Price changes for new club members

Escrito por Mark Forrester on enero 31, 2012 News.

As was mentioned a few times late last year, via the blog and in a newsletter, the plan for January 2012 was to increase club subscriptions charges by $5 per month. A standard club subscription changing from $15 to $20 per month and a developer club subscription changing from $20 to $25 per month. As of immediately these price increases are now in effect.

The reason for the price increase, apart from the obvious being inflation after keeping our prices constant since 2007, is that we now support a portfolio of 123 themes, the mothership that is WooCommerce, and have a team of staff of 18.

Existing active club members monthly subscription costs will not be increased

After much deliberation and number crunching the good news for active club members is that we are grandfathering you into the new pricing, meaning you will not be experiencing any prices hikes and will remain on the same monthly charge as you have been previously. Your monthly membership fees will remain the same until you cancel your membership.

Important note: If you cancel your club membership, and then decide to re-activate it at a later stage you will be charged the new, higher monthly fee upon re-activation.
The new club membership pricing.
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43 Responses

  1. Jon DiPietro
    enero 31, 2012 at 4:05 pm #

    Nice to see a company rewarding its existing, loyal customers instead of focusing all their attention on acquiring new ones. Thanks!

  2. Fred
    enero 31, 2012 at 4:07 pm #

    Glad to see your individual theme pricing staying the same.

  3. Philip
    enero 31, 2012 at 4:23 pm #

    Well then I guess my problem with my subscription not recurring automatically every month will be a bigger problem. How can I make sure that it renews automatically, because it stopped working a few months back and just cancels with no warning or notification. I am going to be upset if I have to pay $20 when I shouldn’t have to.

    • Magnus
      enero 31, 2012 at 5:15 pm #

      If you haven’t already, I suggest contacting us directly about such issues 🙂

    • Peter Ricci
      enero 31, 2012 at 6:22 pm #

      This happens to me every month for past few months, a little annoying

      • Magnus
        enero 31, 2012 at 8:35 pm #

        Have you contacted us directly about it?

        • Peter Ricci
          enero 31, 2012 at 9:08 pm #

          Yes each month, I was told to just update my subscription

          • Philip
            enero 31, 2012 at 9:14 pm #

            Me too.

          • Ryan Ray
            febrero 1, 2012 at 4:00 am #

            I’ll have our backend dev checkout your account if it happens again, we’ll be sure to keep you grandfathered in if that’s what you want! 🙂

    • Budgie
      febrero 1, 2012 at 4:11 am #

      I’ve had this happen as well and I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens again. Do not want to be put on the higher cost when it cancels automatically without my consent. Obviously something going wrong if its happening to multiple people.

  4. Steven Gliebe
    enero 31, 2012 at 4:40 pm #

    I understand sustainability, but even then, nice move to keep current subscribers at the price they signed up for.

  5. Martin
    enero 31, 2012 at 5:03 pm #

    absolute woo – fair move

  6. Alejandro Carrillo
    enero 31, 2012 at 5:18 pm #

    Great that you let us keep our actual price! thanks!

  7. Riaan Knoetze
    enero 31, 2012 at 6:09 pm #

    I also seem to recall talk about including WooCommerce plugins / extensions into the subscription packages – I’m pretty chilled as things stand; just wanted to get some clarity 🙂

    Any news on this?

    • Magnus
      enero 31, 2012 at 8:37 pm #

      Hi,

      We’ve made the decision to not offer a subscription plan on WC Extensions unfortunately.

  8. asaduzzaman
    enero 31, 2012 at 7:45 pm #

    This is realizable theme price for buy & suitable easy to uses.

  9. pedro67
    enero 31, 2012 at 7:48 pm #

    Peanuts!

    I cannot understand why someone wastes his time to discuss for extra 5 Dollars per month!?!?
    Woo has grown, they have much more work to keep everything up to date with much more themes and they DO!

    So don´t complain about those few dollars. It´s worth it.
    You can charge me from now on 25,- instead of 20,-
    I am lucky that you guys do such an incredible good job.

    move on

    • Radomir
      enero 31, 2012 at 11:56 pm #

      I second that. How can i switch to the new prices ? (without re-activating)
      25 dollars is a fair price for all that goodness.

      Woo delivers a lot of value. Take the new Band theme, you can have a
      massive ROI on that one alone…

      Keep up the Woo work !

    • Ryan Ray
      febrero 1, 2012 at 4:01 am #

      Thanks to both of you guys on this thread, really glad you see the value and definitely feel it’s worth the price. 🙂

  10. DeepTitanic
    enero 31, 2012 at 7:51 pm #

    I didn’t realise!

    Doh!

  11. Stanislav
    enero 31, 2012 at 10:24 pm #

    I can not buy the theme “Unite”
    After selecting the “buy standard” nothing happens.
    I have tried in all browsers: FF, Chrome, IE

    Please, check it

    I sent you an email to support, but no one answered me …

    • Ryan Ray
      febrero 1, 2012 at 4:02 am #

      I’m going through the inbox now and will get to your email!

  12. karan
    febrero 1, 2012 at 12:29 pm #

    Important note: If you cancel your club membership, and then decide to re-activate it at a later stage you will be charged the new, higher monthly fee upon re-activation.

    1 Question : If i re-activate my club membership, will i be charged 125$ + 20$ or only 20$ ?

    • karan
      febrero 8, 2012 at 7:57 am #

      Anyone from woothemes intersted in answering my query ?

      • Magnus
        febrero 8, 2012 at 1:18 pm #

        Sorry karan!

        If you re-activate at a later stage you will be charged only the new monthly price, not the initial start-up fee.

        • karan
          febrero 9, 2012 at 9:20 am #

          Thanks

  13. Reji Thomas
    febrero 1, 2012 at 7:28 pm #

    Thanks so much for grandfathering existing members. Btw, the latest set of releases are outstanding.

  14. Gerry Humphrey
    febrero 2, 2012 at 4:26 am #

    Thanks for doing what you originally said you would do.. grandfather existing customers.

    Based upon the last year of blog postings, I have a hard time believing what I read when it comes from Woo.

    “We plan to add a “Commerce Add-On Option” in the next couple of months, which would allow club subscribers to pay an additional fee every month and get access to all WooCommerce Extensions”

    But then on the other side of things…

    “As of 1 January 2012 (3 months from now), we will be increasing the pricing of our subscriptions to keep trend with the continuous growth in the product library and the support thereof. New monthly fees will be $20 per month for a Standard Subscription & $25 per month for a Developer Subscription. This will apply to all existing & future club subscribers”

    Still makes it hard for me to put stock in what you say as I can’t rely on what is posted.

    Please think things through before you post them. If you post that you are going to do something, then do it. Don’t get stuck into the realm of “false advertising” and empty promises.

    • Magnus
      febrero 2, 2012 at 7:50 am #

      Thanks Gerry, we’ll be more careful in the future about saying but not doing 🙂

  15. J Wilson
    febrero 2, 2012 at 1:45 pm #

    At first glance this might seem like a clever move, keep prices down for existing members but up prices for new members. BUT you are making some BIG mistakes here.

    Anyone who thinks that you can increase prices by 33% & 25% in one drop needs to go back to business school.

    Anyone who thinks you can do this when there is a recession on needs their head examining.

    Nobody cares that you did not increase prices since 2007, that is your mistake, doing it now is just bad management.

    Times are hard, people are looking to cut costs, especially monthly costs.

    To be honest even with the threat of an increased price I am seriously considering leaving, your recent themes just do not appeal to the wider audience and most of your recent efforts are in Woo Commerce which is somethign I will NEVER have interest in because WordPress is a pig as an ecommerce platform no matter what lipstick you paint on it.

    On the theme side I think it would pay for me to leave and come back when you start to produce more generic, especially corporate themes.

    I think Gerry Humphrey above is spot on, you should make WooCommerce a seperate membership. You might think that including it adds more value and gives you justification for membership, but you are wrong, because when you give people something they do not want or need and make them pay for it, you piss them off.

    At a time when half decent competitors like Elegant themes (http://bit.ly/Etheme) sell their membership for $89 a year with no monthly charge you have to be doing something fantastic in design work and it is just not happening.

    Unsigned – Not surprised, dark depressing theme
    Shelflife – yet another WooCommerce theme don’t need or want
    Olya – massive slider no use for commercial site
    Sliding – yet another WooCommerce don’t need or want
    Beveled – More rehached WooCommerce don’t need or want
    Wikeasi – see if I wanted to create a Wiki I would go get one from Wiki
    Currents – Not a big commercial need
    Emporium – yet another WooCommerce don’t need or want
    Teamster – Not a big commercial need
    Argentum – yet another WooCommerce don’t need or want
    WooStore – yet another WooCommerce don’t need or want
    Coquette – yet another WooCommerce don’t need or want
    Wootique – yet another WooCommerce don’t need or want
    Buro – Another Huge Slider with no above the fold content
    Swatch – A least a bit commercial, but hey it’s free so why pay a membership

    I could go on but I hope you are getting the message.

    Web designers work for commercial clients, people need to see a return on their investment so they have to create commercial sites that can be monetized. So stop developing sites for oddball audiences and tiny niches. WooCommerce does not count because WordPress is not a mature ecommerce platform.

    Actions:

    Reduce standard membership to $10
    Reduce Developer Membership to $15
    Create Commerce Membership of £15 or $10 as a bolt-on for other memberships.

    Start developing commercial templates.

    • pedro67
      febrero 2, 2012 at 2:04 pm #

      @wilson

      In some points you may be right. If you count together and have to pay 250,- a year, this is much more as for “elegant themes”.
      I do not know them personaly, their support und upgrade policy or event backend.
      The price is really low as you often have to pay even more for ONE theme.

      But how can you afford to pay designers/developers for over 70 themes to have them up to date or even develop more?

      I have used Woo themes for some clients and the revenue is really good for that. The framework is really nice.
      So I think the price is still ok and if you dislike some themes, this would be you personal taste.

      I agree with you, that themes have to get more creative for businesses, because you want to resell them (modified) to your client.
      But the theme UNSIGNED is really a nice one. If it is too dark, feel free to change the colors and graphics.

      A lot of themes look same here – I agree.
      Maybe this critic, which I think is spoken too hard, will get their focus more on resellers.

      I will stay at Woo. Even for the higher price

    • Peter Ricci
      febrero 3, 2012 at 5:13 am #

      I will agree with you in some ways, but you can customize quite easily with child themes. Canvas is still the best option for serious type web houses.
      I do think the sliders are overboard.

      I would like woo to concentrate on releasing real themes and adding shopping features to them, seems a lot smarter and more flexible.

      All themes will sliders should be designed with and without the slider and not look empty without.

  16. pedro67
    febrero 2, 2012 at 9:42 pm #

    I tested Elegant themes.
    They have some interesting designs and features. But I would love to have some of those designs like “The Professional”, the shop “Boutique” with nice graphics, features and scripts, “Notebook” with great ideas for preview and some more nice ideas
    with the Woo backend and framework.

    the epanel is nice, but not flexible enough. But I still have to test – so to say.

    The shortcodes are really nice.

    But still – not to compare with Woo.
    I bought a developer license as well there, but I guess I will just play with it for some small and private pages. I do miss some cool Woo features.

  17. Rebecca
    febrero 3, 2012 at 4:02 am #

    I’m with Elegant Themes too. I feel their themes are superior in design to Woo themes. Support is another matter. If you want support be prepared to wait 2 weeks for a reply (and not necessarily a helpful reply), if you even get one at all.

    And I dont know why someone said its $89 a year. Its only $39/year.

  18. Peter Ricci
    febrero 3, 2012 at 5:10 am #

    Elegant Themes? Seriously? I have used them before and upgrades, features, support do not come near Woo Themes, so for me it seems very obvious a little bit of self promotion going on here.

  19. Rebecca
    febrero 3, 2012 at 6:04 am #

    Sorry Peter but I have no connection to Elegant Themes besides being a customer there too. Can’t speak for the other people here who have mentioned them. And note I said I feel their designs are better and more useful for me *that’s my opinion* – and that their support is questionable.

  20. Charlie
    febrero 3, 2012 at 6:55 am #

    This is why you guys are the best! Thanks for not raising our prices.

  21. Mike
    febrero 3, 2012 at 11:25 pm #

    Nicely played! You’ve proven you know how to treat customers: great support, great company attitude, and great prices.

    @Wilson – really? You have so many options to avoid the complaining:
    1. Customize the templates and don’t just rely on Woo to make it perfect for you. Have you heard of Canvas?
    2. Buy themes independently. Woo offers 5-4-1 deals quite often and always 3-4-1. So, don’t whine about paying for ones you don’t use. Buy the one’s you do use. You get lifetime support/updates.
    3. Business 101 – in the black is good, red is bad. I’m sure, having Woo in the black financially is best for all of us.
    4. It is an investment. $300 per year is nothing compared to how much I make in return. If you’re doing $50 websites, then I feel for you.

  22. J Wilson
    febrero 4, 2012 at 6:17 pm #

    I appreciate the price protection, I would have already gone had it gone up, but I still think the pricing is flawed, every month I am made to pay for something I don’t want or need (Woo Commerce). So unless there is a Bus theme soon I will be GONE!

    Meanwhile none of the themes appeal, they make no commercial sense, it is not something you can fix with colors, you need to have a theme with small slider and visible options ABOVE THE FOLD, that means without having to scroll.

    I have white label WordPress themes that cost me $7, so if I have to make a lot of mods I may as well use that.

    I look for ROI and it is simply not happening here, it makes more sense for me to keep an eye on what you are doing and re-join when you have a theme I can use for my clients.

    Woo needs to look at the biggest markets:

    A blogger will buy a single theme
    A Coder type will buy Thesis and customize it
    A SMB Business will employ a designer
    A Start-up business may buy a single theme (if you had one)

    So if your client base is Developers, you need to please their client base, which is BUSINESSES!.

    Note to Rebecca, Elegant is $89 a year for developers, $39 a year for just your own sites. I can confirm that Woo Support is usually WAY WAY better and Epanel is not a patch on Woo Framework, but for some projects they have a few interesting themes.

    • Alex Murphy
      febrero 7, 2012 at 9:22 pm #

      Correct me if i’m wrong, but if a theme as a MASSIVE slider, it hardly takes much effort to make it small. As a web designer i prefer that woo keeps the themes simple and plain looking so to speak. I’m the designer i don’t want woo to design sites for me, i can do that myself. All i’m personally after is the solid framework to build upon.

      As for woocommerce, i can see what your saying, it’s for some and not for others. Having built many ecommerce sites over the years using Magento / Shopify etc i don’t think woocommerce is a bad 1st effort. Having just completed my 1st ecommerce site using woocommerce i’d hardly say WordPress is a pig as an ecommerce platform. It’s certainly much easy and less time consuming to setup a site that can perfom as well as any Magento site i’ve done.

      No qualms from me woo. But hey your not going to please everyone.

      • Deep Titanic
        marzo 22, 2012 at 1:29 am #

        @Alex

        Hello – I’m just wondering about Magento compared to WooCommerce. I hear a lot of talk about both but your the first person I’ve heard of who’s used both (and seems to be capable of objective thought 😉

        Are you saying that WooCommerce can hold it’s own compared to Magento?

        What’s the largest amount of products you’ve used WC with?

        I’m setting up a site with aprox 200 products. How would it cope with a thousand?

        Maybe it’s a stupid question, but you don’t seem to be a fanboy of either platform so I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts.

        Cheers!

  23. J Wilson
    febrero 4, 2012 at 6:39 pm #

    @Mike

    Yes REALLY!

    Canvas is NOT a suitable business theme.

    For a business theme you want to get your message over, display services, for example if Woo were to improve this

    http://demo.freshface.net/file/st/wp/

    What I would like to see is the ultimate business theme, they could start with Swatch, include some corporate colors, be ultra flexible on the layout (without coding).

    Now why does someone use Woo? Yes the framework is great, the child themes are good, but really it is to save time. To be able to knock out something quick that looks fantastic.

    Right now they are serving tiny markets that will not employ designers.

    As for business 101, putting prices up drives customers away, for each existing customer that goes you lose 4x the increase. In the current economic climate people want to cut structural debt, so you will get less people jumping on board if your prices are high.

    You want a low entry price with an upsell for additional products, that is why Woo Commerce should be sold seperately as in my OP.

    BTW I charge $4k for a site and $400 to $700 a month retainer for the SEO services I provide, depending on how competitive it is.

    I run a BUSINESS, I want and ROI and so far not been able to use one Woo theme commercially. Business 101, you can make more profit by driving down costs rather than charging clients more.

    So you are probably right, it is as I said in my OP, better to cancel and come back when they do something good.

  24. Sarah Nelson
    marzo 30, 2012 at 12:12 pm #

    Great woo! Nice you keep the actual price! I even didn’t realise it.
    http://9pillsonline.com/