We all know that Envato support is not the best.
With Envato Support helping the theme buyers, they won’t be able to handle theme-specific or complex questions.
So, this raises the question, does the buyer review the theme or the Envato-hosted solution? Who’s responsible for 1-stars ?
When they are saying “If you have any questions about the themes you can contact one of our friendly support staff” - they would have trained their WP Experts and support staff on each theme available via Envato Hosted, or not? And if the question is too complex, Envato Support can always get Author Support, can’t they?
Meanwhile, the buyer WILL rate the theme 1-star for all the questions they failed to answer. All the fuss for $12 per year per customer?
Why get into this trouble as an author? You can probably increase your price by $1 and make up for the difference.
$1 is a joke to get into unknown territory for any author. We don’t have any idea how good Envato hosting is at the moment. No uptime, no WP optimizations.
It’s not like they’re a household name like WPEngine or FlyWheel.
To be honest, I believe there is definitely sales potential for WP hosting, but the way Envato approaches this is not the optimal way.
$19 / month is not the cheapest hosting if you consider the fact that many buyers have already purchased other themes.
So if they want to commit to an Envato hosting environment, they’ll want all their sites on there. 10 sites is $190 per month. This will BUG the buyer right of the start.
For example, $99 for 10 sites on WP Engine sounds waaaaay better, even not taking into account of their super awesome speed and lovely customer support.
As a customer, the only thing that would attract me is the demo content install bit. You click purchase, the site is setup. However, ANY PROBLEM would get 1 star from me. Since, that’s why I am choosing Envato hosting. 1-click hosting & demo content. Any less, I would go for other hosting providers.
another reason to give it time to see what happens, I don’t think Envato support will deal with WP questions imho and I hope it will be left to a new “support team” of studio authors who are paid to answer questions?
We are all jumping to conclusions, lets see what customers say for those in the trial before jumping on the blame game.
If the author is only supplying the intial theme, the theme cost and $1/2 a month is more than fair but realistically depends on what you are expected to do.
When it comes to the kind of people that need theme hosting and setup, there’s no such thing as household names… unless they’ve used the service before.
And for support, you’re assuming they’re just going to get the current team to do it. That might be the case, but I’d be very surprised. I’m guessing none of the current team were required to have any more than a very basic understanding of WordPress to get the job, as item based technical support isn’t within the team’s remit.
Training existing staff would be possible, but new hires or outsourcing the support to people with solid WP knowledge would be more likely. I’d also assume that, in-house or not, they would be a separate team. As a new service that they want to succeed, they’ll probably have a much stricter service level to adhere to. Forgetting your Envato password or checking if you can buy Envato gift cards is one thing… but a customer paying $19 a month for Envato’s new flagship service, whose website is down and frantically needs a solution, is another altogether.
But you have a point with just increasing the price of your theme, and it being a bit risky territory for a $1/$2 a month payday.
Envato can’t rely anymore on per-sale revenue. They need to come up with solutions for memberships, and this is what they’re doing with Envato Hosting and Elements. We all know that having customers pay a monthly fee rather than per products is the right way to make money in the long run. I just hope that we`re all be benefiting from it!
Are you sure? The buyer gets:
Theme & Hosting $19/month
it doesn’t pay e.g. $59 for a Theme.
How do authors benefit from subscription model?
Envato may buy the license for the customer in their name, so you still get the sale
It would make sense 
In that case, they should purchase the Extended License
Let’s take the support extensions for example. Users pay every six months a fee for ongoing support. Although the revenue is not what we all expected(support renewals represent just 1% from my total sales and I`m sure that other authors can confirm the numbers).
We can call it a subscription model.
Sorry to be a stickler, but that woukd be true only if the subscriber is then charging a client of theirs for the service. I.e. guy wants a website, approaches an agency, agency uses Envato hosting. If Envato are just buying the template for use ‘for them or a client’ (i.e. for a subscriber) then a regular license would be fine.
I appreciate you were joking, but it was a joke based on a restriction within the license that doesn’t exist (which a lot of people seem to get wrong) so I thought it important to bring it up! Just to clarify… you can buy a theme, set it up for a client, and charge them whatever you want… on a regular license.
All this because of launching Envato USA Inc
Primary vision is lost somewhere in the dark. How does an author still think creative handling all this stuff?
Before doing this, would you mind improving your review time and removing limits and add minimum price threshold to avoid price wars and share fees when authors provide discount in campaigns?
Though you cannot use the theme name and graphics - which is copyright the holder - in conjunction with the hosted solution. Otherwise anyone could setup a SaaS business and offer every theme available in the world.
Which is why it will be opt-in for authors.
I think it’s a grey area.
You can’t purchase Envato hosting without a theme, so either the hosting is attached to the theme or the theme is attached to the hosting. However, this is another question, which does not need answering since themes on Envato Hosted already accepted the conditions.
Most of our customers are people setting up websites for clients. I don’t know if it’s the case for others as well.
It is not extra 12$, or JUST 12$.
I think that most of you here, miss completely the point. The lifetime value of a client is been increased. It is 2$ / month extra, that means, 24$ extra. 54+24, which will also allow authors to sell their extra Support Option, if they want.
Also, it increase the custom LTV to Envato, which means, if you are a rockstar and you know how to do it, you will earn more than others, if you manage to convert the client to multiple payuts, because most will go ahead and buy a second theme for their web site and use it to update the site.
Consider that a gift, it is clear that only the strong will survive, but when you are a business, you have to learn how to pivot and adapt, so you can earn more.
There are business who do that, by buying a new license for each of their customers, with HUGE success.