Pricing Feedback
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There is a principle in business that your customer should be the first to learn of changes in terms and conditions (including prices). You failed that test miserably. I learned of the changes only via another blogger – yet you have my email address and could easily have sent me a direct and targeted message.
Second thing that annoys me: I paid my business plan renewal only a few weeks ago – a cost of $300. Yet now I learn that I can have the same benefits for $120 less. I’ve now managed to change my plan to get the lower cost but I shouldn’t have had to be the one asking for this – if I hadn’t heard of the change I would be out of pocket by $120.
Appalling way to treat a loyal customer.
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What a change!
I’m currently assisting a non-profit (in Africa, where I live) with their website. I don’t get paid to do this. The restrictions you have placed on how many Collaborators a free site can have would significantly change how one is able to do this. Please note that most non-profits don’t have web Administrators ready. Even if you don’t think so, learing WordPress is rather hard for someone who does not have the time, and many other responsibilities.What’s more a non-profit would rather test a free site to see if it’s even worth creating a website. In my country of residence, many of the small companies don’t have websites, never mind the non-profit organizations. Even just a presence on FaceBook is a huge thing. And let’s just be real, even the price tag you had on your previous “Personal Plan” was high for a non-profit.
It would be nice if you could keep the non-profit entities and personal bloggers (especially those in developing nations) with just a tiny little blog into your price and Administration considerations.
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@ladycrunk I was working through this feedback and noticed you’re having trouble with your site, which wouldn’t have been affected by the plan updates. We’ll reach out through a support ticket to help you sort this out. Cheers!
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I am a hobby blogger that just wanted to express my thoughts and put my research out and have it immortalized in written form. I am not pleased with these options.
I had purchased a domain name for my blog through WordPress and could have it used as a domain and have it forwarded to my blog. It was set up. Then, I have not blogged awhile and was searching for it the last few days. My domain, I purchased through Word Press was not searchable and no where to be found. My blog has that name but it also has word press attached. This is not what I ordered. When I set it up it worked and was working when I last checked. Somehow it was highjacked. That is stealthy and not dark.
I was informed that I had a free blog still, but I could not use my domain name. I would have to purchase the $15.00 a month plan, and be billed $150.00 a year just so I could have my domain searchable and attached to my blog. That does not work and is not an economically viable plan for me. All I desire at this time, is that I can have my domain searchable and referred to my free blog. I am not it this for money to be made, but I cannot afford to fork the $150.00 over to WordPress for this option.
I should be able to use the domain I purchased through WordPress. On another note, I lost a domain name through Word Press that I cannot recover. I have been forever in mourning over that tragedy. I remain in black and detached from my domain in great sorrow.
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The zero or everything approach just doesn’t work for bloggers and owners of small sites. I’m happy to pay around $8.50 a month, which is what Wix charges for the ability to have a custom domain, no ads and 3GB of storage. I’m now in the process of figuring out how to migrate the site I’ve spent two months building to the Wix platform. I can envisage an exodus of small site owners as a result of this sudden and unannounced pricing change.
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I read the blog update (which IMO should have gone up weeks BEFORE the new prices kicked in). 1GB of space for free plans and the removal of traffic caps is better than the original proposal, but let’s be frank, taking ten steps backward then one step forward isn’t progress. $15/mos is still too steep just to get rid of ads and have a little more space, and if a la carte options are supposed to fill that gap then they really need to have been announced at the same time as Personal/Premium plans going away. As it is, I can’t plan for the future of my site without them, and would rather jump ship to a competitor that at least tells me my options up front. And if I did want to turn one of my sites into a business, I would be put off from doing so with a service that can and will drop huge changes abruptly and with no official announcement until days after users started complaining.
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I honestly wish the mentions of “15$/month” would be replaced by “180$/year”, because it would be more honest. Dividing by month may look more attractive, but only if we do indeed pay 15$ every month, instead of the 180$ in one shot that would happen.
I’m honestly confused by how the changes were applied before the decisions were made. The options à la carte should be already listed. If the developers are waiting for users’s request, then a poll or something should have been done before.
The official message is making clear what was already obvious, the blog history of WordPress is gone for the business users who need a site. The bloc editor is already a pain for a simple blog post (no, I don’t need to move a paragraph, no, I’m not going to reuse that paragraph in future posts, no, searching the image or read more bloc is not faster than clicking the icon in the toolbar), this is just a continuation of that, create a full website.
The only thing I need (as in, would actually pay) is storage place, eventually. But not for 180$. I’m assuming it’s going to be in the options à la carte, but honestly, I don’t know if it worth waiting for it.
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I’m now in the process of figuring out how to migrate the site I’ve spent two months building to the Wix platform.
I suggest Blogger.
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The official message is making clear what was already obvious, the blog history of WordPress is gone for the business users who need a site.
We are in the middle of a gentrification process.
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It’s worth noting that, in a twitter exchange I had with Matt Mullenweg, he said that WordPress would certainly come up with a plan in between the $180 a year pro plan an the $2,000 a year VIP plan. I don’t know if he didn’t realize that the VIP plan is $2,000 a month, or if it was just a slip.
This whole thing is an example of very bad communication. Pushing out a price change and asking for beta testers to provide feedback is not good. They should have gotten feedback well before the launch. Also, the day the prices changed, there should have been more information.
It’s good that many of the suggestions made here were taken on board, but it’s a worrying sign that they had to get feedback to come up with a less bad solution.
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I’m currently using the Premium plan. The reason I use this plan is because the Business plan is out of my reach (and so is the Pro plan).
For me the Premium features have already perfectly met my needs as a personal blogger.
To be honest this recent development makes me feel insecure, I hope there will be no more sad news this year.
Regards,
Iqbal -
Please allow me to convey an additional detail here (I would like to update my previous message but couldn’t “edit” button).
I hope there will be a plan between free and pro, it can be a Personal or Premium.
As a satisfied legacy Premium plan user, I even wrote a long post praising the Premium plan on my blog (https:// diakhir.blog/2021/06/02/wordpress-com-org-review-uptime-load-impact-speed/) I hope this post doesn’t need to change much and I still can recommend it to my friends :(
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Interesting – considering WP receives revenue from the advertising on free sites 1GB of storage seems to be on the lean side.
Asking for feedback is pointless if you (WordPress) don’t listen and don’t act on the concerns of its clients. The jump to Pro is an unfair out of proportion jump.
Blogging is a lifeline to thousands of seniors all over the world, it has given many a new lease of life. Blogging has encouraged them to get outside, take photos, find things to write about, share their world etc and has helped to combat loneliness.
Interesting – considering WP receives revenue from the advertising on free sites 1GB of storage seems to be on the lean side.Asking for feedback is pointless if you (WordPress) don’t listen and don’t act on the concerns of its clients. The jump to Pro is an unfair out of proportion jump.
Blogging is a lifeline to thousands of seniors all over the world, it has given many a new lease of life. Blogging has encouraged them to get outside, take photos, find things to write about, share their world etc and has helped to combat loneliness.
Senior bloggers looking for a hobby to keep their minds active and find friends in other parts of the world would find this expensive yearly fee difficult to find.
Most of them do not need plugins or anything else technically beyond them. WordPress please look at this again, become more client friendly and provide a simple alternative somewhere in between.
Senior bloggers looking for a hobby to keep their minds active and find friends in other parts of the world would find this expensive yearly fee difficult to find.
Most of them do not need plugins or anything else technically beyond them. WordPress please look at this again, become more client friendly and provide a simple alternative that is somewhere in between. Please give this group some consideration.
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OOps, 😂 Apologies for the double or more comments! My iPad page began flashing and jumping around just as I’d finished typing I made a copy of my reply for my personal notes and during the flashing episode it seems to have pasted itself here several times!
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I would like to ask that you create an add-on to the free plan that eliminates ads, and another that allows you to have a custom domain. That should enable a good swath of hobbyist bloggers to have a reasonable site.
The ads that show up on most free blogs are pretty low quality, because those sites get insufficient traffic to attract better ads. Really, those low-quality ads can be a blight on a blog — “Relieve Dark Spots in the Blink of an Eye (Watch THIS!)” and “Top Heart Surgeon: This Simple Trick Helps Empty Your Bowels Every Morning.” These are actual ads that show up on the test blog I have on the Free plan.
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This is great for people who used to buy the business plan, but I used the Personal plan for small websites that only needed the simple Free plan features with a custom domain, going from $3 a month to $15 a month isn’t going to be affordable.
Just looking at Wix’s pricing and they still have cheap options for simpler tiers, so it seems strange that you suddenly stop offering these yourself, particularly with Elementor starting to offer (cheaper) cloud websites too.
I echo the above comments that putting this live then dealing with all the fallout is the wrong way round, wouldn’t it have been possible to consult your users before dropping this bombshell?
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What an absolute shame… I’ve been working on my website for a month now and intended on buying the Personal plan this Sunday.
Reading the comments here, many people were invested in the Personal plan.
My website is just a blog with no monetary income. Compared to the 50 euros a year, there’s no way I have 180 euros to pay upfront and for this purpose. As another member also suggested, it would be best to stop saying it’s “15 euros/month” as this is a lie, since you only accept yearly payments.
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Only 50GB down from 200GB? What a rip off. For $20 more we could get 200GB on the Business plan.
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Only 50GB down from 200GB? What a rip off. For $20 more we could get 200GB on the Business plan.
I meant $120 more. Still, it seems like a big rip off.
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To put it another way how bad this is, on my main website, I was getting ready to upgrade to the Business plan, now it’s gone, and I don’t even want the “Pro” plan now.
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it is not fair! I have been using the e-commerce plan for 1 year and when I only need a personal plan for my new web site, I have to pay the same money that I paid for the e-commerce plan. Previous plan modules were pretty good and useful. I hope you will recover from this mistake as soon as possible. Otherwise, I think WordPress will experience a serious loss of customers.
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