2013 has, so far, been a great year for WooThemes. We turned 5 years old, surpassed 1 million WooCommerce downloads and have more than 100,000 paying customers. We’ve launched more than 80 products and added to our super talented team.
All in all, WooThemes is looking extremely healthy.
That said, we want to continue creating great products, providing even better support and work to surpass more milestones. We have a great hunger to deliver happiness in the most authentic & innovative way.
In order for us to do that, we’re going to be making a few bold, but important and well justified changes.
Overview:
- We’re increasing the prices of all of our products (themes, plugins & WooCommerce extensions.)
- We’ve implemented a consolidated licensing system (the one we’ve been using for plugins & WooCommerce until now), which now includes themes too.
- We’re dropping our Unlimited pricing tiers in favour of a 25-site license tier.
- Support and updates will be capped to one year after purchase (with the ability for you to extend this).
Let’s look at each of these changes in a little more detail:
Price Increases
Themes
| Package | Current Price | New Price |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | $70 | $99 |
| Developer | $150 | $179 |
Club Subscription
| Package | Current Price | New Price |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | $125 $20/month | $199 $29/month |
| Developer | $200 $25/month | $299 $39/month |
| *Current subscribers remain at the current price levels. | ||
WooCommerce Extensions
| Tier | Single | 5 Sites | 25 sites |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | $29 | $49 | $99 |
| Tier 2 | $49 | $79 | $149 |
| Tier 3 | $79 | $99 | $199 |
| Tier 4 | $99 | $129 | $199 |
| Tier 5 | $129 | $199 | $299 |
Consolidated Licensing System
We’ve been using the WooThemes Plugin Updater along with our licenses for plugins & WooCommerce extensions since late-2012. We have now expanded on that and consolidated this usage to include themes as well.
What this means is that you will receive a license key whenever you purchase anything from us and you’ll need to authenticate your product with that to get access to both support & updates for said product.
No More Unlimited Licenses
In the past, we had 3 pricing tiers for plugins & extensions: single site, 5-site & unlimited. We’ve decided not to make the unlimited pricing tier available anymore and have instead replaced this with a 25-site license / tier.
Going forward, you can choose between a Single Site License, 5 Site License and a 25 Site License.
(What this means is that if you need to use a product on 50 sites, you’ll need to purchase 2 x 25 Site Licenses.)
1 Year of Support & Updates
For each license you purchase, you will be able to download your product, get updates and receive support for an entire year.
After a year, you will be required to renew your license in order to receive updates and support. We do plan to make significant discounts available for license renewals and you definitely won’t need to pay 100% of the initial purchase price again.
Within 60 days of your license expiring, you have the option to renew yor license at the discounted rate of 50% of the product’s price. Once the license has expired, you will need to pay the full price to re-actiavte the license. We will, as needed, change the discount rate depending on expected support or development required for the product.
What about my previous purchases?
Any purchase made before today will be grandfather-ed into the new system with access to support and updates for 2 years.
All theme purchases will also now have a license, which you’ll be able to use with the WooThemes Updater once all themes have been updated.
Why The Change?
↑ Back to topOver the past 5+ years, we’ve matured as a company. We started out as 3 rookie entrepreneurs and web designers, and have since progress to running a business that serves more than 100,000 paying customers. We also help a team of 30 awesome individuals pay their bills and this WooTeam’s livelihood depends on our ongoing ability to be a profitable & sustainable business.
We’ve learnt a lot in this time and whilst the journey hasn’t been without its hiccups, we’re really happy with the way that we’ve grown up.
One of the things that we’ve learnt in the last 2 years is that our business model is unsustainable, mostly because we originally conceptualized it back in 2008. Since that time, everyone else in the WordPress ecosystem has followed our lead and that business model has become the standard. So the way that we (as a WP ecosystem) price / value our products, the way we provide support and how we maintain our products over time is all based on considerations & data from 2008.
Last year we started to address this when we introduced our tiered licensing for plugins & extensions. These new, additional changes to our business model is basically Phase 2 for the process that we started last year.
I would like to share our internal considerations & reasoning in making these changes:
- This is about money. There’s no way that we’d like to spin this in our favour. The truth is that these changes are designed to increase our profitability.
- We believe that increased profitability enables us to be a better and more sustainable company in the future. This means that we can ensure and almost guarantee with 99,9% certainty we won’t be going away any time soon. You can purchase our products today and know that we’ll be around in 5 & 10 years time supporting you / those products.
- The real question is what we can do with the increased profitability and improved operating margins. For us, there’s two areas of Woo that deserves greater investment: 1) creating innovative products; and 2) providing insanely accurate, fast and helpful support to the WooCommunity.
- To create innovative products, we need to hire the best product designers / developers, pay them well and give them enough time to experiment and learn. At the moment though, we simply don’t have the operating margins to do that, which means we need to be leaner. Many of the ideas we have for products never see the light of day, because we need to focus on the things that we know will pay the bills, instead of the things that could change the way you use WordPress.
- We’ve found that the only way to consistently answer all incoming support requests quickly and accurately is to hire a bigger support team. There’s a human scaling element involved with this and that requires money.
- These price increases are designed to earn us more money, so that we can reinvest it in the things that would be more valuable to you.
- We’ve gotten better at what we do and we’ve invested heavily in our personal development as individuals, along with the way that we’ve developed as a company & team. The pricing increases align with that in that our skills have become more valuable.
An Example
Canvas was released over 4 years ago, and has gone onto become our best selling product. We’ve poured thousands of developer hours into making it a great product, and we’ve answered loads of support tickets. This year alone, we’ve solved more than 5000 tickets related to Canvas.
If you had purchased Canvas when it was originally released in 2009, you would’ve paid $70. That purchase has allowed you to use Canvas on as many sites as you wish.
Say that you have implemented one Canvas-powered site for a client every month in those 4 years and you’ve charged $1000 for that work. That’s 48 client websites and $48 000 in revenue to you.
In that same time, you’ve submitted at least one support ticket per every client site you’ve worked on. We know that the average support ticket costs us $5, which means the 48 support tickets resulted in an expense of $240 for us.
And that’s where the math goes wrong: we’ve made a loss of $170 ($70 minus $240) on your purchase, and you’ve made $48k.
On top of that, we’ve also maintained and improved Canvas over the years without being paid directly for it. So the math potentially gets even worse from our viewpoint.
The biggest problem is that the model compounds the risks and expenditure over time. In our early days, we just didn’t notice it, but as we’ve seen our customer lifetime value and operating margins decrease (even though revenues are growing well), it’s impacting our business more significantly.
I’m sure you’ll agree with me that the above example of Canvas represents some serious threats to our business (if left unaddressed) going forward.
We’re trying to move away from absolute terms like forever and unlimited in the way that we price our products. Instead we’re focusing on aligning our benefits with yours and pricing our products based on the value that they provide.
If you are earning $1000 from a Canvas installation, it makes sense for us to earn a chunk of that, because Canvas has saved you a bucketload of time and effort. We’re also helping you earn that $1000 by answering any questions you have related to it. That same thinking applies when you then work on your next Canvas-powered client project. We’re saving you time again and providing you with more support, so surely we should get paid for that again.
Our hearts are in the right place and our ultimate vision and mission still remains: we want to help you be better designers, better developers and better entrepreneurs.
By improving on our business model, we believe that we can do this even better going forward. And more importantly, we can do it sustainably without the threat of eventually going out of business.
Feel free to use the comments below to talk to us about this, ask us to explain certain things in greater detail or just to share your opinions / concerns. Please be constructive though.
-
- All our products remain GPL compliant, the new licensing system does not change that at all.
- We are also in the process of updating our themes and subscriptions to include integration with the WooThemes Updater. We hope to have this completed for each theme by the 9th of August.
- Within 60 days of your license expiring, you have the option to renew yor license at the discounted rate of 50% of the product’s price. Once the license has expired, you will need to pay the full price to re-actiavte the license. We will, as needed, change the discount rate depending on expected support or development required for the product.
- There is no domain limit on our themes; you can install them on as many domains as you like.
- All current club subscribers stay on the same rate as when you signed up.
- Our theme club has ended, all customers have been grand-fathered into the All Themes Package.
About
Brace yourselves… 😉
In short you have to do what makes sense for your business. Customers can vote with their feet if really unhappy.
I’m not going anywhere.
I’m glad this is the first comment. 😛
We really appreciate the understanding and are thankful to have supporters like you!
i read all comments mention below
i found you replay only those peoples who support ur idea
not a single replay to who against ur idea and u always says ur support team is very fast and round the clock (24X7) it shows how u solve customer tickets.
GOD save ur company
Vikas, not so, they do reply to most comments that are not just statements
I haven’t had a chunk of time to get through all the comments just yet, plus others have weighed in and replied perfectly. 🙂
its time to leave woothemes becz 3 year ago u produce quality products but today ur products are not upto mark. always u tell about support and etc in last customer not getting anything good from u. u give example about canvas but what about 1 or 2 site creator ?
i have to say u earn good money by this step but u lost ur loyal customers, who support and believe in u
i purchase lot of things from u this year all gone to waste my money
good luck for ur future
English please…
I’d like to echo andrewjhscott’s comment:
I’m not going anywhere.
Do whatever you need to do to keep the quality great!
Thank you, Tony. So glad to have this comment!
Hey Tonny,
Let me know if you need any help removing your head from WooTheme’s butt.
I’m glad Theme & Plugin providers are starting to realize that a one time purchase + lifetime support is fucking stupid (pardon my french). Though I’m not sure every customer submitting a ticket for every site they build is a reasonable average.
So to be clear, when a theme we’ve purchased in the past (via subscription) runs out of support/updates in two years, will we need to buy additional years of discounted support per-theme; or renew the subscription? (Or choose one of those options?)
Hi Mike,
Themes that you obtained through a subscription will only receive support as long as you are subscribed. Once you cancel your subscription you will not have access to updates and support for the theme, unless you re-subscribe through your account dashboard.
Fair enough!
Hi, Guys!
I’m along time club subscriber customer… I understand the changes in the price structure, and it’s a great choice to let us keep our first rate! great for that!
The new price structure it’s ok too. I offer my clients one year free of hosting, updates, support and domain when I make a site for them. After that I charge them with a 30 dls monthly fee (some clients are willing to pay for it a some other don’t – mainly because I haven’t explain them correctly the pros of have a site updated or to have someone to restore it when hacked). I think this is a model it’s better them and for us. And paying a monthly fee for all the themes and support of woothemes is worth it… you maybe can encourage the rest of woo customers to be a in the club, instead of buying individual themes
About the terms I do think that you have managed it very wrong: Sure, you got that little paragraph when you say that you can change everything when you want… it may be legal, but that’s not ethic… all those little lines intended to not be read by the customer… you are acting like the typical capitalist greedy company who write long terms and hide (or not make clear) the small letters in the contracts(like Rumpelstiltskin). I know it’s not your fault that the customers don’t read the small letter but, a really ethic company can asure that their clientes REALLY understand, in a clear way, what are they signing for…. just take a look a what 500px have made for their costumers. I think is one of the few companies who goes this way. I now you are humans and you have made mistakes on your business model… so if you make a clear state an announce a refunding to everyone who has been cheated by this trick way of doing business will be great…
A part form that, just thanking you for have gave me great tools to work with my clients!
I have a huge problem with the price increase, and with most of what you’ve said. But this is probably the worst/most arrogant statement of the lot:
“If you are earning $1000 from a Canvas installation, it makes sense for us to earn a chunk of that, because Canvas has saved you a bucketload of time and effort.”
No, it doesn’t “make sense” for you to earn “a chunk” of what we charge our clients, because your themes are simply the platform on which many, many hours of development and customisation takes place.
And if your platform becomes too expensive to use, there are many alternatives to choose from.
Why are you using Canvas then? Surely there is some value in it for you? And that’s why you use it on multiple client projects? (We never said that Canvas was responsible for 100% of the client projects that you guys & girls implement; we just said that it is a valuable ingredient in all of those.)
We also totally accept that our products aren’t for anyone and we know that there are alternatives out there. It is however our aim to work with the type of customers that buys into the “WooThemes ethos” that surrounds the way we build and support our products.
We don’t use Canvas – or any of your themes, for that matter, because they’r for the most part uninspiring and generic – and only use Woocommerce plugins. Woocommerce has now become too expensive to use when almost every function available in other ecommerce platforms is only available by purchasing an (expensive) plugin.
Maybe wipe your tears of fail elsewhere.
Here. Here. Well said.
In every other industry, the tools to become a professional are far more expensive.
I’m not just talking about web professional, but Adobe Photoshop costs more than multiple themes. Designers pay up.
But look at becoming a dentist (and ignore the high cost of education). When you buy equipment to start your practice – you pay a healthy % of your expected income. It’s called an investment.
So the fact that you think it’s arrogant for a tool/platform vendor to charge you virtually nothing so that you can be a professional suggests that we’ve all missed the boat.
I’m not blaming you. I’m just saying we’ve moved far from the reality that we would expect in any other industry.
Chris’ comments are spot on to my business experience. Coming from a software industry where we had to maintain support on a very expanded time-schedule, it’s easy to make pricing models that aren’t sustainable. “Unlimited” can be vexing.
The investments for a developer to build client websites with the WordPress platform are very modest in cost compared to many other types of professional training.
If this is what Woo needs to do to maintain a viable business, that’s there right. Market forces (people voting with their wallets, or ‘e-Shopping carts’) will judge the decision.
“If you are earning $1000 from a Canvas installation, it makes sense for us to earn a chunk of that.”
Looking forward to seeing what chunk of your chunk you plan on donating to WordPress. The free open source software that you forgot to mention in your multi-page appeal for more money.
We have always sponsored WordCamps across the globe & try to contribute to core whenever you can. In fact, the WP Menu’s as you use the functionality today, is something that we developed and we thus paid for it.
Also note that we have been one of the most progressive and innovative companies to build WordPress products over the years. The very fact that these products are available grows WordPress as a platform. If we didn’t develop WooCommerce for example, thousands of users would’ve had to look at non-WP based platforms (Shopify, Magento, etc.).
You didn’t develop Woocommerce you forked Jigoshop and then build upon that.
Oh, not THAT again… Sigh
Pick an area and get involved with us as well! – http://make.wordpress.org/ 😉
I think you could cut down a lot of support tickets and also time replying to ones if you expanded the knowledgebase more.
With all the changes there have been to the forum and support area etc there are a lot of broken links (which makes things massively frustrating if you find a post where someone links to a solution but the link doesn’t work). Messed up code in the posts due to formatting changes. The video tutorials were really helpful to my when getting started but they are hard to find and haven’t been expanded on for a long time. Creating more tutorials on commonly requested things would be a massive help.
The time you spend answering a query for one customer if that was then adapted into an article or video (or even both) this would make the site way more useful and save woothemes a lot of time and money. That extra use may even generate more sales and revenue as well.
I agree with this comment about improving the knowledgebase and publicly available support. I have emailed in the past with a question, which as described above had a broken link to the solution!
There’s obviously no excuses for broken links and we should be fixing those. If you pass those onto us, I’ll make sure that they’re fixed ASAP.
In broad terms though, an extended KB (or even a community forum) unfortunately doesn’t solve a big part of the support demand. Our data consistently shows that 90%+ of the WooCommunity prefers to just create a support ticket instead of searching for the solution themselves. This is easier and it’s like #lazyweb; which we’re fine with, because our customers pay for us to help them out.
(I know we’ve shared this in the past and many of you don’t agree with this. Let’s just agree that those of you that don’t agree with this is part of the 10% that prefers using the KB instead of creating a ticket.)
If 90%+ of the WooCommunity is creating a support ticket rather than searching your Knowledge Base then:
a) you’re not training your community properly and
b) it’s likely that your KB needs a serious looking at.
If people can find the information they need quickly and easily, why would they wait hours to get a reply to a support ticket?
The last time I looked at your KB, which was last autumn, I found missing links and a not particularly efficient approach to presenting and providing the information. Unfortunately, you’re not alone in this.
Some ways you could improve:
– a better understanding of the different workflows your customers have and tailoring information resources to those workflows
– a better understanding of the many individual jobs to be done that your customers have (using Clayton Christensen’s concept) and tailoring resources to those jobs
– a more targeted and efficient search function.
People have multi-dimensional support needs but most KBs are one-dimensional so it’s little surprise that people opt for a support ticket.
If you’re looking to keep down support costs, I would suggest that improving your KB should be a high priority.
People are inherently lazy. Sure, you will find people that like to crawl through KB and support forums to solve problems themselves. However, many people find it more efficient to delegate and have people solve (or assist in solving) the problem for them.
You guys love to fall on “your data” on this (saying that no one ever looked for answers anyway, and that support tickets are the only way we’ve accessed your resources) but the bottom line is that you’ve made it hard for us to easily access documentation and previous support tickets at every turn since getting rid of the forum. There wouldn’t have been nearly so much griping about that and you guys bringing a forum back if it weren’t that we used it. Since the new “forum” sucks so much, I’m sure far less people use it.
+1000!!
It is absolutely infuriating the way that you quietly sweet the 30% discount for club subscribers under the rug and then basically double your prices and get rid of our purchased unlimited licenses a couple weeks later, especially after promising that club subscribers would be “grandfathered” in.
All of your policy changes f*** over your most loyal customers the most. The sad thing is that there aren’t a whole lot of options and many of us have already invested so much in WooCommerce, in terms of time and money. I guess now with all purchases basically having an expiration date customers will have many more moments where they can decide to leave or not.
You’ve made is so that our investments in your platform have an expiration now. You’re going to be getting a lot more customer turnover. Hope it’s worth it for you guys. I also hope that WooCommerce gets a serious contender so that the market checks you guys.
A lot of the types of developers who use WooThemes products are small or medium-time and serve small businesses or individuals with small project budges. I’m guessing a huge percentage of your developer base is going to be priced out by these changes.
As a company you guys are so concerned with growth, when you should be much more concerned with trimming the fat and creating efficiency. For all the talk you do of how solid your model, products and platforms are, it’s all bloated. If you guys ran a leaner and more effective ship (your documentation and support forums were worth a crap, your website wasn’t slow and down all the time, you weren’t constantly changing things) you wouldn’t have to have so many support people on staff and wouldn’t have to screw your customers over with unilateral changes like this every 6 months or whatever.
Why penalize those who do not request for support tickets? A lot of us self-help by googling around and poking in the community support forums. We are looking for lifetime updates instead to ensure the projects we built for our clients are not broken as wordpress core keeps improving.
There could be a separate tier for people who requires direct support e.g. they can purchase a $20 support package which entitles them 4 support tickets (i read that the average support cost if $5 per ticket).
I would further speculate that when it cost $ to open support tickets, more will self-educate or self-help. When its free to open unlimited tickets (during support period), most will do it, its plain simple. Unlimited support leads to overconsumption.
I used Canvas for a few client sites, now I am moving over to the Genisis/Dynamik combination as the alternative.
This seems like an excellent solution to build on.
Instead of pissing off your loyal customer base who purchased unlimited licenses and updates by slapping a big Woo FU in our faces implement a support tier.
Honour our existing purchase and figure out some sort of extended support for tickets. Many of use who purchased don’t utilize support and are getting punished for those that do.
I’d be more willing to stick with Woo if something like this was implemented instead of the “hey btw you need to pay $5 – $14k/yr renewals to get updates”.
There could be a separate tier for people who requires direct support
That is a very good suggestion, but I think Woo were concerned about making the pricing too complex. There are already complaints about it being too complex, so adding in a whole new dimension would compound that.
I too, will not be going anywhere. I think most are overreacting. Yes it’s more expensive, but they’d be a lot more pissed if suddenly all this just went away. It’s good to see you know how to look at the data and upgrade your pricing to something sustainable.
However, I also have to agree that at least for themes and maybe plugins/WC extension, it would be awesome if you provided an updates-only option. For example, after 1 initial question about the Stripe gateway that I could have asked Stripe directly, I doubt I’ll have any questions. It “just works” and I assume it will continue to do so in the future. So having to re-pay for it (even at a 50% discount) every year, seems difficult to swallow. If it were 25% or less, and just included updates, I’d feel a lot more comfortable about it.
As I said in one comment thread above, I’m a big supporter of looking at the data and upgrading to a business model that’s sustainable.
But how about some kind of love for us long-time loyal customers? As just 1 example, I recently purchased the Stripe gateway, with an unlimited license, so I could activate on Multisite and would be able to offer it to a client here or there as needed. But guess how many sites I’m using it on currently: 1. Yep, just 1. I purchased unlimited thinking it would make updates automatic and easy on Multisite, and give me a little room to offer it to a few clients. But most importantly, I bought it expecting it would include updates for as long as I needed. So 1) it would be nice to see some gesture to compensate those of us who purchased with very different expectations.
2) the Multisite issue with Updater needs to be addressed now, more than ever. I’ve had a discussion via support around this. You seem to understand my concerns, but I’m not sure anything is going to change. I use most themes and several WC extension on just 1 site. Other extensions I use on 1-5, but rarely do I really need what used to be unlimited and is now 25. Yet I own at least a handful of Unlimited licenses.
It would probably create too much hassle and cost to give every customer like me some kind of store credit for the difference between what we bought, and what we actually need at this point, but it would sure be nice to see at least some kind of gesture for those who purchased with very different expectations than what has now become the reality. I purposely over-purchased in good-faith that I’d be able to get those updates forever, and without ever thinking that my unlimited license might mean a higher renewal cost in the future. So at the very least 3) you need to provide a down-grade-renewal option that’s 50% of the option we’re downgrading to.
You’ve made is so that our investments in your platform have an expiration now.
The software never expires. You can continue to use the products forever.
After one year, if you want to have a human available to answer your questions or want a human to continue adding code to the software, then you have the option to pay for that extra human time.
This is all fine and dandy and seems to be a minuscule issue for future purchases.
It’s not about not wanting to support Woo or that we’re being stingy with wanting to pay. Many of us would be HAPPY to pay going forward for new purchases.
The outcry is coming from the royal boning that existing loyal customers who have invested in Woo are now receiving when the terms of their initial purchase are being reneged upon. There are customers that this will effect that could potentially end up with $5k – 14k renewal fees. Even more if we can’t pay that sum of fee money before the “grace period” expires; then we have to pay the full new pricing.
If we don’t need the support but need the updates we don’t have a choice; despite this not being what we originally purchased. I mean seriously who would run outdated software on their site. It’s begging for someone to potentially hack you or will cause compatibility issues when WooCommerce/WP gets updates.
Sorry, I purchased for the lifetime updates. That was one of the key factors that led to my initial purchase. I purchased 22 WC extensions on this basis so that I do not have to worry updates costing when quoting for projects.
Now that has been changed unilaterally and retrospectively. I am pissed on the latter i.e. past purchases are affected!
I understand you can change your renewal pricing, that’s your right. But changing the original terms of the contract is NOT OK. The original term is lifetime updates (I am not even going after unlimited sites license which was also in the original contact).
You’ve made is so that our investments in your platform have an expiration now.
The software never expires. You can continue to use the products forever.
After one year, if you want to have a human available to answer your questions or want a human to continue adding code to the software, then you have the option to pay for that time.
“or want a human to continue adding code to the software, then you have the option to pay for that time.”
That’s a false claim. If you pay for an upgrade you are not getting a human to add code to the software. All you are paying for is to access the latest version of the software that a human has already added code to.
That software had to be updated for a variety of reasons anyway. Either because of security issues, bugs, or to add new features which are used to sell the product to new customers.
There is no additional costs, aside from maybe a few cents for the download, to have people access the latest version.
There is for providing individual support, but not for simply providing access to the latest code that would have been written regardless of whether you had paid your upgrade fee or not.
There is obviously nothing wrong with having this model for someone who knowingly buys the software with the understanding that this is how it works.
There is however when someone has already bought it and may have done so primarily because it was being sold as a one-time purchase, not an annual license.
That’s only true from the general’s armchair, not on the field.
WordPress plugins need to be updated to maintain security. WooCommerce extensions need to be updated to work with the current version of the WooCommerce core. Extensions that were built for WC2 probably won’t work well (or at all) with WC3.
Thx for describing my feelings adequately, @hoodoofactory.
I can contribute to the KB, I have solved many problems, just checking your code. And I can share snipplets and stuff for you.
Extending our KB is something we do every day 🙂
I agree with this comment. WooThemes I liked its stability.
I believe that a possible customer churn will push WooThemes further price increases. The higher price with WooThemes, the more customers from competitors!
Perhaps I would be wrong!
In any case WooThemes creates its products in a very competitive environment.
I think WooThemes understand all the risks!
WooThemes need to generate more sales for success..
Sorry for my English.
Which tier is WooCommerce Subsriptions in then? At $199 it has doubled in price!
It’s also doubled in functionality. 🙂
What, since yesterday?
Seriously though, I’ve been planning on using this for a client site, the costs have all been agreed and it’s a real drag that I now have to go back to the client and renegotiate. Even 10% I could handle, but not 100% – especially as the extension also requires Groups for WC (up a mere 60%) to function as required. Bundle those extensions together, and $199 could be just about OK.
If an increase of $100 is causing you pain for a recent quote, I would say now would be a good time to revisit how you quote. A website quote that is as complex as CMS + eCommerce + Subscriptions + Groups should not be thrown off by an increase of $100.
Have a read of this article, I think you will find it useful: http://planscope.io/blog/the-definitive-guide-to-project-billing/
Maybe WooThemes could look at providing similar articles to help their customers get even more value from their products?
Well said, thanks Lachlan.
Well said Lachlan.
Do you change the terms and conditions of a service with your clients after they have paid for that service and you have delivered?
It’s not about the money, it is about ethical behavior with your customers.
@lucifer666 No, I don’t change T & C after the fact, I guess my point was that you should try allow for some variance, whether it be in the form of a plugin price increase or in the form of ‘scope creep’ especially when it comes to something complex like eCommerce.
@lucifer666 No, I don’t change T & C’s after the fact, I guess my point was that you should try to allow for variances in your quote (going forward, not much you can do with existing contracts) whether that variance be in the form of a plugin price increase or in the form of ‘scope creep’ it’s business and it is bound to happen.
It’s not something you can see every time, but it should definitely be part of the quoting process.
Read into their actual post Lachlan, people who have purchased one or two extensions will be hit with minor increases. I am looking at a 14k per year price increase on extensions and plugins I have already purchased – not including what I may need in future.
The majority of my clients are very small stay at home retailers trying to get by, the majority of them sell one or two products per month. Price increases for them will drive them out, and I care about them just as much as bigger clients
This has never been the way I do business no matter what I have in my terms and conditions.
Here. Here. Well said.
Some of our most advanced extensions will carry a unique price which is outside the standard tiers. WC Subscriptions is one such extension that requires a higher price.
Hi Warren,
Please can you confirm that the Themes I purchased before 1st October 2012 still includes lifetime support and updates as per the terms at purchase?
Many thanks!
Hi,
Any purchase made before today will be will have a license which gives access to support and updates for 2 years.
That way, you do not respect old sales terms 🙁
What would say a lawyer ?
This is covered in our T&C: http://woocommerce.com/terms-conditions/
Your FAQ says:
How long will I recieve updates and support?
Each theme package includes one year of included support and updates. After one year you will no longer be able to download the theme from your dashboard, or receive support from our staff on this theme. The theme will still continue to work on your site.
There is an optional lifetime support package available when purchasing the theme for $30. The lifetime support package will also apply to the bonus themes and is good for the lifetime of the theme.
Any theme purchased before 1st October, 2012 includes lifetime support and updates.
My comment is awaiting Moderation which deals with the un-enforceability of this change. I have Tweeted Woo also, but still nothing. Very poor show chaps.
So you knew you were going to do this, but you advertised a lifetime license anyway?
I just got done purchasing Canvas under the conditions that it was licensed for life and you change the terms a couple weeks later? What part of this do you think is good business? You blatantly & knowingly mislead people to fill your pockets.
What is your refund policy? I would like one now. This is outrageous and only proves that you cannot be trusted.
Hi,
I agree with you.
It should be so.
I’am afraid they don’t care about previous terms.
They change unilaterally their system and give only 2 years support to old customers like Us :-(. Very bad way to thank their loyal and existing customers.
I hope they will decide to respect their past sale terms.
Dimitri
I have to agree, as well. I really like Woo, and good for you all that you can do this.
But the fact is, some people did pay for unlimited support for the lifetime of themes (I’m not one of them, but I know there are some out there.) It does not seem right that people who paid for that will no longer get it. (themaynedesign is right – your FAQ does specifically say you get lifetime if you buy lifetime.) You do state price changes can be made at any time in the terms, but service isn’t the same thing as a price change. You all retire themes all the time, and it even states that unlimited support only lasts for the lifetime of the theme – so even unlimited support isn’t indefinite. I would suggest you just stick with unlimited support until you do retire the themes – even if it takes you 5 years to retire them, instead of cutting people off at 2 years. I think a lot of people will not be happy with that little detail.
Moving forward, if you don’t want to offer it, that’s cool. I totally get why (and like I said, good for you all to be able to do this) But it just doesn’t seem right to not back a promise. It has a tendency to make people wonder what other promises you’ll break in the future.
Please don’t get me wrong – I really do think it’s great you can do this. Just a bit of constructive criticism from me on a bit of the “fine print”.
And math goes wrong again: If we create 25 ticket per year 25X5 = 125$ and theme only 99$. So you’ll lose 26$ and I’ll earn 12.000$
Is there any ticket limit? If I don’t want to buy support? (is there any special package for that?) For example, I was a club member for a long time but I can’t remember when I create my latest support ticket, and I’m not using your themes for creating customer site…
You can increase prices, don’t need shitty reason but logical mistake started in here and that’s not about only math…
I’m afraid we don’t have a subscription or package which is without support.
The example above with Canvas is just meant to be an illustration of the fact that we can’t make a profitable product if we continue to give unlimited support.
Maybe you should have a support package, so that you can get your extra money from the customers who are sucking up most of your resources instead of penalizing everyone.
This!
150% This!
definitely agree
Hi,
I Can say it is a really bad news for existing customers.
I personally bought all my woothemes products with an unlimited license. For most of them, they are used only for 1 or 2 sites.
Your new system heavily penalizes customers like me with unlimited licenses. You will easily understand that I do not want to pay renewal fees for unused licenses.
Could you please publish somewhere a price table with renewal prices.
Customers need to know how much they will pay after 1 year. You can not hide this kind of information. Those prices help the consumer to decide if they buy, or not, your products.
Thank you.
Dimitri
We have not yet finalized renewal prices or plans. The only thing we can share at this stage is that it’ll include a significant discount compared to the first-time purchase.
Hi Adii,
How can you start to sale products without inform your customers how much they will pay after 1 year ? This information makes part of the decision to buy or not.
Not really fair -:(
Dimitri
It better be, if I’m expected to continue paying for clients who’s sites I did years ago as a one off. I hold 39 extensions. The cost of overhead on those is going to be INSANE. The ongoing overhead is going to determine whether I stay or go as your customer, and I’m sure I won’t be alone. A lot of people think this is fine now, wait until two years from now when a giant bill comes for things they did years ago.
Let me preface my comments by stating that I don’t have any particular objection to prices being raised.
What I do have a problem with is the way that WooThemes goes about this which is a consistent history of making promises and then breaking them.
Let’s go back in time less than a year:
http://woocommerce.com/2012/08/a-club-reimagined/
“WooCommerce has grown in leaps & bounds and we have almost 150 fantastic WooCommerce Extensions available today. Club Subscribers receive an ongoing 30% discount when purchasing these.”
and…
“Discounts on WooCommerce & Plugins. This is a new value category on WooThemes and one that will become bigger & bigger moving forwards. For those Club Subscribers that use these, the available discounts represents major value.”
and…
“Similarly, it is our intent to continue releasing plugins that further extends the value within our themes; WooSlider – released this week – just being the first of these. These plugins will always be available to Club Subscribers at a discounted rate.”
More broken promises to add to previous promises broken.
Woo has established a consistent pattern of large long blog posts that justify raising prices, talk about how much better things are going to be while systematically reducing the value of the club subscription.
Promises are made that it seems Woo never actually intends to be kept (see above) but are simply stated to sooth the angry club subscribers at the time of the latest blog post who feel they’ve been lied to yet again.
Worse still is the pattern of response Woo has developed towards customers who express their anger / disappointment to these broken promises.
Time and time again if we review these blog posts we see the following:
If someone makes a particularly pertinent point that contrasts with Woo we often see a passive aggressive response against that customer along the lines of:
“Well why are you even using our themes then?”
…or…
“I can see we have answered 17 support tickets for you in the last month so what are you complaining about?”
…or the comments simply disappear.
To be frank I half expect this comment to disappear pretty quickly so I’ll be doing a full image capture of the page & comments 🙂
Like I said I don’t have a problem with prices being raised – I’m fully in support of Woo being a profitable enterprise and I understand the unexpected costs associated with supporting a massively growing customer base.
But at the very least make a decision about whether you’re going to honor the commitments and promises you’ve previously made to club members with regard to discounts and product access (the ideal solution) or show enough integrity to openly explain why you are breaking your past promises.
Instead what club members have seen is previous commitments swept quietly under the carpet.
The WCSUB 30% discount disappeared without any notification or discussion.
When club members asked they were told that the discount was only a “temporary introductory offer” – the very first time I EVER heard that and in stark contrast to the actual promises made in the past.
No company can every succeed in keeping every customer happy all of the time but when large changes are needed we can at least try to make them with integrity.
Perfect comment that hits the nail on the head.
I also didn’t realize the discount vanished until I tried to use it and it failed. Then saw it tossed in at random in a comment on one of the blog posts.
Stellar communication! Oh wait… no.
+infinity
+ a lot !!
Yep – I agree!
Sorry, I purchased for the lifetime updates. That was one of the key factors that led to my initial purchase. I purchased a lot of themes on this basis so that I do not have to worry updates costing when quoting for projects.
Now that has been changed unilaterally and retrospectively. I am pissed on the latter i.e. past purchases are affected!
I understand you can change your renewal pricing, that’s your right. But changing the original terms of the contract is NOT OK. The original term is lifetime updates (I am not even going after unlimited sites license which was also in the original contact).
Woothemes had better lift their game in all areas of it’s business to justify the model and price increases because as of today it isn’t sufficient.
We’re up for the challenge. 😉
Here is the piece I need clarity on as I think the price increases and so on are fine but this is something I think everyone needs to be clear on:
“Support and updates will be capped to one year after purchase (with the ability for you to extend this).”
I do not understand this? If I purchase say 20 plugins for wooCommerce at say 99 dollars that is 1980 dollars to get my wooCommerce site off the ground. Then the following year I must pay this or a discounted version of this again to just get access to updates? Is this correct. Alot of the plugins I see now for a single site are actually 99 dollars and using between 10-20 plugins on a wooCommerce site is actually not that strange to be honest. This would be obviosuly crazy for a small business to be paying over 1000 dollars on this kind of scenario for a small eCommerce store not even taking into account domain costs, hosting costs, upgrade costs. Shopify surely suddenly makes a whole lot of sense unless I am missing something here?
Just curious if this is the case really – why am I paying the subscription each and every month if this is all based on a licensing system now? I thought the subscription each month was for support and updates?
I distinctly remember a sale a few weeks ago where we all ran out and purchased our unlimited licenses for over 500 dollars worth to get a 30% discount. I do not believe in the unlimited license model either by the way as of course its silly in the long run but I believe the sale you ran should have been after this announcement in all fairness? I just feel a little dump for making these unlimited purchases when really I was buying a 25 license purchase right?
I agree with the pricing points in general – but the each year paying for all these purchases again scenario, well I am not understanding it really. Maybe a different set of user it makes sense for if so I might be missing the point here. Sorry if these questions are silly and I have the wrong end of stick but I need to be sure maintaining a wooCommerce site is not going to be extremely costly each year. Thanks for your time on this.
Its certainly not uncommon for a WooCommerce site to be running more than 10 plugins.
As explained in the post, by capping support and updates after the first year we can guarantee that we can provide great support for our products and justify time spent improving a plugin.
Without future income for a plugin, it will be hard for us to justify time to improve a plugin.
And, with the new licensing system you don’t have to renew your license. If you’re happy with the functionality of a plugin, there’s no need for you to renew your license 🙂
I would have to disagree here “And, with the new licensing system you don’t have to renew your license. If you’re happy with the functionality of a plugin, there’s no need for you to renew your license” it’s an eCommerce website which by its very nature needs to be secure and kept up to date, regardless of functionality the plugins will of course come across certain security enhancements and need to be updated. So I am bit surprised this coming from an employee of an eCommerce plugin company – surely the fact is if at all possible you should be updating all plugins when a new update is released?? which leads into my next question…
Also you did not address my questions to be honest in full even though I do now know that yes we do need to pay again in year 2 for all the plugins. So a pretty simple wooCommerce site is actually going to have a recurring cost of 1000 dollars give or take if you want to keep it fully up to date and secure for about 10 plugins? correct yes? Just like your blog post – this is a money question and not a matter of principals etc. One must know the recurring cost of their eCommerce store or how does one do business?
Also my membership each month – what is this for if not for support and updates? I am lost still on this point?
In your blog post you use an example of Canvas and how that scales. For the life of me I do not know why you have not used an example of a wooCommerce site with 10- 15 plugins recurring each year which is actually much more relevant.
I think what I am saying is if a client of mine uses Canvas for example and I see its great and offer that to 100 clients then of course I think you should get paid for each and every install of canvas in some shape or form if not the full price each time. What I do not understand is how this applies to wooCommerce with 20plugins as its really not affordable? Can you please provide an example of an eCommerce Store in your blog post as this would really be much more use to customers I believe?
I agree with all the points you’ve raised – thanks for saving me from typing them out. 😉
So we are now supposed to charge our clients a few hundred dollars each year to offset our cost in keeping their site plugins up to date? I’m sure they won’t mind!
And personally, I ALWAYS prefer to use a knowledgebase rather than submit a support ticket because it doesn’t take 24 hours to get a response. If the support forum had been kept it probably would have cut down on support costs AND improved response times due to the decreased load.
Don’t forget that the standing 30% discount for subscribers has also been dropped (without announcement). I understand Woo needs more money but I’m really struggling to put all the new pricing together and see it as something that’s coherent and fair.
I got clarity from Adii and Coen below that realisitically each client should epect to pay in the range of 1000 dollars per year per site to keep every ship shape each year. I just needed to get this so we could see if woocommerce is worth it in the future.
1 wooCommerce site with say 15 plugins could be around €1300 worth of plugins and then you need to build the site for the client and then any resonable website designer would offer to support a client website for a year. So you would need to either tell the client to get in touch with woothemes direct and pay the 1300 for all these plugins and explain the business model and reasoning etc or you would need to take on this for the client and pay the 100 – 1300 a year and also something on top for your own time and effort so lets say 500-750 on top of this which would mean to the client its about 2000 dollars a year to maintain a woocommerce site a year which is a tough sell indeed for smaller stores.
So in effect I would say wooCommerce is pricey in the long run for any client project so being very clear with the client upfront probably will allow one to get the good clients from the bad ones!! but yeah its massive change indeed as now all of us website designers have to move to a subscription model to support our clients in any real way or else tell our clients go to woothemes direct
Peter, of course you should be charging your clients for the software or plugins that run their business. This shouldn’t be free and certainly shouldn’t be absorbed by you or your business.
James, I do charge clients for them, in the sense that additional extensions provide additional functionality, which is chargeable. What I didn’t expect to have to do is go back to people I built sites for 1-2 years ago and tell them that they will now need to pay me $300/year to keep their WC extensions updated.
I have chosen Woo as a platform so any changes in availability, price, etc., to the components of that platform are my problems to shoulder. My clients could rightfully ask why this is their problem. I quoted a price, I created a site, they paid me my money. Now I go back and demand more money lest their plugins get outdated and potentially leave their site vulnerable to hacking.
This is very much like what Woo is doing to their customers right now and it will probably make me as popular with my clients as this move has made Woo with theirs.
James, I do charge clients for them indirectly: extensions create additional functionality and this is worth money. What I didn’t expect to have to do is go back to people I had created a site for 1-2 years ago and tell them I now want a $300 annual fee to keep their site updated lest it become vulnerable to hacking. This is very similar to what Woo are doing to their customers right now and I suspect it will make me as popular with my clients as Woo are with theirs at the moment.
James, I do charge clients for them indirectly: extensions create additional functionality and this is worth money. What I didn’t expect to have to do is go back to people I had created a site for 1-2 years ago and tell them I now want a $300 annual fee to keep their site updated lest it become vulnerable to hacking. This is very similar to what Woo are doing to their customers right now and I suspect it will make me as popular with my clients as Woo are with theirs at the moment.
Wow, sorry for the repeats. I kept getting HTTP 500 errors when posting. Derp.
“And, with the new licensing system you don’t have to renew your license. If you’re happy with the functionality of a plugin, there’s no need for you to renew your license”
Really, you’re going to recommend to people that they don’t need to keep their plugins up to date? What would Sucuri say about that?
It continuously blows my mind that “not updating” was even brought up.
What idiot in their right mind would choose NOT update. Security/incompatibility issues would run rampant down the line.
Hi I am a long term club subscriber and was grandfathered in the last price rise, is my grandfathered rate of $15 pm now going to $29? That’s some hike. I do value Woo’s worth in my business but this is quite a difference!