Ipboard has nothing premium, it is behind in all the fields and does not evolve any more since years, it is especially about correction of bug, on the contrary, it even tends to lose functionalities!
Ipchat -> abandoned without notice. Mobile application -> abandoned without notice. No, the annual renewal has no more sense, it is a total nonsense, because precisely we have no roadmap on what is planned, on the contrary, we go from bad surprise to bad surprise with your communication completely off the mark.
Especially since @Jordan response indicating to reload our accounts 6 months before to keep this period is for me a new proof of total contempt for your customers.
 
Lol is a joke ? We should also pay you for each "major" version? So we would have to pay for the software + a renewal for security updates + an additional fee for upgrades? You're definitely missing the point! 
 
The truth is that for a few years, nothing has been added on IPB, except the club function, the rest is bug fixes! 
You put forward the webp as a novelty, no sorry, the addition of two lines of codes to accept this file extension which is already supported by the majority of CMS for a few years is not a novelty.
The addition of zapier is not a novelty either, it is above all a proof of laziness on your part to really integrate these functionalities in IPB, because if tomorrow Zapier closes, or decides like you to increase its prices of 30%, we are taken hostage! 
I will start by believing that you get a com for each request sent by an IPBoard installation.
What's the next step, suppressing the sending of mail outside the provider? By the way, why didn't you take AWS which is the most common ?
When I read that on this subject, it confirms me even more in what I think, you try to do as little as possible today to rehash as much as possible.
You want me to pay 30% more and once a year? 
Ok, start by listening to your community, work on your software so that it respects today's web standards and that it gets the best possible score on pagespeed especially on mobile, offer us a real integration of wepb, discord, private messages in instant, do your job when you validate an extension on the market to make sure it works properly and then I would accept to pay more.
 

QFT – This is a serious point.
I can handle the price increases (10 years is a long time without one, absolutely) but the way they were communicated and implemented has been... poor.
Que Sera
One other note, as mentioned above, more recent PR and community management has come across as rather shallow and insincere.
We are not children.
Some of us have dealt with death on a daily basis and are not 'funky teenagers'. If you are a business, with business prices, please endeavour to keep it business-like, with a business-like respect for your customers' intelligence.
Thank you.

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.

Perso, j'abandonne 110$ x2 pour 2 forums qui ne me rapportent rien + 300€ d'hébergement çà commence à faire lourd, pour quelques mises à jour, je vais donc arrêter les frais là! Merci ! Déjà que je trouvais que Netflix abusé avec 3x 2€ en 2 ans, mais là on passe de 70$ à 110$ vous pensez que je fais pousser l'argent sur les arbres ?! après on s'étonne que les gens choisissent les versions pirates! 😞
Ce n'est plus une augmentation, c'est carrément du racket !

Personally, I'm giving up $ 110 x2 for 2 forums that don't bring me anything + € 300 hosting it's starting to get heavy, for a few updates, so I'm going to stop the costs there! Thank you ! Already I found that Netflix abused with 3x 2 € in 2 years, but now we go from $ 70 to $ 110 you think I'm growing money on trees ?! then we are surprised that people choose the pirate versions! 😞
It's no longer an increase, it's downright racketeering!