Exactly, there is not enough information but this would have been shared with the participants I bet. Either the theme author does the install (but what if they are on holiday or busy) or they will more likely use a studio author to do it.
If the author is paid theme + $1 a month it’s not so bad, that would be nice to increase it a little, $3 a month for example but if the author is supplying just the theme then that’s probably fair enough.
I would guess that the buyer also gets the chance to buy extra support like a theme purchase would as well.
The proof is in the attention to detail, Envato are probably being coy for good reason.
All these New changes that you are doing to your marketplace is just horrible, First you implemented the NEW forums (horrible), then tell your customers in a nutshell that it is ok to find alternative sources If you don’t like Photodunes NEW pricing & policy (unreal) and now you want to control the entire cusotmer by controlling themes and get into the hosting business?
Were does this end and how do you continually explain this to faithful, loyal members for years?
I am so frustrated with this marketplace anymore and I know I am not the only one. This marketplace has become to big for the small business and small customers who just want things “simple”. You have taken all that from them including our company. We no longer shop on Photodune due to your changes and now another example of how you are trying to make things better when in fact it only gets worse. (this is my opinion only).
This marketplace at one time had so many happy authors, they made tons of sales and just look at how the sales are down for them. Buyers are not happy with the new changes and authors are losing in the end. It’s no win for both.
I have been in business for 28 years and our company knows how to treat customers. Envato has forgotten the simple things that make custmers happy. At $19.00 per month that is $228 per year, plus the cost of the theme and the license for the theme, then the cost of all the images… UNREAL!
I think it is time to honestly say goodbye to this entire marketplace. We stopped buying from Photodune and now I will have to have a meeting with my team informing them we have to make changes. Good luck to all the authors and buyers in the future but there are other alternatives that want our business and not try to change their inner structure.
The theme is included in the price, not all buyers are technical to setup their own hosting, run it and manage it, so this is an additional service for buyers who want it… it’s about offering a choice.
$19 a month isn’t bad for managed hosting.
There are more and more sales on the marketplaces so realistically buyers are happy, just there are more items = less sales per author as there is more choice.
There really isn’t any other choice at the moment, all the other sites that are competitors just don’t have the buyers like Envato.
So 59$ - fees + 2$/month… meaning Envato needs to have a client with them for 4 months just to break even?
What happens if the client after 7 days trial decides not to take it? Interesting very interesting.
The main point in all new features and ventures is that Envato is constantly stating that they are a private company and they can virtually make any decision they see fit.
That’s true… Buuuuut realistically it’s not.
Yes, Envato is a private company but they do not own the products meaning there are many things that clash here. Recently everything is going into our control on this notion except one thing. Direct control of the money.
We can get a sale reversal, we can in some cases if we do not Envato do process a refund, we pay taxes directly from the purchase, but we still need to wait to get the money we earned…
So… as I said, what happens if the client does not decide to use the service after the 7 day period?
Again we are talking about “trusted authors”… what are criteria for trusted authors? How to become a trusted author? It’s all the same as auto updates…
In the end, its again whatever Envato want’s
But I don’t want to be so negative, it is far too early to have any meaningful feedback as we just do not know enough, it’s all too much of a hush hush. The only thing that bug’s me is that again the cream of TF/ or in other cases the lucky chosen are getting extra chance and exposure.
What are you doing guys !!! Don’t be so aggressive to make money. People’s cann’t still adopt the Systems. Feels that we’ve already passed the Golden Age of ThemeForest.
Get used to it mate. It’s the new way Envato does things. Money over anything. I thought this would be very obvious with the Envato Elements banners plastered all over the forums / checkouts / pages / top banner / mails.
@matthewcoxy This is such a damn joke, seriously you think its fair for the author to get the theme price and a $1/month thereafter, do you think we’re idiots? That’s straight up robbery and you guys know it, a buck give me a break. You guys are slowly killing yourself as a company from the inside out and alienating your authors which are your main source of income. I used to have so much love and faith in this company as whole but that’s changing day by day and month by month.
You guys need to step back and think about your priorities, you’ve already let the WordPress category become severely oversaturated killing sales all over the place which makes up something like 80% of your revenue. Then you come out with a competitor to your own marketplace with Elements which will include WP themes in the future and do you really think authors in the right mind will sign up to allow you to take $18 of the $19 a month for Envato Hosted, its appalling to say the least. Take a good look at what you’re doing, where you think you’re going and the consequences that these actions might cause to your community.
Not entirely sure why is everyone being negative about Envato Hosted. Sure, the recent changes haven’t been great, but there doesn’t seem to be a problem with Envato Hosted. Maybe I am missing something, but isn’t this the case:
Envato will manage the whole “hosted” architecture including theme getting pre-installed.
The author gets $1 / month without doing anything. This is obviously in addition to normal theme price.
Authors can expect Envato Hosted to have a recent PHP version and sane configs like memory limits, execution times for importers and so on.
Is the objection based on an extra service being advertised on item pages?
Edit: Got it. The problem is 7 days free trial which includes support. That’s ridiculous.
Not sure where you live but a $1 dollar a month is a complete joke, when we’re the ones putting 1000’s of hours into these themes and Envato is banking recurring revenue off us. Its a horrendous business proposition and only the fools would fall for some underhanded proposal like that.
Not really a good comparison. It’s not like if you sign up then your total, maximum earnings from Envato will be capped at $1 a month. Sure, it sounds pretty bad, but we don’t know the full picture. Some people are saying $1 a month, some people are saying $2 a month and you get paid the theme price.
If all you get is $1 a month and you have to handle support and setup… that’s terrible.
If setup and support are handled by Envato, and you get the theme price and $2 a month… then that’s pretty impressive! Yes, $2 a month for something is still ‘a complete joke’, but it’s considerably less of a joke if that’s $2 more than you would have got every month, if they’d just bought it outright.
Hi @matthewcoxy , we’ve met at Santa Monica author’s meetup half a year ago. I just want to raise a concern that recently top authors with top themes got a much better treatment than us mortals, even tho Envato took more than $100,000 in fees from me I am still unable to speak with someone who has any meaningful role at ThemeForest to help me with an issue I am currently facing with review team, half a year ago I was helping a relative to setup one of the top themes on his website and I saw that they have a requirement to enter a purchase code to validate a purchase in order to install demo data and plugins that were promised on theme demo, I thought to myself - great idea - that will help with fighting piracy since Envato is not doing anything about it at all (I can find my themes on torrent websites the next day after I uploaded them to Envato), so I’ve spent the next couple months building a similar system that will ask for a purchase code (using Envato API) in order to access theme demo, but after I’ve done this - I received a message from the review theme that I have to take that down because its not allowed. How is it allowed to top authors and not allowed to me? I thought its a free market, but it looks like you are giving an unfair advantage to some top selling authors. I hope to get a reply to this message. After I’ve received that message - I went ahead and downloaded top selling themes and top selling plugins to see how many of them are using purchase verification, so it turned out all of them are doing it…sounds unfair to me…
@Osetin please update me as well about your case after your discussion with @matthewcoxy. We are going to do this to protect us from the warez & piracy website and also protect our bandwidth.
I can see the sale reversals keep increasing in the last few days and those maybe the sources for those warez sites.
As a trust-in-automation-power author, I don’t think authors or Envato have to do much to install the theme & demo manually.
Envato just has to write some scripts to automate those procedure on their hosting. They own the server & got the theme source on their server. Just even click once to run the batch & waiting it to be proceeded completely. And this job requires no-IT knowledge to install at once, in fact.
And if possible, maybe their future plan with premium package, with some more cost, the source can be synced to their hosting with the latest version without any delay.
Went over to the “Envato Hosted FAQs” and it states “Ongoing support from our team of WordPress experts”. So, the theme author gets Item Price (minus fees) PLUS $1 or $2 or whatever it is per month MINUS the responsibility/headache and cost of support.
Obviously and naturally, the buyers would ask Envato Hosted team for support with theme because thats where / how they made their purchase decision (based on Envato Hosted claim of “Ongoing Support by WordPress Experts”, AND not by Authors who’s Support Policy which is limited (Not ongoing) and also only to do with bug fixes and answering technical questions etc.)
Not only that, but Envato Hosted also states clearly that “If you have any questions about the themes you can contact one of our friendly support staff and we’ll get back to you in no time.” and provides Envato Hosted own email / zendesk help center to answer questions about the themes, which further helps authors in reducing the number of pre-purchase questions from buyers.
So, its obvious, unless everything stated on that page is just “Dummy Text”, that Envato lets you sell your theme, and keep it up-to-date with bug fixes and new features, in peace and takes over literally every other responsibility related to supporting / updating / answering question etc. about the theme, and gives you a bonus 5% (or $1) per month for every sale they make for letting them advertise on authors precious item page!
And then, I suppose, they will also remove the “Reviews” tab from items page and put it over on Envato Hosted page, because thats where the support comes from, and 99.99% of reviews are left based on support. So, you can totally forget the headache you have when someone gives you 1 star for not replying to them on Sundays!
So, seriously, I would recommend taking a deep breath, and thinking over it, before commenting negatively without getting the full picture.