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Re: http://my.studiopress.com/pro-plus-offer/
I'm sorry to see that SP is ending their unlimited support paradigm. I think it is a mistake. It was one of the major selling points that separated them from other vendors and one of the major factors that brought us in to the Gen community.
If the numbers they post about how many Gen frameworks they have sold, it is obvious that they have been mega-successful.
I would not put my company and clients in a position where I or they could be held hostage to any vendor requiring a ransom payment each year... especially if WP makes an update that breaks the framework. We'd have no option but to pay whatever SP asks.
I think SP should re-think this. To be honest, what the above link says to me is "Hey, we're going to screw you in January so if you are smart you will buy-in now and avoid being screwed later."
If WP makes an update which "breaks" the Genesis Framework, it will be in SP's best interest to fix the framework, regardless of whether users have paid for support; they have many, many ProPlus members who they will still need to support, anyway, so they will continue to work to fix problems which occur.
Susan, I have no doubt that they would fix the framework. But it would not be in their best interest to give it free to all of those customers who had chosen not to pay the annual fee. It would be in SP's best interest to basically say "pay up" or "No soup for you!"
Yes they would get some bad press out of it... but if the drug companies don't care about their rep and if the health insurance companies could care less about what you think of them... and we all know how much the cable TV outfits care about us... where is it written (at least at the moment) that SP will care?
I think that if SP adopted a policy saying that "We guarantee we will support your version of Gen so that it will always run with the features you currently have" it would go a long way in 'selling' 'us' their new plan.
In the announcement on the link cited earlier there is no mention of current Pro license holders being 'grandfathered in' so I can only assume that we and other Pro owners will lose unlimited support after Jan. and we will have to decide if we want to put ourselves in a 'hostage' position. I don't know about others, but my partners and our board would not permit it and we'll move on... but I don't know where.
I sure didn't see this coming. And Happy New Year to you also, SP!
People who purchase Pro Plus before the change in January will be grandparented in: http://www.copyblogger.com/pro-plus-pack-offer/
For a single investment in Pro Plus today, you get unlimited access to: (list of stuff). You get all of this for the lifetime of your account. You never make another payment.
The annual pricing will only apply to those who purchase Pro Plus after the change.
Andrea Whitmer, Owner/Developer, Nuts and Bolts Media
I provide development and training services for designers • Find me on Twitter and Google+Thanks for that info.
I love how they call it a "recurring component" instead of a "money grab."
Notice they don't say how much that 'component' is going to be.
I guess they can make it anything they want... they can start it off small and then do what the drug companies have done... raise it by a 1000% or more... overnight.
Say what you want, and they will spin it since they are masters of marketing... but the 'recurring component' is not in YOUR best interest... and when a company uses 'sales-speak' instead of plain English, you can bet that you are being screwed. (You ever notice how the insurance industry calls it a 'premium' and not a 'price?' The stock brokers call it a "load' and not a 'cost.' )
Guess what a 'recurring component' is.
To me this is a case-study on how to lose your customer's trust and your super-great reputation... overnight! SP was the BEST... now they are just like all the others.
I'm glad I purchased it when I did. This will even become a greater asset over time, provided that you will not have to subscribe to a new "package" to get newly released themes etc.
If, under the current pro plus license, we still get access for themes and support for life, I honestly believe that's a tremendous value. Especially if WordPress and Genesis continue to innovate and keep up with the demands and times.
dev, you and most people think everything should be free of charge. That's simply not reality, and community-driven forums such as this help foster this "entitlement" thinking.
Esse quam videri
As I remember Genesis and SP's Pro package was not free... we paid a considerable amount of money for it.
I expect that the software I buy today will work tomorrow without me paying an annual license fee for that privilege. I have no assurance of that with SP anymore.
I do not mind paying for support if I need it and I don't mind paying for new features if I want them. But to be assessed an annual fee so that should WP make a major update that breaks Genesis, I don't have to pay whatever ransom SP decides to charge in order for the site (and those of all our clients) to come back up.
If you like to pay license fees, well than you will be happy with the new SP paradigm I'm happy for you. Please allow us to take an opposing view without your pejorative implication.
Our company has been around for 25 years, we're mature business people (in our late 50s and early 60s,) we work hard, and we don't believe we are entitled to anything except good service and appreciation from the vendors we support.
If that is 'entitlement thinking' then so be it.
I've been a pro plus member for 2 years and glad I'll be grandfathered in. I always thought StudioPress should have a recurring fee here. The Pro Plus package is really for developers and they shouldn't have to worry about the recurring fee if they have new business every month.
The Pro Plus fee is worth every penny. I'm not a developer but I can see how the recurring fee is needed. Just think that new 3rd party themes will be added from time to time and those themes are just as beautiful as the StudioPress ones.
~’;’~
3rd party themes are really not the issue here as we are talking about SP. I wrote a blog about the move to recurring fees and how it hurts the business of developers and will ultimately hurt that of the vendors as well.
An Open Letter to Theme and Plugin Developers: Why I Can't Buy Your Products Any Longer
It got a bit of discussion when I published it.
Disagree if you wish, but please do it with civility, thank you.
I think that the move to "recurring components" (a.k.a. yearly fees for perceived value) is going to hurt both sides of the industry.
Web design shops like ours do not want to pay these fees... and just because a theme or plugin vendor says in a blog or web page that the license is 'lifetime' it is difficult to know if this is going to be true down the road.
Second, we used to buy lots of themes and plugins... but we obviously only have so many dollars that we can budget to pay "recurring components" so instead of buying 50 themes a year, we are now buying three or four and developing our own with the Dynamik Web Builder (which by the way is also going down the "recurring components" road and so we are re-thinking that platform as well. Thus, the vendors that we would buy from who now expect us to fork over year-over-year fees for little or no (in our opinion) value-added, have lost future sales from us.
But here is the crux of the issue. The vendors say that we should pass these fees on to the client. But few if any of these vendors are selling to our market nor do they 'know' our clients.. Let's assume that the "recurring component" of Gen is $50 a year, and that the "recurring component" of a theme is $40 a year, and that we use five plugins each having a "recurring component" of $30 a year. The vendors assume that it will be simple to sell a client on the idea that they should pay $240 a year to keep their website current with security updates, etc.
If you have clients paying you $5K to $10 per site, the yearly fees are not a big deal, but our market is clients paying from $800 to $1800 for their site... and they are not going to even consider a $240 "tax" in order to keep current. They will see it as 'ransom.' How do I know this? Simple. I asked a whole bunch of them, and they all said "Build me a site without any "recurring component" costs.
We are told that we will be "grandfathered in" and insulated from the "recurring components" on DWB and Gen. But I looked at the license docs and TOS docs of both and have not found any wording that contractually obligates either company to do that. It may be there, but I've not found it.
I suppose we could buy so-called "lifetime use" from each vendor but we have no assurances that we will continue to use their theme or their plugin or their tool... or that the vendor will even be around next year, much less in three or four.
I don't know how this will shake out for other shops, but one thing I'm sure of is that all of us will be taking a very, very hard look at each product and will do a detailed analysis as to whether we think the total investment for a theme or a plugin over a site-lifespan of four years is worth it... for us or the client. In some cases I'm sure it will be, but not for all that many of the themes and plugins that we use.
We are very 'technical' and we can write our own themes... but we don't because it is more cost-effective to just buy them (for clients.) But when a $50 theme turns into a $200 theme (4 years x $50) maybe it isn't that cost-effective anymore. The same goes for a plugins.
And with so many changes being made to WP... the new API... as well as the admonition to "Learn Javascript, deeply" from Matt M., it looks like we may have more options in the near future, than we we have now.
SP is ending their unlimited support paradigm
This is news. But there's no indication on the referenced page; the Copyblogger page link from @nutsandbolts is 404.
I haven't received anything via mail, there's nothing on the StudioPress blog or theme announcements.
What's the new deal?
Choose your next site design from over 350 Genesis themes.
[ Follow me: Twitter ] [ Follow Themes: Twitter ] [ My Favourite Webhost ]Looks like all posts about the change have been removed, which is really odd - there was one on the SP blog as well as the Copyblogger blog. Perhaps they've decided to repost later with more clarification/detials?
Andrea Whitmer, Owner/Developer, Nuts and Bolts Media
I provide development and training services for designers • Find me on Twitter and Google+It is kind of strange. SP and Copyblogger excel in marketing... teaching it used to to be one of the 'services'' and with Rainmaker it kind of still is. Thus, I would have thought they would have worked out an elaborate campaign to reverse their current policy and 'sell' the new "recurring component" plan.
Maybe they got a lot of pushback from customers via some other venue because I've not seen a lot of opposition to it here... except from me and one other person. That also surprised me.
I thought a lot of owners of small design shops would oppose this... but I'm obviously wrong.
It won't work for us... I just can't sell my partners and the board on encumbering lots of dollars to annual license fees for very little value-received... given that we have other options... although perhaps less convenient in the short-run.
I'd hate to abandon the Gen platform (if they don't grandfather us) but with so many changes happening to the WP ecosystem (the new API and Calypso (Javascript/React, etc.)) that maybe we'd end up on a different platform anyway... with or without "recurring components" (I wish they would not use obfuscate it with 'sales-speak.' Call it what it is... an annual license fee... honesty is the best policy. Tell customers the truth and they will love you. Lie to them or try to spin them and you become as disliked as Adobe and Microsoft... as well as almost every drug company.)
2016 will be an 'interesting' year for all of us, I'm sure.
@dev - the reason why more people haven't weighed in could be due to a number of reasons...
Personally, I don't care - I have owned the Pro Plus pack for a number of years, so I'm grandfathered in; I'm not impacted by the new pricing model; anyone who owned the Pro Plus Pack before 5pm yesterday is grandfathered in.
I have owned the Pro Plus pack for a number of years, so I’m grandfathered in
How do you know that for sure? Have you seen that in the license docs or TOS?
I hope you are right, but the pessimist in me says that very rarely these days do companies do what is in MY best interest... they do what is in THIER best interest.
Maybe I've just been dealing with drug companies, cable TV companies, cell phone carriers, and both Microsoft and Adobe for too long!! 🙂
I know it because Brian Gardner said it was. I take him at his word
As President Reagan said: "Trust... but verify."
According to the email offer that was initially sent out last August, what Susan says is correct.
It does refer to the Pro Plus offer link that doesn't seem to work anymore now that the offer is over, but the email says:
With the Pro Plus Pack, you get all of the following for a single, one-time payment:
The Genesis Framework
All 37 of our StudioPress child themes
31 bonus themes
Copyblogger’s standard 30-day money-back guaranteeYou also get:
World-class customer and community support as long as you’re a customer
Every child theme design we make in the futureEverything. It’s all included. You never pay again.
This was the email for the deal that ended at the end of August, my guess is the end of the year deal was similar, just at a higher cost than the end of August deal (and a handful of new themes have been released since then).
So as long as you were a Pro Plus member before Dec 31, you'll be taken care of. A handful of other Genesis theme shops have had sales over the past several years, allowing people one last shot to get into lifetime deals before they changed the pricing structures (I got onboard the last one Themedy had a couple years ago), and as long as they all continue to honor that, if changing a pricing structure means these shops stay in business and continue providing support and quality products, I don't have a problem with that.
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkHow do you know that for sure? Have you seen that in the license docs or TOS?
It is in the email we sent out and we have replied this way to numerous inquiries in desk. Also, the new pricing only applies to the PRO PLUS pack going forward. It does not apply to single theme purchases.
If you are looking for an official statement that you are grandfathered in - this is it.
Also go have a look at other WordPress theme companies and take a tally how many have a one time fee and how many have recurring charges. 🙂
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