Matt

The simple reason is that if you choose to not renew, then you cannot upgrade. If you do not upgrade then you are likely to be on an outdated version of Invision Community which may not be compatible with the latest releases of the third party applications. Say you're on 4.3 and you go and buy an app written for 4.5, it likely won't work. It's not a hostage situation, more of a sensible precaution. But I'm serious about the pizza. I can look into your issues if you'd like? We're actually increasing support costs as we'll be hiring new people to ensure good coverage on the support forums. We are serious about wanting to create a comprehensive well staffed support community.

It wasn't my intention, just reminding that our entry level package is $49 which may be suitable. It's hard for me to know without seeing your site and its needs. 🙂

Jordan posted about some new functionality coming in the next release. I also just added stock replies and I'm working through some achievement refinements. Those are in the pipeline over the next 3-4 weeks.

Drop us a message and we can discuss it in more detail.

Appreciate the feedback and I'm sorry we weren't able to resolve your issue for you.

I'm sorry to hear that Paul. Feel free to DM me if you need help with anything. You could try our starter package, which is $49/month. You won't need to manage the internals, we do all that for you. It'll be one less thing to worry about so you can focus all your attention to growing and leading your community.

Ticket support still exists! We simply ask that you post your issues in the staffed forum and then they will be either resolved, or triaged into tickets. We are moving to a monthly release schedule to deliver bug fixes and features more regularly. We are not holding you hostage, but if we were, I'd ask for two helicopters and pizza with pineapple on.

Oh, you snuck in the roadmap debate! Respect for getting that in. 😄 Yes, I understand that customers are concerned about what this change means to them. I can only listen (well, read), understand and do my best to address those concerns.

That goes directly to our ticket system. It won't have to fight spam or pre-sales questions. The tickets are staffed and you will get a reply. Wedding Crashers? Great movie, one of my favourites.

You can, but really we would urge you to keep your software up to date. We often release security updates or improvements that would benefit your community. We are looking to increase the speed of releases to a monthly release schedule so everyone gets bug fixes and new features regularly. It is not true at all. Self hosted customers still get access to the marketplace, and can upload their own modifications outside of the marketplace as normal. Nothing has changed there. It might be that our cloud option is a better fit when you take into account hosting costs and the hassle of maintaining PHP and MySQL updates, etc. Our infrastructure leverages many tools to improve performance of your site. But we're not forcing a move. This has not changed with this update, to be clear.

A fair point.

Yes. I think the changes to support will be beneficial in the longer term. I truly do. More complex issues will be moved to tickets by our team.

Ok, so if your Invision Community license expires, you can: - Update any marketplace apps that are still active but only until they expire. If you want to renewal an app, or buy new apps you need to renew your license (and if you have missed upgrades due to not having an active license, go ahead and upgrade to the latest version). Many things were updated yesterday, the site, the self hosting prices, and we launched a new range of cloud packages which offer huge increases in media storage, and we dropped the online user limit.

You do not need to give us $1000 to get support. Our peer-to-peer community-led support forums still exist. We have created new support forums which are staffed. What you experienced in the past from 'unofficial' forum support will not be representative of what support you will get now. Oh boy, I think it's only fair to tell you that I've only just reached Checkpoint 3 with Duolingo. If you need a meal ordering, or a hotel reservation booking, I can do that. But for this, I'm going to have to rely on Google translate. 😄 Ok, well - I think you're expressing your thoughts and opinions which I respect. I know Zapier isn't free but it's a popular app that can really help plug in your community to your existing workflows.

I am just illustrating the change isn't as daunting when you break it down. We're used to speaking in terms of 6 months, and now we're talking in terms of annual costs. So even if we went from $25/6 months to $50/year it feels like a big jump. I understand that for you, your support enquiries are private. But you are not illustrative of most customers. 🙂 As always, if you have account issues or something to discuss in private, then use the contact us link. I believe that we will improve support, and not take anything away with this change. We will build a support community right here, the same thing we do for our customers. You'll get full transparency as to what issues our customers face before you purchase, or even as an existing customer. You might find tips or help for issues before opening a ticket. I realise that any change is often met with resistance, but give it a while and you may be surprised. Zapier is being unlocked for self hosted customers in the next release. Drop us a message and we'll issue you a 6 months invoice. I do not want to be responsible for any soft tissue injuries in sensitive places.

I think the floodgates are open 😅 I do not enjoy reading that people are upset. We could have done better with the announcement via email, but I think whatever we did on this topic would have met with a similar reaction. I want you to know that no one is forcing you out of the door.

That's a lot to digest, I'll do my best. I think we do understand the market quite well. We live and breathe it daily. There's no revelation that smaller communities are closing or moving to social media. It's just a change, like all the other changes we've faced over the last 20 years building community platforms. I don't think it's fair to say that we haven't added any major features in the last 2 years. Our blog shows the following large features added in that timespan: Activity stream email subscriptions 3 improvements to spam management Achievements system (badges, points, rules, ranks, etc) Better PWA support including service worker and notifications where supported Zapier A new health dashboard with better reporting Highlight topics in forum view when staff reply A new solved post feature Anonymous posting Sign in with Apple Brought the marketplace into the Admin Panel Trial functionality added to commerce A new clean default theme Improvements for theme designers Page builder widgets Private staff notes on topics New view modes for forums and topic lists Topic summary sidebar ACP Dark mode Improvements to notifications Brand new stats dashboard with live updating widgets Club improvements Performance and security updates Search insight stats Stock photo picker built in Blog categories Invite and referral functionality added RSS feed improvements (including image support) And those are just the headlines. All of that functionality is available just by paying the renewal which for forums is now only $80/year. I understand that you're upset, and I read every word you wrote.

Fair points, appreciate the candour. I hear you. Maybe just give it a try? It's easy to throw out a thousand mental barriers as to why something won't work. You might actually find it a better system for most support issues. If you have an account issue or something private to discuss, just use the contact us link.

Morning Davy. You're right, it's our fault that we chose to not raise prices for over a decade and then made a decades worth of price changes overnight (well over-day but that's not a saying). Yes, the hobby market is declining for sure. Social media and other free apps have pulled a lot of business away from community platforms like ours. It's just change, and life is full of change. We want to keep creating a market leading platform that brings millions of people together. We want communities of all sizes, from boutique to brand to bring people together with our products. We are not drawing lines and saying "We're not for you". If you had the forum product, the cost of the increase is $2.50/month. I understand any increase can be hard to stomach. If your renewal is imminent and would prefer to pay for 6 months this one time, then just get in touch and we'll take care of that. We understand that people are upset and considering leaving. That's a reaction I empathise with. However, first reactions are rarely the right ones. Thanks again for your thoughtful feedback.

We absolutely care about our customers. I will be replying to as many posts as I can today. The email was queued up days ago. We had some issues with the changeover so I paused the email until we were clear they had been resolved. The email went out 4 hours after the site was put back on, which we felt was a priority so customers could get support, download updates and so on.

I don't think it would be fair to increase it again anytime soon. 🙂 In the future, we feel that smaller price increases a little more regularly will help for sure.

I want to point out that "no ticket support" isn't what we're changing. After Jan 1st 2022 (until then you can use tickets as normal) we are asking that you post in our community support forum which are actively staffed by our team who will then triage and move more complex issues into a ticket, or into our internal bug tracker. I understand your point about trust too.

I'm sorry to hear that you're thinking of leaving. I hear you on costs. Everything seems to be getting more expensive. Hosting costs keep rising, even things like Netflix creep up on you. Rising costs suck. It's the same rising costs we face every day keeping the lights on and paying our team for their hard work. I can't disagree with any of that. 🙂 I understand that in the past forum support has been peer-to-peer and we've been very firm that we only offer 'real' support in tickets - so I totally get that now we're saying 'use the forum and let us decide what needs to be a ticket' is a big change and we have to prove that this will not result in a bad experience for everyone. We've already got a head start on this, if you check out the support forums now you'll see our team super active in there. I appreciate your honest feedback, thank you.

They are certainly welcome to do that. It's hard to get traction on a new site and harder to build trust to sell items which is why we put so much effort into our marketplace and putting it front and central in the Admin Panel where tens of thousands of community administrators can browse for new add-ons. You can keep getting updates from third party apps until those third party apps expire, regardless of your Invision Community license situation.

Thanks for the feedback. I realise the annual change is a lot to digest but once we get past the first renewal, I feel an annual renewal makes more sense. It's less to think about, fewer invoices, and fewer payments to make. I understand the shock of seeing $25 every 6 months to $80 a year. It's a big leap in numbers. The truth is that the $25 renewal fee that was set in 2005 was just barely covering a single ticket, let alone development time. Keeping in mind that we do not charge a new license fee for every major release, even $80 a year (or to go back to 6-month thinking $40 every 6 months) is still good value when you consider that you are getting a market leading platform that gets new functionality added very regularly. Broken down monthly, it's $6.66 a month for a market leading platform with rapid support when you need it. We should have increased the price annually to keep track with inflation - which has eroded nearly 30% from the dollar value over the past 15 years or so. Simply put, that $25 renewal is worth 30% less just because the cost of living (and thus our running costs) have increased. We haven't removed support. As above, we will keep your ticket access until Jan 1st 2022 (or if your current license renewal expires later, then when your renewal expires). The support forum is now staffed and your request will be triaged to get you the best help in the fastest way.