Rizenmusic

@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.

@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.

Not my case. This is my only source of income for a couple of years or so (yes, I’m not crazy to have 200 resources for nothing) but honestly, this is becoming a pain more and more at every “new thing” IPS does.
IPS don’t listen. Just read. Try to justify things and that’s it. Nothing will change.
So for the rest (of us) stop wasting your time debating here. That’s how it will be from now on. 

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.

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 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>

The people who paid hundreds of dollars to be self hosted?

I don't get it. Those of us who are self hosted are self hosted for a reason. We don't need you to "manage the internals." We want to host in our own, secured environment, that we have 100% total control of. Not create an external point of failure subject to downtime and potential for compromises.
Sure, all of the shortcomings of cloud hosting could happen to self hosting, but I'd rather go out in my own terms. 😉
You're advertising to the wrong crowd. If we wanted cloud hosting, we wouldn't have chose IPS.

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.

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.

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.

I was shocked to read the email about the increase and it was like a slap in the face!
I can understand a price increase, but the prices here are going up extremely in one fell swoop. Corona has already caused a sharp drop in income and now we are supposed to pay the price increase? I can almost no longer afford that for my hobby forum. 
The price increase is even higher because the e-mail support is no longer available. Community support can be provided for freeware, but not for expensive licensed software!
Thank goodness I recently renewed for 6 months at the old price. I will now definitely look for an alternative and move my forum to another system if they don't reconsider the decision here...

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 think for little communities like ours that price rise of nearly 50% (47% in our case) may be a kill factor.
I just have something to say : if you go ask your boss for a 47% rise, how do you think he/she'll react ?

Generally speaking, after so many years I feel I can say that invision is a company that thinks well about the choices it makes. But this time, as others have already written, I am very concerned about the collapse of the Marketplace. It is quite clear to me that the new pricing policy and the type of support offered for a fee is aimed exclusively at the business sector. This means that hundreds of hobby forums will be looking for alternative software solutions and this also means less appeal for me and many other developers to develop app and plugins.
Although I don't know the reasons for a series of "blows" thrown at the customer at the same time, I find some of the choices made by Invision risky.
Even if I accept the price increase, which is something I can live with, I think it was a mistake to remove the possibility to pay every 6 months. This has disoriented customers even more, even giving a perception of a heavier increase than it really is.
Furthermore, it must be acknowledged that one of invision's greatest assets has always been its ticket support. 
In short, I'm a bit worried, I'm sure I'll be one of the last to abandon ship... I've been here for 20 years... but I confess that I've been looking for alternatives for the first time in many years.
The problem is not the price, I am more concerned about the choice to let the hobby communities go.
Unfortunately I don't think the the fresh new green buttons can turn this into good news.

Let's see, I understand that even the pandemic period is not the best but let's try to give confidence to Invision as Jordan asks. Instead I would ask invision to review at least the possibility of returning to payment every six months, not for me, but I think it would help many.

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.
 
 

Strange, after more than 21 years now using IPB forums, now I have to consider switching to another forum platform.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.