Dll

I really feel like there are four issues at play in all of this. 
The price rise
Personally, this is the one which, although I can understand the issues it's causing for some, is in my opinion, the least controversial of all that's gone on over the last few days. Things get more expensive, the product is very different to what it was since the last increase in price, and so personally I have no problem with it. As long it goes hand in hand with a discernible and ongoing improvement in the quality of the product. There's work to be doing, rough edges to smooth and features which need adding. I do see why this may cause people to move away from Invision though - everything has its price and there are (and always have been) cheaper (and even free) alternatives. 
The support change
On the face of it, this looks terrible. But in a way it's all in the telling as it's not really a big change, assuming it works as Invision are saying - eg things that need a ticket will end up in one. For me it's one of those that needs to be given a chance to see if it works as advertised or not - if it ends up being poor then it'll need addressing/reverting to tickets urgently. 
Communication
This leans into everything else really. Had the price rise been communicated in advance, then that may have mitigated a lot of the upset it's caused. If the support changes had been communicated more clearly, that would also have stopped so many people assuming various different versions of what it is that Invision are apparently planning to do. It's an ongoing weak point with Invision in my view. There's no doubt that Invision make us feel less valued as paying customers than anyone else we spend our money with, sadly.
Does Invision care?
This is often about communication and the perception that it gives. I mean how many times can you screw it up so royally that you leave your customers confused or angry or both? With Invision it's frequent, it's frustrating and it's entirely avoidable. If you refuse to learn, refuse to take it seriously and don't change the way you do things after so many years and so many occasions, why should your paying customers keep giving you the benefit of the doubt?
It's not enough to say you care as you're picking up the pieces of another mess, or arriving back onto the scene of another feature left on the shelf for months with zero communication (think mobile app, as one example). You need to show you care, and you need to step up and own the problems that are of your own making by showing some flexibility.  EG - maybe look at a longer period of 6 month invoicing for existing customers who request it, offer a discount code for those with renewals within 3 months or something - just do something, anything to show it's not all pr style fake 'regret' just to play for time until everyone calms down or gives up. It's very little effort on your side in the great scheme of things, but could make a massive difference to the customers you're doing it for.
Oh, and finally (long post, sorry), look after your third party developers - you need them, so show some gratitude and a spirit of partnership by working with them.

I really feel like there are four issues at play in all of this. 
The price rise
Personally, this is the one which, although I can understand the issues it's causing for some, is in my opinion, the least controversial of all that's gone on over the last few days. Things get more expensive, the product is very different to what it was since the last increase in price, and so personally I have no problem with it. As long it goes hand in hand with a discernible and ongoing improvement in the quality of the product. There's work to be doing, rough edges to smooth and features which need adding. I do see why this may cause people to move away from Invision though - everything has its price and there are (and always have been) cheaper (and even free) alternatives. 
The support change
On the face of it, this looks terrible. But in a way it's all in the telling as it's not really a big change, assuming it works as Invision are saying - eg things that need a ticket will end up in one. For me it's one of those that needs to be given a chance to see if it works as advertised or not - if it ends up being poor then it'll need addressing/reverting to tickets urgently. 
Communication
This leans into everything else really. Had the price rise been communicated in advance, then that may have mitigated a lot of the upset it's caused. If the support changes had been communicated more clearly, that would also have stopped so many people assuming various different versions of what it is that Invision are apparently planning to do. It's an ongoing weak point with Invision in my view. There's no doubt that Invision make us feel less valued as paying customers than anyone else we spend our money with, sadly.
Does Invision care?
This is often about communication and the perception that it gives. I mean how many times can you screw it up so royally that you leave your customers confused or angry or both? With Invision it's frequent, it's frustrating and it's entirely avoidable. If you refuse to learn, refuse to take it seriously and don't change the way you do things after so many years and so many occasions, why should your paying customers keep giving you the benefit of the doubt?
It's not enough to say you care as you're picking up the pieces of another mess, or arriving back onto the scene of another feature left on the shelf for months with zero communication (think mobile app, as one example). You need to show you care, and you need to step up and own the problems that are of your own making by showing some flexibility.  EG - maybe look at a longer period of 6 month invoicing for existing customers who request it, offer a discount code for those with renewals within 3 months or something - just do something, anything to show it's not all pr style fake 'regret' just to play for time until everyone calms down or gives up. It's very little effort on your side in the great scheme of things, but could make a massive difference to the customers you're doing it for.
Oh, and finally (long post, sorry), look after your third party developers - you need them, so show some gratitude and a spirit of partnership by working with them.

No worries, there's a lot going on. 😄 

Apologies, I did misread your reply, so my reply makes no sense. 

Wow. I didn't know that. I thought the switch to community support was all about offering better support and a 'live knowledge base'. So, if it's a better way to go, why limit it to self-hosted customers? Those poor cic customers will be missing out, surely? 

Maybe it's time to get cracking and get something in place then? I mean, what's the alternative here?
You make a big deal of the marketplace in your marketing piece, you take a commission from sales from it and you're reliant on third party developers for its success. So, maybe don't take them for granted and work more in partnership with them? 
And, if you want an idea on how to implement a system for discounting or making the renewal free. Base it on volume of sales/downloads. It's maybe not the perfect solution but it's simple, and gives newer devs something to push for, particularly if you offer a sliding scale of discount dependent on those volumes. 
I'm sure there are other ways of doing it, but the one thing you really shouldn't be doing is nothing, and overthinking by looking for the ideal answer often leads to stasis. There's already been a drop in the number of devs working on marketplace items, you really ought not to be waiting for that trend to continue or accelerate. 

No no no. Come on. You weren't minutes late, you're weeks late. You have clients who have renewals at the new price due in days (maybe hours), which due to the change to annual pricing and the increase will mean an outlay of more than double what they were expecting. Can you not see how giving a reasonable amount of notice is the least you should have done?

In advance would have been a start. 

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. 

No no no. Come on. You weren't minutes late, you're weeks late. You have clients who have renewals at the new price due in days (maybe hours), which due to the change to annual pricing and the increase will mean an outlay of more than double what they were expecting. Can you not see how giving a reasonable amount of notice is the least you should have done?

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. 

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. 

I don't believe that to be the case, Matt.
I do not expect IPS to hold its prices, but this is not just a pricing issue. There are a number of issues:
It's a big price increase (46% for me), in one fell swoop, on an unsuspecting customer. That introduces a shock factor to the equation. That is entirely of IPS's making. Smaller incremental adjustments to pricing, inline with inflation, are easier to absorb and to plan for. This increase is not. It was not communicated. I cannot tell you how furious I was to find a new price on the website, with a changed renewal term, without so much as a word from IPS. I therefore have little time to absorb, reflect or plan for it, and being on the smaller hobbyist side of your userbase, I now have serious doubts about being able to continue to be a customer. That is a shame after a decade of being a loyal customer, but I guess that's part of the game. It benefits your cash flow and hurts ours. You get a chunk of cash in one go, whereas you would have previously accepted it in two. It's stated that this is in part for simplicity, yet I can see no justifable reason for this claim. How hard is it to set 6-monthly renewals? You've done it for years. Bringing it inline with industry standards isn't a compelling reason - IPS is now just as inflexible as other industry players. The communication, when it did arrive, was completely tone-deaf. "Don't worry, it's not bad news"... Yes, it is. It's not only an unexpectedly large price increase with little notice, but it's changing the frequency too. Neither of those things are good news for me. The costs were communicated in monthly terms when the renewal is now collected annually, which screams of smoke and mirrors.

I should have kept my face shut when I was suggesting Invision raise prices.

But, in all seriousness I have no issue with the increase itself. But for a company that's apparently expert in all things communication, it's a bit weird to see it just dropped in there with a site redesign rather than pre-announcing it, emailing customers in advance or whatever else. 
The site does look waaaay better than it did though. 

And between you all, none of you thought that communicating the changes in advance may be the way forward? 

 

1. You chose to update your website and the price that your existing customers pay before emailing them. It's not really about what is posted on here. And you make it sound like emailing 'thousands' of clients is a difficult or time consuming process. Which of course it isn't, beyond writing the email, which could have been done weeks ago, unless you made the prices up on the spot this morning.
2. You're probably going to have to drop the 'barely any clients use this forum' line to justify the lack of reasonable communication on offer, now you're only offering support through it to the majority of your clients.
I'm broadly supportive of the price rise, but can you not just admit that the way it's been communicated has been poor and stop spinning it. It would be so much easier to believe the 'we want to be transparent' pr type guff then.

In advance would have been a start. 

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. 

No no no. Come on. You weren't minutes late, you're weeks late. You have clients who have renewals at the new price due in days (maybe hours), which due to the change to annual pricing and the increase will mean an outlay of more than double what they were expecting. Can you not see how giving a reasonable amount of notice is the least you should have done?

1. You chose to update your website and the price that your existing customers pay before emailing them. It's not really about what is posted on here. And you make it sound like emailing 'thousands' of clients is a difficult or time consuming process. Which of course it isn't, beyond writing the email, which could have been done weeks ago, unless you made the prices up on the spot this morning.
2. You're probably going to have to drop the 'barely any clients use this forum' line to justify the lack of reasonable communication on offer, now you're only offering support through it to the majority of your clients.
I'm broadly supportive of the price rise, but can you not just admit that the way it's been communicated has been poor and stop spinning it. It would be so much easier to believe the 'we want to be transparent' pr type guff then.

@Matt
I have been in development for more than 20 years. I remember the story of how Vbulletin died. I was only engaged in forums. One mistake can really cost you a crash. Now you have a choice: leave it as it is or offer a decent solution. As one of the options that I suggested to you.
Please answer in front of everyone - Are you ready to offer us my version? Give the opportunity to renew the license at the old prices for 1 year?
If not, why not?

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. 

This line from yesterday stood out - I mean who'd have thought that Invision re-made their entire website to coincide with the sudden/zero notice price rise just to show their customers that it was worth it. That is dedication for you.
 

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. 

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.