12 thoughts on “2015 MainWP Recap and Important Extension Pricing Changes”

1. Dennis, you guys do an awesome job and are definitely one of the most switched on and most reliable development teams I have the pleasure to work with.

   Unlike a few I could name.

   You guys rock!

   • Thanks Terence, that’s great to hear!

2. Hi.
   I am a ‘Bundle member’. How does the new pricing change affect me, when it come to future new extension releases? Will thet still be part of my Bundle membership, or do they fall under the new pricing rules?

   • Thanks for taking the time to ask the question Casper, to quote above “All Bundle purchases before January 4th 2016 will, of course, be grandfathered in.”

     This means if you have the Lifetime Bundle you will never pay for another Extension, no matter what the price goes up to in the future, they will be added to your account automatically at release.

     The same goes for yearly and monthly members as long as they maintain an active subscription, subscriptions also stay at the price they were purchased at and do not increase over time either.

     I hope that helps.

3. Although I can see the advantages, I can also say that for me and my use of extensions, I would never have the need for all of the extensions.

   Having been burnt before, with my naive thinking that I would make use of the entire WPMUDEV suite so “why not pay $600 for a year, these tools will set me up for every need”.

   I ended up using 4 with each causing more problems than the last.

   Whilst I am very happy with my WordFence and Remote Backups extensions. I doubt that there will be any extension worth the subscription.

   Whilst the trend of moving everything to subscription based pricing does have benefits. They all add up, and when you start to notice that you are paying $200 a year to “migrate” a database with a few clicks. It becomes apparent that you could save those clicks and just do it the old fashioned way (with a similar amount of clicks and minus the initial setup) and the once amazing feature quickly becomes less of an essential tool than you once thought 🙂

   The above example is one of many services I have canceled over the past year.

   Don’t get me wrong, I do not expect people to work on software that I use for free. I pay for the software that I use (e.g. Sublime, Tower, Hazel, Affinity Photos, Sketch etc), and subscribe to services that I use (Dropbox, Google Business, Beanstalk (Git), DigitalOcean, AWS).

   But I don’t like this overall need across our industry to take what was a very simple tool that does a single task well that you paid $50 for (and would be happy to pay another $30 for an upgrade in 18 months or so). And turn to that same tool into a “service” that you end up constantly paying $$$ to use even if it only ever gets a couple of minor updates.

   I fully respect your decision and am not arguing against it. But I wanted to give a bit of feedback, especially when you asked for it 🙂

   Have fun

   • Sam, thanks for taking the time to let us know your thoughts, I really appreciate the time you took out of your day to provide such detailed feedback.

     Just to be sure we are on the same page, the two Extensions that you already own, WordFence and Remote Backups, will remain under your current lifetime license. This change will only affect Extensions purchased after January 4th, 2016.

     • Thanks Dennis, and yes I do understand what is happening regarding existing licences 🙂

4. Hi Dennis,
   say i’ve already purchased 4 or 5 extensions under the current pricing model.
   I understand these will be ‘grandfathered’ into the new model, but what will happen when you’ll come out with this new supercool extension after January 4th and which i’ll want to purchase?
   I mean, no matter how many ‘old’ extension will be grandfathered-in as of Jan 4th, as soon as i’ll want to purchase a new (or any) plugin after that date, i’ll end up paying the full monthly, annual or lifetime bundle subscription anyhow just for the sake of being able to add that one magic new plugin to my collection, correct?

   • That is correct.

5. Hi Dennis,
   I can understand why you are moving to a model like this, and MainWP itself (let alone the extensions) are well worth your pricing. As a tiny business, though, $400 is a purchase that gives me pause to drop at one time. That’s why I love companies that offer the buy-individually-and-earn-dollars model. It’s one reason I chose MainWP in the first place. I knew I wanted the full bundle when I started using MainWP in May, and have since added 2 paid extensions (intended to add more, just never enough time in the day!). But I had expected to add an extension a month or so, which would have gotten me to a lifetime bundle in just over a year. If I’d made the time, I would have earned $240 towards the bundle by now.

   Now, if my tiny business can’t afford or justify to drop $400 at once prior to January, I will have to choose monthly. Which is essentially what I had expected to pay on individual extensions – $30 a month – but at the end of a year, would have the lifetime. Now, it’s forever.

   I do understand why you’re dropping the individual extension option, and again, your product is worth the cost. Just wish existing customers had more time/heads – up, even 3 months of buying individual extensions would have gotten me $90 closer, you know? Or let *existing* customers choose monthly but let the monthly payment earn dollars towards the lifetime bundle — that would be ideal.

   Hope that you consider this “constructive” feedback and know that I am pleased with MainWP as a whole. Used another competing product for a few months which was awful. Then scrutinized MainWP and 2 others to decide which to go with, and aside from some minor issues occasionally, I am still happy with my decision. But the pricing model you offered had a lot to do with the choice I made.

   • I appreciate the detailed feedback and your situation is one we tried to take into account by keeping any credits earned towards the Lifetime Bundle available for you until 2017.

     Hopefully, the extra year allows time for small businesses such as yours to budget for the Lifetime Bundle without losing what they already earned.

6. I manage a small client site network and my sites network. I bought several extensions since I started using MainWP. I have a few credits left, but I can’t get the lifetime bundle now.
   Could you please notify when / if you change the price of the lifetime bundle? A few weeks / one month in advance would be nice so I / we can plan that extra expense.
   Happy holidays and keep the excellent work. I’m sure with the “new” javascript / restapi rush your “coding heads” are tilting with ideas. 🙂
   Thank you,
   Antonio Almeida

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