John, for the information you provide, this is very appropriate and fair pricing. Please keep up the great work you guys do in keeping us informed.
Changes in IPVM Legacy and Group Plans
Published Sep 13, 2013 04:00 AM
Starting October 1, 2013, IPVM shall discontinue legacy personal plans and change group plan options. This will not impact most subscribers on current personal plans. Indeed, the personal annual plan will remain unchanged at $199.
However, those with legacy personal and group plans will need to select new plans when their current term expires. This will make payments fairer across the community and help us to continue improve our offering.
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***** ******* **** **** ******** ******** in ************* ****** ******* ***** ******** us ** ** **** ** ***** you. *** ** **** ** *** have ********* ** ********, ****** ** the ******** ***** ** ******** ** me (****@****.***).
Comments (24)
UI
Undisclosed Integrator #1
Sep 13, 2013lB
leigh Bester
Oct 17, 2013Hi John,
I am at present on contract as an Advisor, and as such need to be able to download your PDF documents so as to provide my client with more comprehensive information and advise (I know you have a copyright on your documents, I prefer to write my own recomendations using your printed documents merely as a reference without having to work continually off the computer screen). I originally opted for you Personal Pro account that doesnt offer the Download option, so I took up your offer to upgrade to the '5 Member Pro Option' which I have made extensive use of (thank you so very much for the info). Am I right in saying that for me to continue as usual I must take up the '3 Member Pro Option' to maintain my current Privilages?. In other words my question would be, is the 'Personal Pro Option' still offered without the PDF downloads?
Kind Regards
Leigh
JH
John Honovich
Oct 17, 2013Leigh,
Yes, PDF downloads remain for group members only. In your case, you can continue to pay the same annual price by switching to the 3 member plan and get the same privileges. Does that make sense? Let me know or email me (john@ipvm.com) with questions.
lB
leigh Bester
Oct 18, 2013Thanks John, thats great! I shall procceed with my mebership as advised.
Kind regards
Leigh
PN
Paul Noble
Jan 31, 2014Just FYI, when clicking on the option to renew, we are facing a minimum 5x cost increase From $499 to $2,499 so syonara to what was a truly excellent forum, but hard to justify at that rate. In your explanation you indicate lower rates, 5 for $749, 10 for $1,349, but we do not seem to have the option. (We have 10 subscribers in our company since that was the corporate subscription, you indicate 11 and this may be our error, but only 2-3 actually use).
JH
John Honovich
Jan 31, 2014Hi Paul, if you only have a few who use regularly, you can delete the users who do not and then choose a lower cost plan. It looks like you already did that, but let me know if I can help.
PN
Paul Noble
Jan 31, 2014Thanks, John. Yes indeed. it took a while to figure out!
js
jesse schartz
Mar 27, 2014"....when you're in your little room...and you're working on something good...but if it's really good...you're gonna need a bigger room...and when your're in the bigger room...you might not know what to do...you might have to think of, how you got started, sitting in that little room..." -white stripes
...sorry man, boss won't pay the higher price and not enough of your original candid blogs which brought me in to pay that much personally...we pretty much only use axis at our shop and surveillance is only a small fraction of what we do, Im the only tech and we don't bid on big surveillance projects, just smaller residential/commercial stuff...seems like your trainings and bigger corporate accounts could float your biz, not saying there isn't value and you are definately unique so I understand the strategy, I just thought you were a small guy fighting for the small guy and now it looks like you are going to be a big shot, why cut out the single small guys who helped you get started instead of grandfathering us in? ...wish you were local, I would love to be one of those engineers you hire!! ...good luck!
JH
John Honovich
Mar 28, 2014Jesse,
You were grandfathered in for 3 years. And what IPVM is today is radically better than what it was years ago. IPVM is a far better value now at $199 per year for all that we offered vs $99 years ago.
RW
Rukmini Wilson
Mar 28, 2014If you feel like sharing some of your e-marketing mojo, I would be very interested in why you would not simply continue a membership like Mr. Schartzes. Not for any of the reasons he states, which are mainly attempts, I believe, to provoke some kind of guilt response. Is it fair to say that these next two statements are true?
1. You believe that since the product is worth a minimum of X, that everyone must pay X.
2. You believe that it is not fair to the other members to have pay full price while some members recieve deep discounting.
Except that if we believe that Jesse will actually 'abandon cart' and since the cost of continuing service to Jesse is trivial, I believe that the standard move here is to continue the service at such at the lower rate.
Unless of course doing so would be known to the unwashed at large and therefore cause full paying members to mentally devalue their memberships or to feel somehow that they were being treated unfairly.
Any thoughts on abandoning/abandoned cart e-strategies?
JH
John Honovich
Mar 29, 20141 and 2.
On rare occasions, we offer discount or free memberships to charities or other users that clearly cannot afford to pay. This is not the case here.
js
jesse schartz
Apr 02, 2014...wow...went from disappointed to insulted... Nothing positive to say about your former customer's post struggling with this decision huh John... You criticise large companies for favoring personal relationships to strengthen business, so I only assumed that you would make a cold decision to cut out anyone who didn't agree with your new pricing. I was pretty sure that my remarks about the value or your product in general would suffice to offset the "attempts to provoke guilt" that are more personal to my situation. I have turned a number of people on from Denver to your site, but of course that is a personal recommendation that will stop due to the lack of compassion your reply showed. I thought I was being engaging but I must have insulted you instead, none the less during a rather difficult transition I can only imagine...I appologize for this.
I am not renewing my subscription because, well... you doubled your price with no input from myself and no gain to my company. Our office flooded (colorado had very bad rains last sept) and now I have to analyze descretional spending and this was a hard call. Your service to me (a full service low voltage integrator with an already set top tier camera supplier) has not improved and does nothing to make us money as I am unable to print or use anything from your website according to the agreement. ("Hey, you should spend 6 figures with me on a complete system because this blogger says I use good cameras")...I have found that your knowledge is similar to my own and I was impressed to see most of it covered in an Axis certification that includes a camera that offsets the price of the cert in the first place. The rest is common sense to those who have the ability to understand it all. I am not interested in industry "fluff", just your style of dry and critical writing that ruffles feathers... otherwise you are a niche and specialized provider of information generally purposed for those who have no idea what they are doing in the first place.
To Rukmini, you don't know me bro, your next thought on abondoning e-cart strategies should be to go fuck yourself.
JH
John Honovich
Apr 02, 2014Jesse, cursing someone out is uncalled for.
I did not criticize your decision. I just simply reiterated that the prices are what the prices are and that we believe IPVM provides more value in 2014 than in 2010 when the old prices were offered.
You did not say anything about your office being flooded in your original post so its inappropriate to accuse me of lacking compassion in my response.
I am not interested in getting into a flame war with anyone. Thank you for your feedback, I appreciate you being a member in the past.
RW
Rukmini Wilson
Apr 02, 2014Jesse, perhaps you should re-read my original post before instructing me on what my next abandoning e-cart thought should be. In fact I never had a thought regarding abandoned e-cart strategies before I came across your Dear John. It was filled with a wistful bitterness that I found touching and it forced me to consider your plight.
From what I knew of John's resolve, it would have been pointless to continue in the same manner and tone as you had begun, the characterization of which as "attempts at provoking guilt" I still believe is generally accurate and although somewhat clinical, more than descriptively generous, considering the numerous pejoratives that could have been applied.
Instead, I thought that a better approach would be to engage in a more abstract argument taking a bottom line focused approach, in an attempt to discover more of John's way of thinking. And more importantly to express the opinion that it possibly makes more cents to eternally and silently grandfather such members as yourself, as can be seen by this challenging statement:
I would be very interested in why you would not simply continue a membership like Mr. Schartzes...
followed quickly by an appeal to the norm:
I believe that the standard move here is to continue the service at such at the lower rate.
I'm sorry that this did not help your situation as I might have hoped, although I don't believe it hurt either. But in any event I'll consider your suggestion next time .... I have a thought on abandoning e-cart strategies. Good Luck!
RM
Richard Martinez
Mar 28, 2014John, what 's the cost for a single Pro Access, and with at least 3? I'm not sure if this can be accommodated but I need to ask you. I don't need a. 5 membership group, if possible. The economy is not good. Please advice, thanks.
JH
John Honovich
Mar 28, 2014RM
Richard Martinez
Mar 28, 2014SA
Syed Ali
Jun 30, 2014What's a single user plan from what I was paying before?
JH
John Honovich
Jun 30, 2014Syed, you were paying $499 before. You can continue to pay $499 for a 3 user plan or switch to $199 for a single user plan. Let me know. Feel free to email me at john@ipvm.com
Manfred Fichtl
Aug 06, 2014100% increase ?
unjustifiable
JH
John Honovich
Aug 06, 2014Manfred, You have paid $300 less than the going membership rate over the last 3 years, an amount thousands of other people pay ($199 annual).
Statistically, 60%+ of members with discontinued plans have upgraded them to the "100%" more ones.
It's certainly each individual's decision, but thousands of professionals around the world deem $199 annual for IPVM as a justifiable amount.
CJ Leffel
Jul 31, 2018This is most unfortunate, as my employer has determined we can't justify paying the increased cost in comparison to the benefit provided, and will be allowing our account to lapse, and I'll miss the reporting keeping me up to date on industry news, but I can't say I blame him either, as the cost increase *is* pretty steep: no blame or aspersions from me on you doing what you feel you need to do to keep your business running, it is what it is, I guess, and I wish you the best for the future.
Michael Budalich
Jul 31, 2018JH
John Honovich
Jul 31, 2018CJ, we implemented this price change 5 years ago. You were on a special discount where you got half off for the last 5 years by prepaying for 5 years, just to give you context.
What does your company use IPVM for? Becuase even at $1,349 for 10 users, that is not much for technology companies that get benefits from learning what works in our test, or using our software, or getting information on new products or problems with manufacturers, etc.
CJ Leffel
Aug 01, 2018John,
Please let me reiterate from the start there's no judgement from me on this, nor any ill will... as I said, mainly I'm just disappointed I'm not going to have access to the industry insights I get from IPVM and will have to rely on more generic or less dedicated resources to get the same relevant industry-focused information. Personally, I'm just a mid-to-high-level I.T. SysAdmin who supports our field operations as occasion requires it, and I like staying up to date on anything I might need to support, which definitely includes cameras and the like, but then I'm also a technical sort, so...
As for what the company uses IPVM for? Mainly news, as far as I know. I know several other employees - mainly at the C-Suite level - have had access, but I honestly don't know how much they used it. However much it was, it must not have been enough for our CEO who was the decision maker in the process. I do wish you the best for continued success however!