Hey there, how are you doing?
Before we say anything, let me start by making a very important point:
None of the changes I’ll discuss here apply to current license owners: If you already own a Lifetime license, the terms of that license remain the same: unlimited networks, lifetime support, and updates; If you have a recurring subscription, your price will remain the same, and it will afford you the same access to add-ons, support, and updates you have now for as long as you keep it active.
Now that’s out of the way, let’s get started.
After December 9th, we’ll no longer sell WP Ultimo Unlimited Lifetime Licenses, and new plans with updated terms and prices will replace the existing ones.
The new pricing page goes live in the first minute of Saturday, December 10th, 2022, UTC. There’s a timer on the deal page, counting down to it (to help with timezone conversion).
This will feel like a dejavú moment for some of you, as we originally intended to up the prices and eliminate the unlimited lifetime license by the end of last year.
As we discussed in this Community post, I didn’t go through with the change at the time for a couple of different reasons, without really realizing how bad that decision was. It not only left some customers with a bad taste in their mouths – which is completely understandable – as they took the deal because they thought Unlimited Lifetime was going away, but it also ultimately prevented us from focusing on building up our recurring revenue numbers – which is the true path to long-term sustainability for a business such as WP Ultimo.
We won’t delay this transition any further.
Why now?
The main reason continues to be the same: WP Ultimo is a very complex piece of software.
It does a lot of things. And it integrates with a bunch of different services, including hosting providers – that’s how we deal with adding domains and creating SSL certificates automatically, so you don’t need to do it manually for every new customer, for example 😉
It handles site creation, content duplication, and populating site templates with customer-provided data; it handles your customers recurring payments, their access to plugins and themes, how many posts and pages they can create on their site on a given subscription plan, etc. The list of features is huge and will continue to grow as time goes on.
It needs to do all that and more to help you achieve your goal of automating your freelance/agency/niche website business. As a result, WP Ultimo is considerably more complex to maintain than your average WordPress plugin. And this higher maintenance incurs higher costs.
In addition to the above, a lot has changed in our company in the past twelve months, making this transition almost mandatory at this point. During 2022, our team has grown from three to eleven people, working full-time on fixing bugs, writing documentation, and adding new features.
Lifetime deals are awesome for customers, and I get that. I have LTDs myself, and some of them are among the best investments I’ve ever made. They can be dangerous for businesses, tough, especially if they remain an option forever.
If LTDs are so bad, why do an extended sale, then?
That’s an excellent question.
Lifetime deals have their downsides, but if used wisely, they can be a fantastic tool in propelling company growth. That’s especially true when your company is 100% bootstrapped like ours is.
The best part of end-of-year sales for small teams like WP Ultimo is that it allows us to start the coming year with much better financial solidity.
If it wasn’t for last year’s sale, for example, growing the team to its current size would’ve taken a lot more time. It took a while for us to ensure everyone was familiar with the codebase and to put processes in place to make sure we were as effective as we could be as a team. Still, we got there, and the results ARE INCREDIBLE.
The other factor is easier to explain, but not everyone feels comfortable sharing: I’m human =) And I admit I’m nervous about finally going through with the pricing change. As simple as that. While I’m confident it is the right move in the medium and long term, I’m not sure what the impacts on short-term revenues will be – and that’s a bit scary 😨.
Those are the main reasons we’re holding this sale on the LTD before we finally let it go for good.
It will give folks a last chance to grab on to the deal of a lifetime while providing us with slightly larger coffers and the confidence required to make some of the more ambitious investments we have planned for 2023 – some of which you can read a bit about already on our updated roadmap.
In summary
Okay, here’s the brutally condensed summary of where we are and where we’ll be after this Friday.
Until Friday December 9th, 2022 @ 23:59:59 ⏰
There’s an Unlimited Lifetime License for sale. You can grab it here.
- It can be used to create an unlimited number of WaaS’es;
- It gives you lifetime access to support and updates.
After Friday December 9th, 2022 @ 23:59:59 ⏰
We will no longer offer an Unlimited Lifetime License.
There will be lifetime-updates-only tiers at $997 (for 1 (one) Network) and $1997 (for a 3 Networks pack). Access to support is restricted to the first three years in both cases.
In addition to that, all of our recurring license offerings are also changing.
Here’s a summary of the new plans:
- 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
And here are the current plans, as they stand today – for comparison purposes:
- Starter – 1 Network – $99/year – Free Add-ons
- Plus – 3 Network – $169/year – Free Add-ons
- Pro – Unlimited Networks – $249/year – Pro Add-ons + Free Add-ons
That we’ll be it from me, I guess.
See you soon!
