We’ve come to a difficult decision: as of today, we’re no longer selling Canvas.
- WordPress is constantly evolving, and Canvas is no longer a good option for site builders using newer versions of WordPress – we don’t want to recommend a theme we don’t think will serve you in the future.
- We’ll continue to provide support for active subscriptions, and for a year from today for lifetime subscriptions.
- We’ve created a comprehensive plan for all our Canvas customers going forward. We aren’t simply dropping the theme, we are going to walk this road with you.
We know that this is a big change for you, but we believe it will set your sites up for better success in the future. Read on for more details about how we got here and how we can help moving forward.
Themes are changing
We launched Canvas in February 2010 — one of the first themes we created using the WooFramework — and it became one of our most popular. Canvas moved themes forward by innovating on the concept of theme frameworks, empowering builders to create some amazing sites. We’ve seen Canvas used to create lovely experiences on personal blogs, political websites, record stores offering thousands of products with WooCommerce integration, and more.
The WordPress theming world will experience a new wave of innovation over the next two years. The rise of page builders and the many multipurpose themes means more and more people expect easy-to-use customization tools for WordPress. Current work on the WordPress core Editor and Customizer will evolve how we build and use themes, and the Gutenberg plugin will fundamentally change how themes and content within WordPress are created.
Canvas isn’t built to keep up with the changes
While still early, we believe strongly that Gutenberg is the future. We’ve decided to invest our resources in preparing our products for it in order to bring you the best experience. Unfortunately, that won’t include Canvas.
When I first joined WooThemes in 2009, we had just created a new theming framework dubbed the “WooFramework” and had begun building themes on top of it. It has been one of our biggest strengths, and ultimately one of our biggest challenges as well. Canvas benefitted from the WooFramework, which was created at a time when the Customizer didn’t yet exist and theme options were becoming popular.
At the time, it was a great solution. However, over time we kept adding features to the theme; this added to the complexity of the code, and ultimately made it more difficult for Canvas to evolve with shifts like the Customizer and the Gutenberg Project.
That brings us to Canvas 6.

We built two iterations of Canvas 6; one made it as far as alpha testing stage with a select group of existing Canvas customers. Thankfully, this feedback helped us realize we built something customers didn’t want. Our intention was then to keep working on Canvas and to find the best solution for where Canvas was heading.
So we went back to the drawing board and did extensive research into how we could bring Canvas in line with the Customizer and to smooth out theme activation and setup.
During this work, we came to the realization that the legacy of the WooFramework, Canvas Theme Options, and the overall complexity of the theme meant that Canvas was just too far behind similar themes in the ecosystem.
This includes our other flagship theme, Storefront, which was built on top of the Underscores starter theme, which better prepares the theme for the future.
Bringing Canvas in line with current WordPress standards and feature compatibility — specifically, making it fully compatible with the Customizer and the upcoming Editor changes — requires a complete overhaul of Canvas’ underlying logic as well as how the theme functions. It would be a completely different experience, one that we knew our users didn’t want.
Overhauling the theme wouldn’t serve our users, yet continuing to sell it as-is wasn’t the right decision. So we made the difficult decision to say goodbye.
We aren’t publishing the Canvas code because it won’t serve the community
We considered publicly posting the code for Canvas, but ultimately decided that extending its lifetime will not serve the community. It’s in the best interest of our users and the community to eventually move to another theme:
- The WooFramework code contains a large amount of soon-to-be-outdated code (for backwards compatibility), and the theme would require regular maintenance to maintain the existing code standards.
- Because of the legacy of theme options and lack of Customizer support, Canvas doesn’t pass the current standards on WordPress.org — that’s something we value highly.
- No matter what kind of warnings we could place in a README in the repository, someone would need to triage this repository, which takes focus away from bringing you a better experience in other products in the future.
Going forward, we suggest users make a change — and we’re here for you
We are no longer selling Canvas, but we are not stopping support and bug fixes for it. We will continue to provide you with the same level of support that your theme subscription has always included.
That means that;
- You can continue to use the same support channels for Canvas that currently exist.
- You can continue to access all existing documentation for Canvas.
- We will fix bugs that are reported.
- We will keep Canvas compatible with the latest releases of WooCommerce and WordPress until all existing Canvas support subscriptions have lapsed. Lifetime subscriptions will end on October 24, 2018, and all other subscriptions will end at their currently scheduled date.
- We will assist you in migrating to a new theme with helpful documentation, including theme suggestions.
It’s important to note that you have time to make a decision on a new theme. One of the main reasons we’re no longer selling Canvas is that we feel it won’t be in your best interests to use it in the future, knowing where WordPress is going to be in the not so distant future. Canvas isn’t going to immediately stop working — it just won’t support the next generation of WordPress features.
As a practical step, we believe that Storefront is the best replacement for Canvas, both for developers as well as anyone building sites without modifying their theme’s code.
Developers loved Canvas for the hooks and filters extensibility, and Storefront has this and more. It was built from the ground up specifically for this purpose. There are a variety of extensions offering similar functionality to Canvas. And most importantly, it is well-positioned to support both the Customizer (right now) and Gutenberg (in the future).
Your success going forward
We value you as our community, and we want to position you and your sites to be as successful as possible. Canvas has been a popular choice for agencies and developers, something we are proud of, but it’s no longer the best way to ensure your success.
We’re here to support as you figure out what it looks like to change themes. We firmly believe that this is a step towards helping you build better sites and better experiences on the web.
If you have questions or concerns, do not hesitate to get in touch with one of our Happiness Engineers.
About
waw, thanks… really good news… Thanks a bunch “Woothemes“ … 🙁
This is the second theme y’all have dropped from me. Costly and painful. Lesson learned, no more woo themes
Same for me. The alternative is to use old technology. Retiring the old is a part of progress.
Hi John,
I’d like to hear more from you about how the retirements have affected you, could you contact our Happiness Engineers so we can continue the conversation?
We learn from feedback from our customers, and this is why with this retirement we have tried to make migration to a newer theme easier.
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Same with me. If I can avoid Woo I will. I will tell you why. You have stopped being honest publicly. You new Canvas was being retired back in february. I know because when I asked support of what was happening they said I should look elsewhere. When I discussed this on Facebook groups Woo employees denied it. Said no way was it retirering. I believed them. And you still let us buy it. In quiet you hid the All Themes bundle. Same thing. You let people automaticly rebuy even though you knew you where going to retire it. I also set up several customers with Canvas this year. Really hard to explain that to them. I stand as the idiot. Thank you very much. I have payed for the All Theme bundle for quit some years. Not worth it. No customer loyalty. -We learn from feedback from our customers, HA!
My feelings exactly. I have a lot of clients’ websites that use Canvas. Some of them were only set up in recent months. I have responsibilities to my customers to keep their websites running for a reasonable length of time, e.g. at least 3 years. It would be unfair, unethical, and bad for business for me to say to them “sorry, your new website has to be redone at your expense because the theme has been discontinued”.
Woo, you have a responsibility to people like me, your customers. If you discontinue a product that we and our clients rely on, just giving us a few months (or maximum 1 year) of notice is not sufficient. Yes we can stop using Canvas for new sites now, but we need to keep recently set up sites running for a fair length of time. 3 years feels about right to me. Less than that is unfair to our customers, and unfair to us, and ultimately not at all good for your reputation.
Agreed – many clients on this theme. I don’t feel like I can charge them for new theme, but I certainly don’t want to donate my time to it. 3 years would be much better.
Did you really say that?
You cant say to your clients you support the website for 3 years, when you have no knowledge. i mean, develop a theme and sell them to your clients.
at long last you are only a money maker, who buy a theme and sell this to a client. where is your real work in this progress? calm down. it is only your failing, when you promise 3 years of support with a third-party theme.
think about your business. really.
Hi Peter
Thank you for your feedback, we really do value your input. We didn’t make this decision lightly, and we also felt that a year is a reasonable length of time to migrate from Canvas as a theming platform to another theme.
We are always here to listen to our customers and we hear your concern about the length of time. That is why we’ve made the resources listed below available and have made our Happiness Engineers available to help you in this process.
If you are struggling to migrate to a new theme, I suggest reading through the following guides:
* How to choose and change a theme
* Moving on from Canvas
If you are struggling with the migration, don’t hesitate to contact our Happiness Engineers for advice.
Thanks,
“we also felt that a year is a reasonable length of time to migrate from Canvas as a theming platform to another theme”
No, it’s really not. If you run less than 5 sites then maybe. I know of a company that has 600 clients. It’s lucky they have their own in-house theme. It’s not inconceivable that a company could run 50 client sites built on a theme framework from a reputable developer like Woo. That means to have everyone moved within the support period they have to move about 1 client a week – and remember, being a theme *framework*, they probably child themed it to suit their own design, worked on with and approved by the client. You don’t just pick up 50 client sites and “migrate from Canvas as a theming platform to another theme”.
Totally underwrite Peter’s (and others) statements about this the discontinuation of Canvas… This not how things work in the professional big world…
It will generate a lot of unnecessary for me and my clients. I’ll try to avoid Woo Themes going forward… Pfff
Even though the writing’s been literally on the wall for quite some time now, it’s still a bit sad.
I built a LOT of websites on Canvas. Some are still up and chugging along (even after 7 years!), and I need to transition them. But it’s time for my clients to update their designs anyway – nothing stays around too long either in technology or style.
If you don’t know about them, Pootle Press has been developing add-ons and plugins for Canvas for many years and they seem like nice people. They’ve created their own alternative to Canvas – you can learn about it here: https://www.pootlepress.com/18tags-theme/
Cheers, David
Hi David,
Thanks for the feedback, and I’m glad you had success building a lot of sites with Canvas! I’d encourage you to read through the migration guide I’ve linked to below, and if you get stuck migrating a site to contact our support channel.
* How to choose and change a theme
* Moving on from Canvas
We’ve done a case study on PootlePress in 2011 on how they were using and extending Canvas. I’m not sure if you know, but 18tags is actually a fork of our Storefront theme 🙂
Let us know how your migrations go!
Actually, I didn’t know that! Jaime has been helpful to me in the past. so I thought I’d give him a shout-out. 🙂
For me, this change is scary. I am not a tech guru who knows much abt code or developing or anything like that. I chose Canvas because it had everything I need for the 501-C3 website I volunteer to keep operating. I have learned to make it do everything needed for a nice website wo investing half my life on it. Canvas made it easy for me to be successful. I know it is always good to change up a website and make it look new and fresh, but I literally don’t even know where to start to find another similar website that I can handle. Maybe you all will help me make a choice.
Change is indeed scary.
We didn’t joke about our commitment to help you find a new theme, though.
Definitely have a look at two documents that we created recently:
* How to choose and change a theme
* Moving on from Canvas
But also, once you know what the main features are that you’re looking for, don’t hesitate to contact our Happiness Engineers for advice.
I can identify. I am no expert, but I’ve made 7 websites over the years, ALL on Canvas.
However, I saw this day coming a few years ago. This summer I began the transitions, and now 5 of the 7 are running on Storefront. A lot of work, but ultimately I like it better.
Plus, Storefront works MUCH BETTER for mobile, and all my websites have about 50% mobile.
Transitioning is tough, but it’s worth it. I’d recommend Storefront, and now they’re giving their Storefront Extensions Bundle away for free, with coupon code sfe-theme-retirements.
Were they personal websites or for clients?
This is my concern also. Storefront doesn’t have a tenth of the backend design adjustment options that Canvas has. And for the seven sites that I manage, I need a theme that will allow me to make similar adjustments WITHOUT having to code them in CSS. I manage 7 sites for nonprofits all of which are on fairly tight budgets, and it wouldn’t be realistic to ask them to pay for a design pro to come in and fix the sites. I’m betting LOTS of Canvas users are in the same boat – they bought Canvas for the easy of tweaking the design. I completely understand the process that Woothemes is having to go through to adjust its products to the new WordPress realities. But if you-all could at least suggest a number of themes that will survive the Gutenberg saga, and that permit doing a ton of adjusting with dialog boxes, I for one would be very grateful.
Storefront isn’t close to being a suitable replacement for those of us using Canvas for non-commerce sites. Understand the decision, but the path forward isn’t as well-considered as you assume it is, in a grave misreading of your customer base.
Thanks for your understanding, Kevin.
Storefront is indeed more focused on the eCommerce side of things, although we do also know of some websites that use Storefront without a commerce focus.
That being said, we believe that each of our Canvas users has a unique configuration of this theme and we don’t want to offer too many solutions but rather offer to help you look on an individual level. Please have a look at this document, but also don’t hesitate to contact us with questions.
I run Storefront on both e-commerce and non-commerce sites. Good success, but I’d recommend their Storefront Extensions Bundle, which they’re giving away for free, with coupon code sfe-theme-retirements.
One year free is good, but the yearly subscription model is what scares me away. As a web designer I find my need for support is like this;
year 1 > high need
year 2> low need, mainly reporting just bugs
year 3> If I don’t understanjd this software by now, I never will
Hi Craig
Thanks for your feedback, did you have a lifetime license or are you just not a proponent of a yearly subscription model? Would prefer something like a multi year license?
We appreciate your feedback, so if you have any other queries don’t hesitate to contact our Happiness Engineers for advice.
Thanks,
Personally I’m with Craig and feel the same way. Early on is when we might need support, not years down the line. What really irks me in the subscription model though is the limitation on updates. Limiting support in time makes perfect sense to me and I’m willing to pay for it (as a small agency owner with dozens of client sites in active maintenance, I rely on solid companies providing good support for the long run). But limiting access to updates to one year makes absolutely zero sense to me…
The other thing that irks me is companies changing their terms (understandable) but without grandfathering existing users into the terms of the product they purchased at the time of purchase. That’s breaking your word to me and WooThemes have done this more often than any other company I deal with. And we use many premium WordPress products. Your support as also been abysmal for long periods of time and that’s worrying to me when paying yearly subscription where I expect quick and competent support.
But I do use and believe in WooCommerce because it’s a great product and is now also backed by Automattic. But I’m not making the mistake again of getting into any of your themes and that’s including Storefront. Your past record does not reassure me that Storefront will be supported for the long term.
Also, using Canvas has been painful to me and my agency. That is why we’re down to 2 Canvas sites at this time when we’ve had many more in the past so this announcement has limited impact on us. But Canvas updates have broken client site layouts and functionality. before requiring CSS and other code rewrites. All in the one 5.x cycle. That is not normal to me.
That is why I’ve been using Genesis exclusively since 2013 and it has never failed us. So I trust it, StudioPress and CopyBlogger media because they have always kept their word to their clients. Genesis is also a true theme framework though while Canvas is a “parent” theme which sounds similar but is really quite different.
And your supporting Canvas for only a year from now is really not good enough. Before starting to work with Genesis I tried and started to work with another theme framework called Catalyst. A few months later that theme dev decided to port his Catalyst child theme called Dynamik (where all the framework’s power really was) to Genesis and stopped developping Catalyst itself. Yet, he’s pledged to support Catalyst for years to come because so many of his clients used it in their client sites. So he’s doing right by theme and he’s still supporting it.
And that’s the part that’s really important for agencies like ours and freelancers working for regular clients that hire us to build their web sites. They DO NOT expect to have to pay to rebuild the same deign because a component stopped being supported after a few months. They hired us in good faith and we work for them using products we also bought in good faith from vendors we trust and not expecting the rug would be pulled under our feet with little to no warning. 1 more year supporting Canvas is not nearly enough to give your clients who trusted you and used your product on a number of sites the time to turn around and deal with this issue. You have to be completely disconnected from the reality of freelances and agencies like ours to not see that…
The Storefront Extensions Bundle is, unfortunately for my purposes, heavily weighted toward customizing Woocommerce sites. For my sites, I would still have to do a ton of CSS coding. I’m the kind of user Canvas was written for, who supports lots of sites but doesn’t have time to learn the intricacies of CSS and PHP. I hope someone, whether from Woocommerce or not, will post a roundup review of highly customizable THEMES (as opposed to page builders, which are very, very much not the same thing).
I don’t to sell things on this website and having only purchased in June after being recommended to the site I am very disappointed and now think I will have to move forward.
Sorry to hear that, Colin. In all honesty, in June, we hadn’t made this decision yet. We were still looking at the future of Canvas. And it’s still a robust theme that works fine – just not with settings in the WP Customizer.
That being said, please get in touch with our Happiness Engineers so they can help you find a solution.
So, if we don’t use WP Customizer (I don’t even know what it is), how long will our Canvas theme remain stable?
Hi Philip
We will keep Canvas compatible as it currently is until 24 October 2018. Following that, as long as WordPress doesn’t remove any of the functionality that Canvas uses, it will continue to work as it currently does, support for Canvas ends then.
Keep in mind that you won’t be able to use the Customizer or the new Editor features which are going to become the standard way within the next 2 years.
If you have any questions about migration, don’t hesitate to contact our Happiness Engineers for advice.
Thanks,
Thanks for the timely headsup. I get the impression Woo has moved from the theme business to the ecommerce business. However, I sell nothing on my (several) sites.
The main reason I like Canvas is I can build sites which look like I want them to, so two questions:
1. Will this site you point us to have the same customizability as Canvas? In other words, will I be able to make my sites look exactly like they look now?
2. Will the existing Canvas-based sites stop working with WordPress in the future?
Thanks
I use Bridge theme now for most new sites as it is endlessly customizable from the Options panel. Plus it uses Visual Composer which has really changed the I build-out sites and pages.
Hi Williaam
I’m glad you liked Canvas! To answer your questions,
1 – There will always be design difference between themes, but like with any theme, you could customize it using CSS or modifying the code to look like another. It’s most likely that it won’t be an exact replication if you migrate to another theme though. You could have a similar layout as a starting point and customize the theme from there. This depends on the theme you choose to migrate to.
2 – To put your mind at ease, it won’t “stop working” – a better way to understand this is that Canvas simply won’t support the newer features of WordPress. The site should continue to function as normal. The only time the site would stop functioning is when WordPress core code deprecates (removes) a piece of functionality that Canvas was using.
If you are struggling to migrate to a new theme, I suggest reading through the following guides:
* How to choose and change a theme
* Moving on from Canvas
If you are struggling with the migration, don’t hesitate to contact our Happiness Engineers for advice.
Thanks,
As a real world example, I recently migrated my personal blog at jeffikus.com from Canvas to Storefront, and while it is a design change, it has a familiar feel to it and retains the majority of features.
Shocked. Not so much that Canvas will no longer be sold (though that is a major surprise) but that my subscription runs out in 3 weeks and I have 30+ websites – most of them are not e-commerce, though one which is and is very complex. Yikes.
Simon, please get in touch with us and we’ll see what we can do.
Cheers Job. Thanks. 🙂
Staring at my screen feeling absolutely nauseous…. I just checked ManageWp, I have 17 sites running on Canvas.
One of them ranks very well, with over 1200 posts since December of 2008, and uses alot of those framework shortcodes in those posts. Face palm……
Ugh….
Hi Doug
I just want to reiterate, we are still going to be making fixes to Canvas for a year from today. Which means that you have time to migrate those sites if you choose to. Like I mentioned to Williaam, the sites aren’t going to “break” suddenly, they just won’t support the newer features of WordPress.
There is also a free plugin which will handle the shortcodes in those posts if you are going to change to a different theme, you can read more about it here, it’s aim is to make sure the shortcodes work even though you won’t be using a WooFramework based theme like Canvas.
Thanks,
Same here. 10 sites. SO MUCH WORK to port and these rely heavily on features in Canvas. I am sick.
I have 7 sites, transitioning them all from Canvas to Storefront. Been working at it for a few months already (I saw this coming).
Storefront is very different environment from Canvas, but after you learn it (specifically Customizer), it’s quite nice.
Specifically for me, the Mobile-ready aspects of Storefront are FAR SUPERIOR.
Hard work, but worth it.
Right now they’re giving their Storefront Extensions Bundle away for free, with coupon code sfe-theme-retirements.
Do you know if you will need to renew the Storefront Extensions Bundle after the one free year for you to be able to continue customising the look of the website?
What if you have over 30 sites using canvas and are up for $70 a year ( $90 AUD ).
Just wondering…..
Forgot the “each”.
So 30 sites x $70 USD per year?
Hi Megan
Sure, I can clarify that for you.
The renewal cost is for support for the extensions, you can continue using the extensions on your sites, but if you require continued support and updates you will have to purchase the license per site each year.
Does that answer your question? If you have more detailed questions, don’t hesitate to contact our Happiness Engineers for advice.
Thanks,
This puts me in a terrible position. I have 10 client sites on Canvas. They look beautiful and the clients are happy. So these are done deals, I’ve been paid, and do occasional maintenance. Now you’re telling me I have to go back to each of them and explain that because you’re discontinuing this theme, my clients will now have to pay me thousands of dollars to port their sites (with no obvious improvements) to new themes. Pretty sure I’ll just lose most of those clients. Thanks a lot. I think you have badly misread your customer base.
…amen.
It took years to build a website with Canvas for this noprofit organization . I looked long and hard for at theme and this one seemed the most flexible. Between meetings with the client and calls to customer support, I was able to get it customized with the features they want. I am earning a small fee for maintenance which I set up to be easy to do.
Now you are telling me that I may have to go to them and ask for money to redo the site and redo all the customization? My fee was low to begin with but I am not sure it is going to be worth my while.
Not happy with woo-themes
I am now
Hi Martha
I’d like to address your concerns, specifically that you don’t have to redo the site.
Canvas is not going to stop working overnight.
Keep in mind we’ve preemptively come to this decision so that you have plenty of time to plan ahead for the future of your WordPress site. This includes both the themes and plugins that you’ve chosen to use.
As I mentioned to a few other commenters here, the biggest thing to remember is that Canvas will simply not support the newer features of WordPress such as the Customizer and the new Editor, but it’s not going to stop working as it currently does.
The only reason that Canvas would stop working is if the core of WordPress changes after 24 October 2018 after which Canvas support has come to an end.
If you have any more questions that you want to discuss about your specific site, don’t hesitate to contact our Happiness Engineers for advice.
Thanks,
Another deeply felt amen! I ask myself: can I trust Woo to not do this to me again two years from now? Ugh.
Hey Leon –
That’s certainly a difficult position to be in. Moving away from Canvas will mean your clients’ sites are better set up for the future of WordPress, but I can definitely appreciate that this is a difficult conversation, at best.
As we mentioned, we’ll keep supporting Canvas for another year, so you’ll have time to make those changes – the sites aren’t going to “break” suddenly, they just won’t support the newer features of WordPress.
If there’s anything we can do to make this process easier for you and your clients, don’t hesitate to reach out to our support team.
I get it. I’m in the same boat, with about twice that many clients. The people I work with are very small business owners and had to save up for the original website. The emails I will need to send out are not going to be well received! No more Woothemes for me!
Storefront is progress over Canvas. I’m transitioning 7 sites – easy, but time-consuming……….
Ultimately, though, I like it better. I didn’t know what I was missing till I got a modern theme.
Right now, they’re giving away their Storefront Extensions Bundle away for free, with coupon code sfe-theme-retirements.
Hi Glenn
I’m really happy that you are enjoying Storefront! We’d welcome feedback from you about your transitioning of those 7 sites. Feel free to submit that to our support channel if you want to, perhaps your learning might be useful to other customers as well!
Thanks!
Yes I would be interested in that too and wondering if Glenn has still got a copy of the email he sent to his clients explaining he needed to update their website’s theme? (And what their reaction was. )
I am sure that I am not the only one that would love to have a copy of the email and edit to suit each of our individual clients…with their individually customised canvas themed websites. )
It’s my understanding that Storefront contains almost NONE of the easy customizing options that Canvas did. And that’s an ENORMOUS deficit as a Canvas replacement.
I will surely (and sorely) miss Canvas. An innovative theme for its time. Good luck on your future growth.
Thanks Fred, we’re looking forward to the growth ahead as WordPress evolves! 🙂
Totally agree. It was fantastic to make a unique looking website. I loved using it.
I don’t know what to think…I’m lost for words and truly sadden. I’m on a limited income every penny counts with web hosting fees, domain name fees, and now another fee for a new theme I’m not sure if I can afford to have my bird blog and bicycle club websites up anymore. All I wanted from the start was simple theme for my blogs and Canvas offered this to me. I feel lost now…having a year to decide to keep my websites up or close them down really sucks. Thanks for nothing.
Armando
Hi Armando
We totally understand that you are concerned about additional expenses, and we believe that it’s in the best interests for you and your customers using Canvas to switch to Storefront. And that’s why we want to remove the financial barriers by making the Storefront Extensions bundles free, and remember that the Storefront theme is also free, so making a switch won’t cost you anything extra in license fees.
You also don’t have to close your websites, as I mentioned to a few customers above, your sites will continue to work, they aren’t going to suddenly break, but they simply won’t support WordPress newer features in the future.
If you are struggling to migrate to a new theme, I suggest reading through the following guides:
* How to choose and change a theme
* Moving on from Canvas
If you are struggling with the migration, don’t hesitate to contact our Happiness Engineers for advice.
Thanks,
40+ sites here on Canvas and not looking forward to the extra work involved in migrating to new themes. Going forward, certainly a lesson to be learned re minimizing risk by spreading clients’ sites over a number of themes.
It’s not using the one theme that’s problematic IMO, it’s choosing the wrong one. We’ve been working with Genesis exclusively since 2013 and it never failed us. StudioPress is there for the long haul. And I’ve been burned by Headway and iThems Builder before. So I know how it feels. We only have 2 client sites on Canvas at this time so this won’t be too bad for us but I feel for you…
I’ve been working for some months on a bilingual website using Canvas for a library, which is on a limited budget. To hear today that really they shouldn’t be on Canvas at all is a bit of blow, to say the least.
I’m really going to need some help with figuring out which theme to adopt instead; as noted by someone above, I can’t see Storefront being the best bet, as this is not an e-commerce site. It’s an information-rich nonprofit site. Help.
Hi Dagne
I can understand that this is a tricky avenue to navigate, however, while Storefront’s focus is eCommerce, I’m confident it would meet your needs.
I would encourage you to take advantage of the free extension bundle and give Storefront a try to see that it can meet your needs.
If you are struggling to migrate to a new theme, I suggest reading through the following guides:
* How to choose and change a theme
* Moving on from Canvas
I don’t know all your requirements, so don’t hesitate to contact our Happiness Engineers for advice.
Thanks,
Thanks for the good times Canvas.
I agree it’s time to move on and I really appreciate all the good years, the good support and documentation. I’ll have plenty of jobs changing themes for people for the next year.
I had a look at Storefront when it first came out but since then I started exploring with other page builders. I used to use the Pootle Press page builders with Canvas, but when you start adding up all the subscription fees… and then Pootle started abandoning Canvas years ago in favor of Storefront so that’s when I started reviewing all the other page builders and price models.
Oh PS: Thanks for providing a clear roadmap, good job.
Thanks Craig! 🙂 I appreciate your honest feedback, and that you agree that it’s time to move on! Don’t forget to check out the Storefront Extensions bundle that’s free with the coupon code, that way you can try Storefront with the full spectrum of features.
If you have any questions about a Canvas to Storefront migration, don’t hesitate to contact our Happiness Engineers for advice.
Quick reminder: This is only true for the first year. It is not free as in “free beer”. It is free, like in “you have won this premium page builder license”.
Hey Torsten, you’re right about this of course. But that would have been the same with your Canvas subscription as well. We do hope that this coupon will help you transition. If you have other questions or concerns, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.
Not it would not have been the same. I bought Canvas near the end of the 4.0 cycle so I had a lifetime license. You’re not offering me and others in my shoes the same deal on Storefront not that you are sidelining Canvas so, for me, it’s akin to breaking your word.
I have enjoyed using Canvas and am sorry to see it discontinued.
While I am not surprised that it is no longer being sold. I’m somewhat surprised that you aren’t committing to bug fixes and compatibility for longer. This theme was sold as a platform to build professional sites. Those of us that have launched Canvas sites recently now have to go back to clients less than a year later asking them to pay us to migrate their sites because we just launched their site on a now discontinued platform. That conversation would at least seem reasonable if it wasn’t less than year since launching their site. I think a longer commitment for bug fixes and compatibility should be strongly considered.
Thanks,
Hi Scott, we’re committed to another full year of supporting it. After that year, Canvas won’t just break, it just might have conflicts with newer features in WordPress core.
We do understand if this looks short to you, but one of the reasons that we’re no longer selling Canvas is that we don’t have the resources to rebuild it for the future. We cannot commit to longer than this time for this reason as well.
Please feel free to get in touch with us to see if we can work something out that would help you sell this better to your clients.
I guess I just feel that since Canvas was marketed as a premium theme/framework that developers to use to build sites off of, then a longer deprecation period is warranted. If it was just a simple theme, 1 year of support would be fine. I understand it won’t break immediately, but it’s just kind of like shame on us for continuing to develop sites off of it this year. Admittedly, I probably should have known better since I could tell that not a lot of resources were being put into Canvas, but I wish you had at least communicated that Canvas was being scheduled/considered for phase out in the future more clearly. Just my two cents.
For those of us with subscription plans ending within a few months, do we have an option to extend our support to Oct 24, 2018?
Hi Scott
That’s a reasonable request, if you’d like to have your plan extended, please get in touch with us through support and ask our Happiness Engineers about getting this done.
Once again, thanks for the feedback, we appreciate it and it helps us learn from our customers!
Thanks,
Hi Scott,
I’m from the industrial automation world and when manufactures decide to retire a product “hardware or software” they have to support it for 5 to 10 years depending.
My hope with this comment is to get the WordPress business community to realize that if on the name of moving forward with technology they let go their customer base, in the long run it will not serve the WordPress community well.
A 1 year support is not enough, WordPress community need to ask a minimum to companies like Woo. I would suggest a minimum of at least 3 years.
I completely agree with this comment. 3 years of continued support is what I would consider reasonable. 1 year of further support, or less if your subscription expires sooner, is really poor. I have responsibilities to my customers many of whose sites use Canvas. For sites that I’ve recently set up, they need to work for at least a further 3 years. I can hardly say to them “sorry, your theme is discontinued, so although your site is only a few months or a year old, you’ll now have to pay me or someone else to remake it.”
Woo, to be fair to your loyal customers, you need to offer a decent wind-down period for Canvas. We’re on notice now not to use it for new websites, but we have to support recently set up sites for a decent period of time, and 3 years feels about right to me. 1 year (or less) is a total let-down. I hope that on consideration you will agree that you need to keep Canvas sites functional for at least a further 3 years to be fair to us developers, and to our customers. I hope you are listening to this – your announcement comes as a real shock, and your approach seems high-handed and not shouldering your responsibilities in a decent way.
Hi Annie
Thank you for input especially as it contains learnings from other industries.
When making this decision there were multiple factors that we needed to deal with, including a reasonable length of time for you as a customer to migrate a site. We felt that a year is a reasonable length of time consistent with our high standard of support to migrate from Canvas as a theming platform to another theme.
While we might not agree on a length of time, we’ve made several resources available to you in order to help with this process;
If you decide to migrate to a new theme, I suggest reading through the following guides:
* How to choose and change a theme
* Moving on from Canvas
If you are struggling with the migration, don’t hesitate to contact our Happiness Engineers for advice.
Thanks,
Hi Peter
I’ve replied to you above.
Thanks,
So with Canvas joining the club, you’ve abandoned every single one of the (over 50) themes you had built as WooThemes…
(Except Storefront …yet)
Very disappointing. Given your history of theme abandonment, I would be very reluctant to consider Storefront even if it was free forever…
Hi Dimitris
I can understand why you are disappointed. The themes we’ve created over the years are dear to our heart, however, as with all products sometimes they are no longer relevant or they become obsolete.
We are working towards the future of theming within WordPress, and I hope you give Storefront a chance to meet your needs.
If you have any questions about Storefront or Canvas, don’t hesitate to contact our Happiness Engineers for advice.
Thanks,
Thanks for your answer Jeff.
Why should I be confident that you won’t abandon Storefront in a couple of years, as you’ve done with every other theme you’ve ever built? What’s different in this case?
Hi Dimitris
That’s a fair point, I’d say the biggest difference here is that Storefront is intimately linked to WooCommerce, which is Woo’s primary focus. And it’s also built on top of the Underscores starter theme which is part of Automattic’s larger theme strategy.
I would have to say that confidence in a platform/company is most important when buying a product, and I know that right now you might not have a lot of that with us for various reasons, but the major reason behind why we are saying goodbye to Canvas is to position our products for the future of WordPress. Ultimately you and your customers will benefit from that.
I hope that answered your question enough?
Thanks,
I guess so. I just hope I won’t regret investing in one of your themes again, if I decide to do so.
I’d like to add that other theme authors rebuilt their code almost from scratch to keep up with wordpress changes (like the people that built The7 did in their latest major update).
The old version settings weren’t compatible with the new versions’ code. So, for people to be able to update, they coded a procedure to “migrate” the settings from the old version to the new version (in the database).
You could have done something similar with Canvas and I hope you’ll do this with Storefront if you ever reach a coding “dead end” again.
I don’t know if this is possible, but here’s an idea: You could code a similar procedure so that people could switch from Canvas to Storefront and migrate as many settings as possible to the new site. That way, you’ll restore some of your credibility and save your customers a lot of time and frustration. I’d be happy to pay for this plugin (or whatever it is), as I understand it would require work on your part.
Hi Dimitris
I can understand that, and for what it’s worth we evaluated what an upgrade path would look like and the benefits it would provide – and ultimately decided it wasn’t the way to go. We’ve done something like what you suggested in the past with other products, but in this case it wasn’t the right fit.
Thanks,
Typical, this is the reason I moved away from WordPress as an ecommerce platform.
Lifetime products that are not lifetime.
Hi Jeff,
Sorry to hear that you’ve moved away from WordPress as an ecommerce platform. Is the reason you moved away related to themes or ecommerce plugins or something else? I’d like to hear more about why so we can learn.
I’d like to clarify the “lifetime” part of our early licenses, when we made changes to our pricing model in 2013, we addressed this, and it’s important to know that lifetime refers to the lifetime of the product. You can read more about this here and here.
Let us know if we can be of any further assistance to you by contacting our Happiness Engineers.
I bought a lifetime package on unlimited sites for Canvas, and three other themes. Please can you clarify what you are offering for customers in my position? Reading the text above, it seems you are asking for $69 per site, per year, for the storefront extension to offer the same functionality I’ve already paid for. Surely you are going to grandfather in existing lifetime unlimited customers?
Hi Tom
To clarify what we are offering, you will get the Storefront Extensions Bundle for free for 1 year per site using the coupon code. Thereafter it will be $69 per year per site.
Just to clarify, are you suggesting that we grandfather in lifetime Canvas licenses to be a lifetime Storefront Extensions Bundle?
Thanks,
Yes, I think that would be reasonable, given the terms of the offer at the time (2011) for Canvas as lifetime licence, for unlimited sites, and support. I think that would certainly help with next steps and decision making for developers.
Hi Tom
Thanks for clarifying that. Based on your reply, I would suggest continuing that conversation with our Happiness Engineers. That way you can get the best assistance there rather than commenting here.
Looking forward to hearing from you there!
I agree with tomtolkien. I think that’s the absolute least you should do for people who bought lifetime Canvas licences for unlimited sites. With 30+ sites on Canvas, even if I was to migrate them all to Storefront that’s more than $2k / year you’ll be trying to hit me for.
For many of us, with clients for whom developing a site with Canvas was the most affordable way of delivering what they needed, that’s simply not a cost that can be absorbed or passed on.
And don’t even get me started on how to sell clients on the idea of migrating a site to a new theme, with no change in look or functionality, but at £100s in cost. Those conversations could literally put me out of business. Thanks Woo.
Hi Mark
Thanks for the feedback, again we do appreciate it. It would be great if you could start a conversation with our Happiness Engineers first, before having the kind of conversation that you suggest above with your customers. We are ready to assist you in finding a solution.
Thanks,
Tried that, and the support person was only able to repeat the suggestions already done to death in this thread without really addressing the issues. It felt like a complete waste of 30 minutes of my life. A ticket has been created on your system, perhaps you will respond.
I’ve done around $40K in client sites on Canvas over the years. It used to be my go-to theme, but when Woo went ecommerce several years ago, I knew Canvas was essentially dead along with all their other themes. I think Woo knew it too, but why cut off a cash cow when it still gives milk? To push Canvas users to Storefront is another self-centered move by Woo unfortunately. There are closer matches like Genesis that have similar capabilities and a vibrant community. That said, nothing in the tech lasts and change is a constant. That’s what I’ve told my clients whose site I built on Canvas. Adapt and overcome.
What this announcement really became is a wake up call for where WordPress is heading as a whole with the new Gutenberg plugin. Tectonic shifts for WordPress are ahead. I would highly recommend that you read Morten Rand-Hendriksen’s post https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/gutenberg-morten-rand-hendriksen/.
Hi Frank
Thanks for the feedback, we appreciate it.
Regarding Gutenberg, I think Morten’s post sums it up early on,
“The best way to understand what Gutenberg is is to try it for yourself” – it would be interesting to have him update that post since the latest iterations of Gutenberg have been released as some of his concerns have been dealt with already.
Thanks,