The updates to our pricing and business model have received a significant amount of attention over the last few days from our customers, competitors and the general WordPress community.
Within the blog post’s comments, on social channels and internally at WooThemes we’ve discussed the repercussions of the decisions we’ve made. There are some things we have gotten wrong, and we’d like to address that.
Before we do though, we want to go into a bit more detail behind our reasoning.
First off, it’s important to understand that when we offered ‘lifetime’ support for a product; this referred to the lifetime of the product. As you’ve seen previously, we’ve retired products. That’s because these products, at some stage, become no longer viable or sustainable, and we can’t justify spending time on improving that product.
More importantly, WooThemes no longer simply provides a great design and layout structure for your blog. This was what the WordPress market catered for when we initially developed our business model.
With all the innovation that’s happened within the WordPress system; we’re now able to build functionality that allow businesses to exist online. We empower an incredible amount of businesses to generate revenue and build livelihoods. These businesses depend on us to be around for a very long time.
For some that might be a simple one pager, a brochure site, an online catalog, or even a fully fledged e-commerce site. In the digital era where we find ourselves today; your business needs an online presence.
With the pricing and licensing updates we announced, we want to make sure that your business will be able to thrive. In order for that to happen, WooThemes would need to have a sustainable business model and make sure that we were able to keep the promises we made.
It’s clear that most users agree that we’re well justified in increasing our prices and adapting our business model. We’re extremely happy about that.
(Thanks to everyone that has left a note of support on the blog, social media or sent us a private message. We really appreciate that! Although some feedback was difficult to swallow it was important for us to hear from you all.)
What many don’t seem to be happy about is that we’re changing the terms of a product you’ve already paid for. Specifically, that we’ve now capped support and updates for 2 years on any purchase before the 1st of August.
Obviously, that’s not an ideal situation. We wish we could have made you a more realistic promise.
Our decision in this regard was influenced entirely with our eyes on sustainability in being around for a long time. We assumed that this was in the whole WooCommunity’s best interest and that every one of our customers would want to support us in that goal. Even if that meant that you would have to compromise or sacrifice certain terms / conditions that were previously attached to your purchase.
We’re sorry for making that assumption.
We’re also sorry for the way we communicated this in our previous post. Reading & re-reading our words, we might’ve come across as being defensive. We would be telling you a lie if we said that we weren’t concerned about potential negative feedback; so we probably focused too much on justifying our decision. Instead we should’ve appealed to you.
To do right by you, we would now like to give you the option of whether you want to back our strategy for sustainability or whether you would want to stick to the previous terms & conditions that you signed into (which means we’ll grandfather all of your purchases). If you choose the latter, your purchases before 1 August 2013 (that were already unlimited or lifetime) will remain unlimited and lifetime forever.
We won’t value you as a customer any less if you want to be grandfathered, nor do we want to coerce you to adopt the changes if you fundamentally disagree in how we’ve gone about the re-structure. The decision is entirely yours.
Our Appeal For Support
↑ Back to topAs we have admitted, we have made a real mistake in pricing our products and the business that we built around it. We only realized this about 18 months ago, as the effects of those mistakes have silently been chipping away at our business. 18 months ago the cracks widened and we noticed them for the first time.
The new changes are designed to right our previous wrongs and ensure that we never have to worry about this again.
So we call on all of you to support us in this regard and adopt the new pricing plan. By doing so, you will ensure that WooThemes stays around for a very long time.
You will also support our vision to really invest in innovation, as well as building out our support offering to the extent that we can give you insanely awesome support every, single time.
How do I update my licenses?
Simply visit your licenses page once you’re logged in. From there, if you’re eligible to have your unlimited licenses grand-fathered in, you’ll be able to update all your unlimited licenses bought before the 1st August 2013.
We’ve updated the FAQs around our licensing system, you can view those here. Please feel free to contact us should anything be unclear.
We’ve ended our Theme Clubs. If you were previously an active, paying member you should have been grandfathered into the All Themes Package.
About
I already thought the first post made sense, but this is just icing on the cake. Congrats to being one of the most transparent companies out there, your customers are lucky to have you.
Thanks, Noel 🙂
Agreed. I second Noel’s sentiments wholeheartedly. THANK YOU WooThemes for being transparent, upfront, honest, and human.
Interesting, I emailed support about honouring the lifetime updates or if that cant be done to see if you’d issue a refund. I was told that I should see my refund within 5 days.
Glad that this will please some people. I’m finished with the games.
The 5 days is banking not policy. Thank you for allowing us to clear that up.
Good call … and I’ll be happy to re-instate my licences **and** purchase new themes under the new pricing model.
Please
Woo, I’m so happy about this announcement!
Reading your first post and all the comments made me feel like this was an unsolvable problem for you and your customers. Giving the choice to your customers is THE SOLUTION to it. Perfect!
I hope this will help your company to regain your customers trust and friendliness.
Warren,
Thanks for coming back on the previous post in a very professional matter, to my opinion.
Personally I really loved the WooThemes team and products until the last post where I got a shocker first class.
However it is more then great to see that you guys really do listen to your customers and I think it’s more then awesome that now you give your clients the choice whether or not to support you with the new pricing models related to previous purchases or to honor the purchases earlier made.
As I mentioned in the previous post I fully support the new pricing model and really do hope Woo too be around for a very long time indeed. However I fully disagreed with not honoring previous purchases and then mostly because of the way it was brought.
However after this post I will think a while about if I will adopt the new pricing model for my previous purchases as well… with this post you really fully restored my trust in Woo plus a bit extra.
Again, a big thanks and good luck with the changes!
– Mark
Glad to hear that Mark 🙂
I see you took a course in PR between these posts. Well done on that, but I have a feeling the damage is already done for many people. What started as a plan for you to be sustainable and last well into the future may end up leading to your early closure. Hopefully it won’t come to that (for the sake of current customers), but I wouldn’t be surprised.
I’m confident it won’t Geoffrey, and data is already suggesting the changes will help push us to the next level.
You can never build a business model around people who expect everything for nothing, and you can most certainly expect the same people to complain the loudest about everything you do.
@John Gillespie You mean the 100,000 customers?
Sorry for the cynicism but can you confirm that there will be no future attacks on Lifetime / Unlimited licenses in the future?
Creating the next ‘version’ of a product in lets say, 2 years, leaving us with products at their ‘end of life’ is the obvious manoeuvre to those of us left with a bitter taste in our mouths. I don’t believe the community would swallow it then either, but you will have had 2 years breathing space to rebuild your brand.
Your statement in bold about ‘Lifetime of the Product’ gives me pause for thought. Can you categorically confirm this will not happen? If you can’t will you refund those of us who no longer trust Woo to do the right thing?
I’m also left wondering along the same lines as thebastion. I hate to be wary but at this point it can’t be helped.
I agree, thank goodness I haven’t used woothemes on too many client sites.
I built my pricing around what woothemes offered. Sure, it was a good deal, that’s why I bought it.
I’m not adverse to the new pricing model, as a matter if fact I subscribe to more than a few products. What I am adverse to is changing the terms after I purchased the product. So, now I am expected to change the terms with my clients? Sorry, I don’t roll that way.
I’m tired of being at the “mercy” of a company that thinks its ok to change their mind like they change thier underwear, and change thier terms to already purchased products. Who’s to say in 2 years time they don’t retire every theme that still has lifetime customers, or renames Canvas? (They’ve made it abundantly clear that its their prerogative to do so)
It’s not the new pricing model that’s got me worried, it’s the ongoing changes, and ethics.
Hi Roxy,
Just to be clear, we don’t expect you to change your terms with your clients, which is why we’ve given you the option for lifetime support and updates.
You can also see our timelines for themes and when we have retired them they have legitimately been very old and not selling any more.
Great job in giving your users an option. It shows the values of your company 🙂 Proud of you guys.
Thanks Syed 🙂
It’s stuff like this that makes me proud to be a WooThemes patron. Thanks for the transparency.
Thanks for sticking with us!
Just another thought/idea: What about offering yearly subscriptions at a discounted rate as well?
Hi,
Wouldn’t that complicate the current model?
The optional renewing of a license after 1 year is already discounted with 50%.
Wow, I’d missed the first post completely, but having read through and all that, I completely agree, there’s no point in running yourselves into the ground financially, as then you wouldn’t be of any use of any of us WooTheme users.
This new model makes perfect sense to me, however the one thing that isn’t totally clear is for the subscribers (such as myself). Does the limited licenses / support etc apply to subscribers as well? How is that going to work with things as we’re paying a monthly fee, regardless of how many sites we make up, and it doesn’t really say (or if it does, I missed it completely) in either of your blog posts how that would work for us?
Does it mean that when we use a theme we need to purchase additional licenses on top of our subscription to make use of them etc?
Many thanks
Andy T 🙂
Hey Andy
There are no licenses with subscriptions, and there is no domain usage. If you have a Club Subscription you can use the themes on as many sites as you want.
The only thing that changed with the club subscriptions was an increase in pricing, and that does not affect any current club subscribers; you stay on the same monthly fee 🙂
Cheers Warren. Reading it again, that does make sense, but I thought it better to ask.
Like I say, the whole thing makes perfect sense to me. As you say, I get the themes, save hours of my time and get a better end result because of it.
Thanks (as many others have said) for the transparency. Besides the great themes and plugins, it’s what makes you guys stand out from the crowd!
Andy T 🙂
To add to Warren’s reply, please see our FAQ: http://woocommerce.com/frequently-asked-questions/#license-8
Please give us any feedback if you feel the FAQ doesn’t explain it properly. Thanks!
Cheers Magnus. Seems good to me. 🙂
Andy T 🙂
I honestly don’t know of any company as transparent as you guys. Wonderful job!
WooThemes opted us out of the original licensing agreement and now want us to opt back in.
Hmmmm…
Once again this is a deceptive business practice on your part.
I should not have to opt-in to my original licensing agreement (after all it still stands).
Opting out of our new pricing / licensing only requires a couple of clicks and less than a minute. 😉
Then YOU should spend the few minutes and update everyone’s accounts – we customers having to opt in to what was already agreed upon is disingenuous on your part.
Couldn’t agree with this more. Why not existing customers opt-in to the 2 year deal, if it’s such a positive for all concerned?
Hi Woo’s
I too had some how missed the last post about this, but looking back it made sense you can’t just run yourself into the ground. It’s not often that any company will (in public) explain prices rises, but you have and that is great and the reasons make complete sense.
I’m not sure what the hullabaloo is about really, you can’t expect any product to be supported forever – do people think that something you bought 10 years ago would still be supported today… does Microsoft do that? nope, they have a lifespan of a product and the support they offer. Does apple do it now, they have a product warranty. Do webdesigners and developers offer it, hell no!
So why should Woo? there is no reason other than for a few developers to make a few more quid from each plugin or theme they use.
I’ve logged in and said i support the new system, you guys are awesome please keep up the good work.
I think any purchase before Aug 1 needs to be honoured at the terms at the time of sale. That is just plain and simple business practice whether it is a drain on your business or not. You made those rule, you need to stick by them.
Knowing I would need to pay yearly to keep my extensions alive would have probably kept me away from WooCommerce. Thankfully it’s only on 4 extensions but everything adds up for a small ecommerce home based business.
@juliankidd “…whether it is a drain on your business or not.”
Are you serious? That’s a rather short-sighted thought, don’t you think? As someone who owns and operates a multi-million dollar company, I applaud Woo for making a tough call…one that they knew would be controversial and unpopular. Sometimes it is a matter of survival.
I will never understand people who would rather see their vendors go out business than than to do what is necessary to continue to provide quality services and products to their customers. It would be one thing if Woo was screwing with people simply to pad their pockets, but that’s not the case. Just look at their old model. Any analytical examination shows they have no good option but to change their model to one that is sustainable.
I also applaud them for giving prior customers a choice. I’m not sure I would have done that, frankly…but kudos to them for being so customer-centric.
@WooThemes “… From there, if you’re eligible to have your unlimited licenses grand-fathered in, you’ll be able to update all your unlimited licenses bought before the 1st August 2013.”
I’m reading from that quote and within my account that only “unlimited licenses” have the option of grandfather-ing. What of the Single and 5 Site licences?
The issue customers have is related to all purchases, not just unlimited licenses.
All licenses will be updated, not just your unlimited licenses. I’ll fix the wording there to make it clear 🙂
All of us who run online businesses can take notes from your handling of this. Thanks for being so open.
I am going with your new business model, and won’t be claiming the lifetime update. I’m throwing my hat in with you guys because I recognise that the value you provide offers so much to my own future business growth…and so long as you continue to grow and improve your support, that is good news for all of us.
Thanks Woo.
Great news, we hope to impress 🙂
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.” – Sir Walter Scott.
I think it’s important to note that we never intended or planned to deceive anyone. It wasn’t like we’ve been plotting this situation this for years, acquiring customers under terms we know to be false, just to eventually screw everyone.
As we’ve communicated on countless occasions, the decisions we made were based on data that became aware to us about 18 months ago. The mistakes we made were unknown to ourselves for a very long time.
So if you were actively deceived, then we also deceived ourselves. 🙂
First, you decommission our themes and don’t offer replacement skins or alternate solutions.
Then you shut down our Support Forums which were used heavily by us to avoid support tickets.
Then you get hacked and nearly lose everything because of no backups.
Finally, you try to alter our original licensing agreements. Opting-in is lame since WE never opted out.
You have purposefully taken your customers on a roller-coaster ride and, I for one am not riding anymore.
Yes, I’d say you HAVE indeed deceived yourselves.
Read the well-written comments on WP Tavern and, perhaps you will understand why you have pissed your customers off.
Good bye WooScrew; Hello StudioPress.
Hi Marcus,
We’ve only retired very old themes which were not selling any more, so they were not sustainable. There is less reason to retire themes with our new model if customers renew their license, showing that they support for the product. We always offer big discounts if we do retire themes, so you can buy a newer theme.
We closed our old support forums when we moved to a ticket based system, but we opened them up again as a community-driven forum. You can still use them as they have all our old posts.
I’m sorry if this all feels like a roller coaster ride, as this is never the intention, but I do have confidence we have put our business on the correct path to be sustainable for a long time.
There are many well written blog posts about our price changes, and we’ve read all of them as we do appreciate any feedback we can get.
I really appreciate the transparency and the humility in this post. I would have loved to see it in the first post.
As someone who has paid for Woo Products for 3+ years, I had no issue with you wanting to adjust pricing models to sustain your business. Those types of decisions are hard and necessary. As a consumer I understand that 100%.
My biggest difficulty with any of it was the tone of the last post. It felt like we were being told since we have been getting such an amazing value all these years, you had every right to change pricing and we should thank you for it. The “you make x amount of dollars from things we build so this move is justified” just really rubbed me the wrong way as a long time supporter.
Thanks for following up. And here’s to your long-term success!
I’m sorry about that Ryan, I hope you understand that wasn’t my intention at all.
It’s cool, Warren 🙂
Unfortunately I had that impression too. I mean, look at it the way round, if it was not for customers/early adopters of Woo products, where would be Woo now? Gratitude should be mutual, early adopters should be rewarded, not backstabbed. Early adopters and customers will reward the provider by continuing purchasing products, recommending it to friends/colleagues/other professionals etc. and contributing to the company growth. The previous post sounded too much like “oh we are delivering to you such great products and we’re making you rich, you should be thankful, and you should handle to us a share of your profits because of course we assume you are making a profit because of us”. I’m not quoting of course, but if you go through the comments here and elsewhere you’ll notice that’s what people perceived. Also, I’m not sure what’s the average Woo customer (and why should I know anyway?), but their new pricing policy will discourage categories likes students, no profit entities, amateurs who just want a theme for their blog, professionals from developing countries to buy their products. Even though I don’t have any data, I’m quite sure there must have been a lot of these categories among the early adopters and they won’t be too happy of course.
It wasn’t our intention to come across the way it eventually did, and we’re sorry for that. We greatly value our early adopters, and really hope you value that we’ve given you lifetime support and updates, even though this will cost our business in the long run.
We are aware that our new price changes will alienate some customers, and obviously that is a very negative thing with any price increase, but we need to make sure our business is profitable 5-10 years from now.
Hi,
As a website developer, I do not really need support.
If I use it, it is more because I’ve discovered a bug and this one needs to be corrected fast.
I’d love to get all the update ( for security and bugs) for all my previous licenses.
I do not know what other developers think about it but I understood with the comments on your previous post that all developers would love to be able to keep their themes or extensions up to date for live but 50%/year of the original price is too expensive (100% of the price if not upgraded directly seems to be unacceptable).
I would suggest, for those who do not really need support, to be able to choose to have it or not. By the way, you could charge maybe 10% a year for developers to get products updates without support.
Updates cost you nothing and are very important for security and bugs.
Dimitri
Updates don’t cost us nothing. That work needs to be done by skilled developers, and some updates, aren’t just bug fixes or security updates. We’re constantly making improvements to our product, and refactoring any code we feel isn’t up to standard.
Improvements needs to be done any way to get new customers. If you do not make improvement, your products will not be in the market and customers goes somewhere else.
I’m 110% sure our success until now is testament of our product quality and the continuous improvement thereof. It’s in our DNA.
So this isn’t something that I’m / we’re concerned about at all.
As visitionweb said, improvements should be made to keep customers.
I agree that there should be a separate cost for support, perhaps you pay 20% of the cost yearly if no support is required, and 50% if support is required.
The problem with support is I rarely use it fix a problem that is my fault, it’s usually a bug I’ve found with the plugin and then the author fixes the bug. This is more like us doing beta testing for you, and paying you for the privilege!
See me comment below about de-bundling support + product.
I agree with @visitonweb. The major cost in the item you cited was the support tickets. How about an “updates only” option for 25% yearly, or a subscription that includes X number of Extensions/themes without support? This would pay for their continued development, but doesn’t have to pay for support we’re not using.
+1 to this
The signs of an honourable business is the ability to admit when you make a mistake and then fix it. Warren I am delighted at this change in heart. I love WooThemes and I am so glad I do not have to find an alternative.
I am more than happy to pay the new prices on new purchases going forward, but I am especially delighted that my existing purchase agreements will be honoured.
Well done guys. You restored my faith.
Di
Well done Woo. Thank you for your transparency, for listening to your customers, and your willingness to find a compromise. I hope that this solution meets your needs as a business, and the needs of your customers. I know I’ll continue to be one for the foreseeable future.
Thanks Mzak, really happy to hear!
I’m glad Woo are taking steps to ensure their business survives and I can understand how frustrating it must be seeing sites that are generating huge incomes using software you’re making a loss on, but as a non-commercial user (heck, I update my site so infrequently I’m not sure I could even be classified as using it) I know I wouldn’t have made my original theme purchases had I known about the licensing changes. Not because I don’t value the products or the work that goes into them by you guys, I just couldn’t justify spending that much money ($70/$99 is a huge chunk of change for some people, especially for a non-essential). While I do genuinely appreciate that the licenses have been grandfathered in, the wording of it did make me a little prickly, especially on the page where you click one button or the other; it is perfectly possible for a person to support Woo (wouldn’t that be why we’re customers in the first place?) but just not have the money to spend every year, especially on something we thought we’d only be buying once. Genuine gestures shouldn’t come with guilt trips guys.
Its not designed to be a guilt trip 🙂
Some users may not see those blog posts at all, so we wanted to make sure that they were able to get to them. I also needed a way of allowing users save in our system that they were ok with the changes, so that the messages wouldn’t then come up for them.
Seems like a good option, particularly for those folks that may have taken advantage of the recent promotion. Kudos for the adjustment.
I don’t have to use support often but in many ways have built my business around WooThemes offerings. You long term viability is important to me and my clients.
eCom is hard stuff, I can’t imagine the support resources it consumes! Hopefully the new model helps both paying for support, but also giving people pause before they take on a self-hosted ecom shop. For small places there are some good hosted models out there that work just fine. (I in fact have a little concept I’m planning on useing on big cartel because the overhead of a full ecom set up is likely to much for now.)
Hope the more robust biz model allows more work on plugins. Testimonials and Feedback are a bit duplicative. Testimonials seems to be your path forward but is missing some nice options you have in “Feedback”. (I’m sure this is part of the transition of moving functions from themes and into plugins)
I would love to see a robust “Section Navigation” solution along the lines of this seemingly abandoned project http://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-section-navigation/
I’m not going anywhere, keep on rocking Woo!
The first post caused me a lot of worry over the last few days. After being made redundant I was looking at setting up my own ecommerce site. Having used canvas for some personal sites in the past the timing was right with the announcement of woocommerce.
Looking at the pricing options etc at the time it made sense to me this was a good way to go (though I spent far more on extensions for added functionality that I hadn’t anticipated but I kept eating them up regardless). The announcement that I’d then have to pay a running cost was a big blow and had I known about them up front I’d have given serious thoughts to other ecommerce options out there. It was this turn around that was the biggest blow, suddenly an extra cost that I hadn’t factored into my business plan.
Now hopefully the business turns into a success, for now I’m going to opt out but I certainly feel people should be paid for their time and work. I have been eyeing up other woocommerce extensions and knowing the cost up front I can make those purchases with my eyes open. This news has come as a great relief to me at this point and should things prosper in the future I wouldn’t be adverse to opting back into the new pricing model.
When I woke up this morning I will admit that I never expected the outcome to be in our (existing license holders) favour; even more so when I read the first bit of their article.
I was wrong. Woo has allowed us to reclaim our original license terms. Thank you Woo Team for honouring our existing terms.
I’d be lying if I said this experience hasn’t left me very wary going forward but I’m more likely to purchase new items now under the new model than I was over the last few days (prior to this article there was a 0% chance of that).
I’d like to point out that even if we choose to “re-claim” (which I don’t think we should have to do it should have been a given) that doesn’t mean we’re not in support of your new model. The wording of this article made it sound like if we revert to our original purchases terms we are against the new Woo model of sustainability; and that just simply is not the case.
Lastly I’d like to thank everyone who stepped up and spoke out against what was happening to existing license holders; you’re the reason that we’re seeing this follow up article.
Just a note re: opting out of the new support model for past purchases.
We understand that on future purchases all customers thus “support” the new pricing & support models. The support we’re talking about above though is different.
We’re basically asking past customers with unlimited licenses to commit to the new support model. This means that we get to save some cost and those customers are thus taking on a new personal cost to themselves (renewal fees after the 2 years). This way we’re (WooThemes & past customers) are essentially sharing the expense related to our previous mistake(s) and inefficient pricing / support models.
I think you are still completely ignoring the people who have not used any of the support channels you offer, even once.
Our data suggests this “type of customer” is an outlier.
So whilst I understand where your comment comes from, our business / pricing model doesn’t have the ability to de-bundle product + support (and essentially “cater” for outliers.
Definitely understand what you’re saying. I also understood it in the article as well; it just felt a bit like a “one or the other”. Even though I know that it wasn’t meant that way I wanted to re-affirm we support you going forward.
Thank you for listening to our voices and giving myself and many others a pleasant Monday surprise.
It just blows my mind that you think we, paying customers, are responsible for your terrible mistakes.
We PAY you for your services and products, and they’re great services and products, but this whole mentality that we need to share the expense for your problems is just crazy to me.
I will never use a wootheme product ever again.
That’s why we’re giving you the choice: support us or don’t support us. That remains your decision. 🙂
I agree that it’s just bad business. You act as if we are all in this community together, but then you make major changes to pricing that affect your community of users without bothering to consult them or consider their needs, or even give them options.
When you were first getting feedback you initially rejected everything people were saying as if they have no choice or say at all. It’s only because of the extreme outrage that you are now forced to make these changes. You are not making them because you want to, but because you have to.
I think Warren was spot-on in the post above for saying sorry for the defensive nature of our initial communication.
The same goes for our comments subsequent to that. We had loads of individuals having a real go at us (for something that we believed in and something that had good intentions) and our natural response was to defend that. That’s obviously the wrong way to go about this and we should’ve been more objective from the very first comment.
Sorry about that!
WooThemes’ existing customers, now operating from a context and frame of reference of distrust, will find little of value in this walk-back. WooThemes is still adamant about externalizing the costs of its previous business mistakes on its current customers.
Additionally, what appears to be a grandfathering of the original license terms for existing customers at first glance falls apart under closer examination as I parse here:
http://www.farces.com/woothemes-walks-back-its-retroactive-license-terms-changes/
Well said (blog post). There really is no transparency or solution here. Just a bunch of PR bull that will unfortunately fool many of the Woo customers.
Hi @Geoffrey we are legitimately trying our best as a company to do right by our customers. We are truly trying to ensure our business model is sustainable and feel that our latest response ensures we look after customers who made a purchase before August 1.
You ask: “On what planet does it make sense for us to pay for your “previous mistake(s) and inefficient pricing/support models?”
IMO there’s never a harm in asking. Heck, I think that’s the basis of any business: if you don’t ask, then you will never know.
We’re not holding a gun to your head in supporting us in this regard; it’s your choice. Many WooThemes customers will (and have already) decided that it’s in their best interest to support us in this regard. So surely I can answer your initial question by saying that this happens “on their planet”!?
Hi,
Not to be too skeptical but it seems that requiring the ‘opt-in’ is simply a way of creating an ‘enemies list’ that will not really receive support anyways.
I myself have used you support twice. The first time I was told ‘it works here’ and the ticket was closed. The second time I received a little more information and a workaround as the problem was a bug in the plugin I was using. I never did receive full information and I had to figure out the correct usage of the product myself and the documentation was woefully inadequate.
The support was still pretty arrogant and unresponsive. I have been learning what I needed elsewhere. When I decided to go with Woo it was after a LOT of research and the ORIGINAL community forum played a big role. I have been a professional software developer since 1980 (C++) and what I really need is updates for the inevitable bug fixes and really good documentation. And yes, I DO NOT want to pay you for helping you fix your bugs, but that is what you are asking.
So, I am going to go join the enemies list now…
-James Leonard
There is no enemy list, I guarantee you 🙂 No customer will be treated will ever be treated differently.
What he said. 100%
On a side note, if it’s not being done already, it would be great if you sent out an email communication to all your users regarding this.
Many might not know what is going on if they don’t read the blogs.
I’ll be sending out a mail mid-week 🙂
Excellent to hear. 🙂
I am sorry, but I just don’t share everyone’s joy at this announcement.
Not until a Woo employee comes back and tells us that our Lifetime / Unlimited purchases are just that.
I have a sneaking suspicion that in a year or two, when the dust settles, the subscriptions extension might be shut down as it’s ‘end of life’ and be replaced with ‘Easy Recurring Payments’ or some such title.
Until there is a promise, in writing that all subsequent releases of extensions are part of the grandfathering scheme, and I mean that functionality isn’t just replaced by another extension, then my opinion of Woo remains the same as it did yesterday.
The Woo apologist Chris Lema already stated as much in his comments on this post;
http://chrislema.com/pricing-lies-we-tell-ourselves/
I would honestly hope that your scenario isn’t the case. I think that would cause just as big an uproar.
@thebastion:
We’ve never been superficial in the way that we upgrade or label new product releases. And when we have retired extensions (twice I believe) in favour of something new, we’ve given all users of those extensions access to the new one’s for free.
You can also see our timelines for themes and when we have retired them they have legitimately been very old. They also haven’t been replaced by the same thing, just with another name.
Neither of these makes sense in our business or the new pricing / support model.
Our biggest cost was related to providing active support (which relates to # of tickets generated & how many sites a product is used on). The new pricing model wasn’t designed to increase revenues by charging renewals; it was just designed to cover those ongoing support & maintenance costs.
Adii,
On face value that is everything I want to hear. I hope that we don’t see a reversal in this approach.
You have many customers who no doubt all have varying needs and budgets and I can see it is difficult to please everyone, but you took on that job when you started Woo. It appears you can appreciate why people were angry at Woo by your actions today, but please know that this was never about money for me and I am sure many others who felt let down in a massive way. No one like to be deceived and that’s how it felt.
Lets hope that trust can be rebuilt over time, with some more amazing products and Woo sticking to the policy announced today. I’m not sure i’ll be rushing to spend more money with you just yet as i’m still getting my head round this, but I like the product enough to do so in the future when we see things play out.
Thanks again for responding.
I understand that once trust has been broken, it’ll take time to re-establish that. I trust in our team, our products and support though and I hope that we’ll have your (and the greater WooCommunity’s) trust back in no time. 🙂
Time will tell for sure if that happens, but I doubt it. I remember on Friday giving you advice from your own book about backing up your words with actions.
“If what you say and what you do aren’t the same, your customers would feel that you’re just fooling with them.”
You laughed and asked me if I read the chapter about which customers make you the most money.
“Did you also read the chapter where I wrote that not all customers are equal?”
Here is some advice from me, it’s free. You should always value every customer of yours equally, because you never know when a small customer can turn into a much bigger one.
A forward thinking businessman looks at the smaller guy and says how can I help him grow his business, which will then grow my business. The cowboy businessman just thinks about how to get rid of the smaller guys so they can make more money faster.
Greed and ego are a deadly combination.
I totally agree and especially with this: “Here is some advice from me, it’s free. You should always value every customer of yours equally, because you never know when a small customer can turn into a much bigger one.”
I however stick to saying that not all customers are equal, which at the core means that some customers (prospective or existing) just aren’t a good fit for a company (regardless of whether that is Woo or not).
I also believe that it’s simply impossible to please all customers all the time. And I’ve personally seen some customers repeatedly act in a disrespectful way.
Those – for me, as a business owner – are just the realities of playing this game.
Umm… So you don’t think that telling half-truths to customers is disrespectful?
Like telling them you are going to be increasing prices, “hurry up and go buy now”, but not telling them you are also changing “unlimited” licenses to 2 years?
Ok, whatever…..
“The new pricing model wasn’t designed to increase revenues by charging renewals; it was just designed to cover those ongoing support & maintenance costs.”
But Adii, when people suggested this initially and said they had no problem with reduced or limited support but just want the updates, you guys refused to do that.
That was mentioned over and over again as a solution. Why did you refuse to listen if this was always about your support costs?
Umm, I’m not following you here. We’ve always said that our cost relate to maintenance & support (which includes updates). The latter might be the smallest driver of that expense, but a driver nonetheless.
I’ll also point out that a handful of comments suggested that they were happy to forego lifetime support, but expected lifetime updates.
Ultimately the overbearing message we got was that the grandfathering of past licenses was very important to some customers. So we’ve just addressed this by giving all customers the option of whether to grandfather their licenses or accept the new pricing.
I supported you in your first decision, although I can understand frustrations from the current users. I applaud you in revisiting this change and I believe you have given us an option that is brave on your part. Cheers Woo!
And we just have to all remember as business owners, sh*t happens 😉
It’s better, but still offending. Respecting a contract should not be optional. For me the proposal to change the terms from now on are understandable and I agree. But you can’t change the rules for your early adopters breaking the contract. Anyway, the way it is now (you never know what’s gonna be tomorrow with them), it’s very healthy for the WP community. Let’s hope that this episode will be buried soon. Still, it’s hard to swallow the promotion that they run just few days before they broke the contract.
To be clear:
1) I want to keep products updates for life for my existing licenses (I don’t care about support).
2) I found recurring prices in your new licenses system are too expensive (50% is too much and 100% if not renewed on time is not acceptable).
As i do not need support, that mean that if recurring prices are too expensive, I will probably not buy any new products on Woothemes.com.
1) Just follow the prompts in your My Account dashboard and you can revert your licenses to have lifetime updates (where applicable to previous purchases that had them before last week’s changes).
2) That’s your choice. Hopefully the quality of our products, support & updates will persuade you otherwise.
For developers, you should really think about a system for UPDATES ONLY WITHOUT SUPPORT.
In your first blog, you were complaining about your support costs.
Support should be paid only by people who use it.
If I need support, I would accept to pay a fix amount by ticket.
Any ticket concerning a bug should be free.
Thoughts?
Dimitri