WP V0RT3X

Maybe for most people, but that doesn't change the fact that if you want to have more than the limited basic features you have to pay.
PS: I'm a gamer and use it every day, so I know what I'm talking about too.

A downloads button for the Marketplace would be great too.
Now we have to open the menu first but we have an own button for a single club.

Maybe for most people, but that doesn't change the fact that if you want to have more than the limited basic features you have to pay.
PS: I'm a gamer and use it every day, so I know what I'm talking about too.

Thanks, is working just like described.

This was not meant negative. Just an example how urgent help topic can look like.
Me, personally, I hate ticket support in most cases 😄 I like community support:
Searching before ticket can give a fix within minutes. Writing down and waiting for support can take hours. See if the issue is a known bug. When a support thread becomes hot or there are many similar threads, I can see that the issue is a bug and just wait for solution instead of ... you know, writing down 😄 Get several ideas, brainstorming. While waiting for solution, I get answers from community, that probably do not contain a solution, but kepp me busy (I hate waiting).  Just browsing through threads a while. It's a kind of permanent knowledge update for me.  1 and 2 save IPS support time that is (hopefully!) invested into developing new features 😉
Even if I can understand the reasons, why others would like ticket support, I am happier with community support.

You would have to obtain that from the Theme developer, as it is their resource and they own the copyright. No one is authorized to distribute it but them.

The new support option via forum could even be a better system if the support team is picking up urgent issues as quick as known from the ticket support. Especially when my forum has an outage because of upgrade errors or other issues. A knowledge base of known issues is something I miss hardly. So, take this chance and convince us. Thanks for this open discussion Matt. And please consider the benefits for devs in your next meeting. 

I want to thank you all for your feedback. I appreciate everyone who took the time to leave their thoughts and concerns. I've read every single one and replied to almost all of them.
Firstly, I want to say that I understand that the messaging that went out ahead of this update fell short of what you deserve, and I want to apologise for that.
After spending two days reading every single post, almost all concerns fall into these three areas:
1) The future of support
I've seen many people use the phrase 'no more support', which isn't true. I know the change from ticket support to staffed community support is a significant change, but I genuinely believe that it will benefit customers. I believe that we can create a living knowledge base of solved issues just like many brands do. For example, when I have a problem with my iPhone, I google it and invariably end up with a link to a topic within their support forums with a solved answer. I don't need to raise a ticket with them and wait for a reply.
There are many "what about" concerns mixed in, and I ask you to try the new staffed community support areas and give us your feedback once you've used it regularly. We will work with you based on that feedback and make improvements where it is needed.
We have custom functionality that shows our team links to your client accounts, including license keys, etc., so we know who you are and have all your information right next to the topic. You will never need to divulge personal information, or even your site URL if you do not want to.
If your support issue is complex or needs developer intervention, with a click of a button, our technicians can convert this into a ticket for you and we will continue to resolve the issue with you in that ticket.
You will be in safe hands.
2) Price Rises
We have not raised our prices for well over a decade. We've always been reluctant to do it and held off for too long, resulting in a large jump to make up for a lost time.
We can't reduce the prices to their pre-September levels, but we will be much more mindful of price rises in the future.
3) Annual Renewals
We want to simplify billing and reduce the number of invoices we need to send, and you need to pay. An annual invoice seemed logical to achieve this.
However, you have made it clear that moving to annual renewals affects your budgeting, and we have listened to that.
We have reverted this decision and have restored 6-month renewals in your client area. This is not a temporary one-off offer; it's a permanent change.
Again, I want to thank you all for being so vocal and passionate about Invision Community. We want to keep offering you the very best community platform to help your communities succeed.

Sorry, but I find that very hard to believe. Then again, most of what has been said by IPS staff in this thread is pretty unrealistic. Moral of the story is, this is a tactical push to evolve completely into a SaaS service. Might even save you some time and money just to refund all of the self license purchases and get rid of it entirely.
I'm pretty disappointed you haven't realized this was a huge mistake, and haven't taken steps to accommodate anyone you've blatantly hurt by these, I'll say it, malicious changes.
It's clear this was not a "communication" issue, rather a stunt to prevent anyone from renewing prior to the price hike. It's also clear the changes to self hosting prices had nothing to do with betterment of the software, rather an excuse to push people to cloud hosting. It's also clear the reason for yearly renewals was to prevent customers from selectively renewing only when they actually need to. Not because "it would confuse customers."
Yeah, confuse customers with the same model you've had for the past 10 years... We aren't that gullible. I'll stick around, but I'm not going to renew until there's drastic changes, and I'll avoid using the marketplace from now on and work directly with 3rd party developers to make sure they're being taken care of.
I can't express enough how disappointed I am.

Another question, on some of my licenses I want to cancel some applications too. For example I don't need downloads anymore and on some sites not even forums, only core and pages.
So can I do that when I get the next invoice? As long as I have already paid for them I still want to use them/backup content, but when I renew not for those apps of course.
In the client area I can only renew the whole package with all purchased apps and then it looks like it's too late.

My two cents: Invision is in a tough spot. Price hikes probably should have been gradual over the last 10 years. Moving to annual billing at the same time as the price increase, though, re-started our community's long-running discussion about moving off of IPS entirely.
The value of IPS for us has eroded over the 10 years we've had the product, mostly due to changing members' needs. So many other communities have turned to zero-cost solutions (like a sub-Reddit) or have completely abandoned forums for SNSes like Twitter, Facebook, Discord, etc. Those who still want their own private forum increasingly use open source software like Discourse.
Unfortunately, many of the other IPS features (Blog, Gallery, Pages, "calendaring") still feel half-baked when compared with software like NextCloud, WordPress, GApps, etc. Downloads & Commerce, however, are probably priced right for people who earn their living on this platform.
Since it sounds like the price increase is going to fund more development, I went over the list of new features in the past 2 years that Matt shared earlier in the thread with my community, to see if they felt they have been getting their money's worth. The only features they said they value are "Highlight topics in forum view when staff reply" and "Club improvements", both things we used to get from plugins.
As for @Matt's suggestion to go with their managed offering:
I suspect that this message falls on deaf ears for anyone posting in this thread right now. If you already have the knowledge to run (and extend) a solution like IPS yourself, $50/mo gets you a lot, even from the more expensive hosting providers out there. (Of course, IPS's hosted offering is much cheaper than Discourse's.)
For the changeover to forum-based support, I believe the messaging was worse than the decision -- it took reading this entire thread to come to terms with what was actually happening. We've had both great and poor experiences, both in private tickets and public threads. I think the move can be a good one, if the new forum can be well curated, easily searchable, and the process continues to make sense for things that shouldn't be public.
What to do? For now, we've requested a one-time, 6-month payment period reprieve, as offered in this thread, and are waiting for Sales to confirm. Thank you for making this available. We'll be taking the next few months to decide if we stay or jump ship. It's not a straightforward choice, and we share concerns with many of the others already expressed in this thread. We look forward to seeing what the monthly improvements will be, and are hoping for a road map of potential new features to come. In parallel, we'll be costing out what effort it'll take to move to a different solution.

It's not our fault that IPS chose to be competitive and not raise the prices in line with cost of inflation each year. I'm very grateful they didn't, but that's honestly on them. They just can't come along out of the blue and ramp up the costs for whatever reason is behind this and expect people to embrace it.
Whatever it is that's causing the company to dismiss the feedback of their loyal core community customer base and steadfastly refuse all requests for some reasonable compromise, like retaining 6 month renewals.
It's very difficult justifying the cost of IPS 4.6. Since we're paying over and over again for it, we lose all our investment if we our cancel renewals, but I'm not willing to pay a year up front. I couldn't do it anyway. It's been the most problematic buggy release for quite some time.
Honestly, I've been with you since Ikonboard and I've never felt so disillusioned.
I'm also so tired of the all the patronising 'Fam' and bizarre hump day rubbish, please grow up already especially if you're being so corporate. It's a shame to see what this forum community has become in the last year.

https://invisionify.com/files/file/25-who-was-online-hours/

It just moved here.

The higher prices will have a big impact on the Marketplace too.
- Many ppl will leave IPS -> less sales in the MP.
- The ones that don't leave won't invest as much as before in addons.
- Less addon sales will make devs switch to other platforms.
- Less and bad supported addons will frighten new customers
(that and the high prices for the basic backage of course).

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.  
 

After a quick and dirty calculation, you even win if you lose 30% of your customers. So, from a financially viewpoint it's a good business decision. And another plus, your support effort will be reduced too Congrats.

It's not about the fact that prices are rising. In my country it's a constant process, they never stop. It's about:
1. That the gap between old and new prices is 50% which is a lot. I don't see many businesses do this to their loyal clients. We would understand something about 15-20%, not 50%.
2. That you guys try to sell it like "but look at monthly rate! Not a big deal!". You seem to forget that people who are able to spend hundreds of dollars on forum software are adults and wouldn't fall to cheap marketing tricks. I'm a marketer myself, and I know exactly what is happening here.
3. That you didn't inform us before this decision so any hobbyists could pay for their software. The greediness is not good.
4. That you try to sell it like IPS is the best thing ever, some premium software that is nowhere near it's competitors. But would the best software company treat it's customers like this? For real? 
5. That you tried to cover it under website redesign.
6. That you're telling us "pay more but if you have a problem - go ask community"
 
You know, it feels really bad. It's a really bad publicity. How many existing clients will recommend IPS after moves like this, how do you think?
 

The higher prices will have a big impact on the Marketplace too.
- Many ppl will leave IPS -> less sales in the MP.
- The ones that don't leave won't invest as much as before in addons.
- Less addon sales will make devs switch to other platforms.
- Less and bad supported addons will frighten new customers
(that and the high prices for the basic backage of course).

@Matt what would be the harm of letting people choose the renewal period ?
I know i would definitely choose 1 year personnaly but at least you would make a move to help some of us.

@Mattwhat would you say if your barber would tell you that your haircut costs now 50% more just before they finish it, but then tell you that it's not a big deal because they didn't want to be the cheapest, just the best? I bet you would be furious and rightfully so.

Matt, morning! Let me put my two cents. I think you should have to announce renewal price change and allow everyone to renew till January 1 for old price (even if a customer has renewal date after January 1). The pros are customers may choose between renewing right now for $105 or later for $310 if it is no problem for them.
Personally I do not see global problems in $310, but I believe this change had to be realised another way. You should have to give customers a chance to select between several options. Especially because we live in COVID era and some people may have financial problems. I am in luck I renewed my main license past week.
I guess we will see less free products in the Marketplace in the future and less purchases of paid products, because some customers may leave or simple do not renew their license. Bet renew price raising will have long-lasting consequences for us as a third-party developers. I also think we will see how some of developers leave us and switch to another projects.
Regarding support, I see a lot of products where support are provided via public forum. I don't think it is such bad as someone else wrote here. Will see how it will go and hope it will be ok.
Regarding PR, I really hate that 'Don’t worry, it’s not bad news'. It is on top of the worst sentences I have seen for a several months. I work for Yandex and face a PR-sentences from time to time, but that one sentence is very ugly. Price raising is always a bad news for everyone who are paying. I would really re-word it.
I am not leaving nor have a plan to, but I think Invision Community development team must concentrate on customers suggestions and do all the best to release long-awaited update for Pages and Downloads. Especially for Pages, because it has unlimited potential and may turn Invision Community into the next level.

No, this doesn't help b/c most of my plugins are available for free. There is a difference whether I have to pay 25$ each 6 months or 80$ at once. Would be better to have monthly payments and maybe to get a discount when someone pays the complete amount at once.

Make some payments options will be ok...
6month renewal
9 month renewal
12 month renewal etc...