We’re changing how we handle support

Mark Hamstra | November 23, 2017

Since launching in 2013, we've sold licenses that come with a year of support and offered discounted yearly renewals for support following that. As of today, we're dropping support renewals and are offering unlimited support for supported major versions.

Here's how support now works: if you buy a ContentBlocks v1 license, you will have access to support for as long we support ContentBlocks v1. It doesn't matter if you bought a license a month or three years ago, our email support will be available to you at no extra cost.

When the next major version is released, in this example ContentBlocks v2, we'll announce the end-of-life support date for v1. When you upgrade to v2, you'll get unlimited support coverage for as long as we support v2.

Unlimited subscription holders don't pay an upgrade fee (which makes unlimited subscriptions a great deal if you work on a lot of sites). If you buy a license just before we release a major release, we'll offer a grace period so you can get the upgrade for free.

The first release that will use this upgrade model will be Redactor 3, but we also have plans for ContentBlocks 2 and MoreGallery 2 in 2018.

Why drop support renewals?

We offered support renewals since we started modmore to create recurring revenue. Creating a business that has solid recurring revenue allows everyone involved to sleep easier at night, but it didn't work well for us. Support renewals brought in far less revenue than we had hoped.

We considered spending some time pushing support renewals harder, but it didn't feel right. Here's why:

  • Most support questions come within the first couple of weeks after purchasing a license or an upgrade is released. Only a small percentage of tickets are outside their support coverage. Catching the cases where tickets are created outside of their support coverage would have required a lot of time and effort – time and effort that could be put to better use.
  • Not answering support questions until someone pays up didn't feel very client-friendly. That isn't the kind of business we want to run.

What I like most about the new support model is it aligns the interests of modmore with the interests of our customers. The upgrade model requires that we continue to push our Extras and create really awesome upgrades that you'll want to pay us for.