Note: this post marks the beginning of the re-use of this blog as a channel of communication between the WP Ultimo team and the Community. We’ll continue to use the Community to post updates as well.
Hey there,
As you probably know by this point, our WP Ultimo Black Friday sale went live this week.
Since we first announced it, I got a ton of messages asking essentially the same set of questions, so I wanted to address them all via this post. We’ll be answering today:
Very important questions:
✨ Is the Unlimited Lifetime License going away after Black Friday?
✨ Is version 2 stable yet?
✨ Where are the updates?
✨ What are the next steps for WP Ultimo?
More general, deal-related questions:
✨ On how many sites can I use my WP Ultimo License?
✨ Will my Lifetime License cover new major releases (v3, v4, etc)?
Let’s dive right into it.
Is the Unlimited Lifetime License going away after the current Black Friday & Cyber Monday sale?
Short answer: yes.
I purposefully avoided mentioning it in our promo material this year, though.
I made the same announcement last year – used it all over our promo material – and didn’t follow through with it based on what I thought were the right reasons at the time.
I only recently realized how bad a decision that was. And what a sour taste it left in some of our customers’ mouths 🙁
And they have all the reasons in the world to have felt that way.
We discussed this in length in the WP Ultimo Community, if you want a more elaborate explanation.
In any case, our team grew from 3 to 11 people this year, and one of my main priorities is ensuring WP Ultimo is sustainable in the long run.
Unfortunately, Unlimited Lifetime Licenses can’t get us there, so the new pricing structure enters into effect as soon as the BF & CM 22 sale ends.
Below you’ll find the new pricing structure, but first, two important observations need to be made:
(1) nothing changes for existing license holders – be those licenses recurring or lifetime;
(2) you’ll note that we still have Lifetime license tiers, but those are limited in terms of how many networks they can be used on, and support is limited to 3 years.
1. Recurring Pricing
- Starter – 1 Network – $247/year – Free Add-ons
- Plus – 1 Network – $347/year – Pro Add-ons + Free Add-ons
- Pro – 5 Networks – $547/year – Pro Add-ons + Free Add-ons
- Agency – Unlimited Networks – $997/year – Pro Add-ons + Free Add-ons
2. Lifetime Pricing
- 1 Network – 3 years of support – Lifetime Updates – $997
- Pack of 3 Networks – 3 years of support – Lifetime Updates – $1997
Is version WP Ultimo 2 stable yet?
Short answer: yes.
Hundreds of networks have been running it without issues.
However, I understand why people would be afraid to upgrade from v1 to v2, as we could have done a better job of providing help materials for that process. We’re working on those now.
In any case, while we work on those, we are organizing a task force internally to help people with their migration processes personally.
I think it is an excellent idea as it allows us to see some of the migration bugs we can’t replicate in our test environments and fix them once and for all. It will also help us bring more and more people over to v2, the target of the goodies we’ve been working on.
We’re already doing this for some networks, but we’ll open discovery call slots at the beginning of January. Priority will be given to larger networks and customers with older license keys, as we can only do some of these at a time. We’ll keep you posted on that.
Where are the updates?
People were under the impression that WP Ultimo was an abandoned product. The reasons were varied:
- I left the Facebook group in favor of our Community, which meant no updates ever got to the group members.
- We stopped sending update/changelog emails in favor of posting them in the WP Community (of which only some were members).
- We had a (now fixed) bug on our site’s changelog page that was not serving the latest version of the plugins’ changelog.
- Between onboarding six new team members and working on V2 stability, releases were mostly comprised of bug fixes and only a few new features.
Most of those have been addressed now:
- I decided to return to the Facebook Group (although the Community will continue to be the main community site);
- We will resume sending version updates via email (like we did with version 2.0.23 earlier this week);
- The changelog page has since been fixed and shows ALL the updates we’ve been consistently shipping for the past seven months (with roughly a new release every three weeks);
- The team is fully integrated, knows the codebase, and the work we’ve been doing is starting to amount to releasable features – new features =)
What are the next steps for WP Ultimo?
Short answer: Our top priorities are (1) fixing the last bugs on V2 and (2) the domain seller add-on.
We are trying to promise less and work on fewer features simultaneously so we can focus on delivering the best results.
We are also going to make changes to our roadmap. From the very hard-to-keep-up-to-date model we have now to a more straightforward, straight-to-the-point approach with three sections: now, next, and later.
Update on 07/12/22: Since this post was originally written, we remodeled the WP Ultimo product roadmap to make it clearer and straight to the point. You can check the new roadmap here. We also wrote a post about the remodeling itself. You can read that here.
On how many sites can I use my WP Ultimo License?
In our pricing page, you’ll notice that we don’t use “sites” as a limiting metric for each tier; we use “networks”.
That’s because WP Ultimo is a WordPress Multisite plugin, and each WordPress Multisite installation can technically run unlimited sites (called sub-sites).
On the other hand, a network represents each individual WordPress Multisite installation, no matter how many subsites it might have.
So, a single-network license can be used to activate WP Ultimo on ONE Multisite installation of WordPress with 2, 30, or 500 sub-sites.
Note: We have an e-book covering the basics of WordPress Multisite and how WP Ultimo uses to do great stuff. You can read it here.
Will my Lifetime License cover new major releases (v3, v4, etc)?
Short answer: yes.
I take lifetime licenses seriously.
Here’s a “fun” story for you:
I almost sold the company in 2020.
After more than six months of negotiations, the deal ultimately went south when they realized we wouldn’t budge on the requirement that all lifetime licenses be honored after the transfer of ownership and that all customers would have access to the all-new v2 we were working on at no additional charge.
That reason was never officially given by the other party involved. Still, it was the impression I was left with after our final call.
All of that to say this: If you have an unlimited lifetime license, you’ll get support and updates for as long as the product exists, including major versions.
Ok, this ended up much longer than originally intended…
Have a wonderful weekend ahead,
