Goodbye Envato. I loved my authors.

Envato Authors Author Hangout
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I loved my authors. I bought 20 or 30 themes over the years.

I am a small one person webdev firm. I ASK ONE TO THREE SUPPORT QUESTIONS A YEAR on average across all the themes I own.

You’ve ruined my business model. Changed my life forever.

I can’t afford to pay on all my sites - FOR NOTHING!

I’ll stay with authors who offer free support. And I would gladly pay them something when I need support. Something equal to the amount of support I need.

Your policy change was a greedy, unnecessary business decision.

Got rich and lost your valor. What a shame Envanto.

You had a lifetime, loyal customer here.

Never, ever smart to stick them in the back.

p.s. I could not even find a place to post on your announcement thread.

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Hello!
I don’t think I’m one of your authors, but I’d like to say something regarding the situation.
As author, I find out that (and I think you won’t be in any of these cases but just to explain you why I support Envato decision):

  • many customers are totally not polite, and aggressive without justification
  • 80% of support requests (over about 3000 we had in 2 years) are because people don’t read the instructions, don’t even unzip the file, don’t watch the 2 minutes videos and complains because the theme doesn’t do things that is not written in any place they should do, nor the demo has the functions they expect
  • 15% asks for help regarding customizations of code, functions and CSS, which I do in order to help the people who honestly paid for the product, even if no rules forces us doing so. I chose personally to help people a bit more when they are polite and ask things in the good way. But most of the times this turns out in hours of unpaid work.
  • Anyway, if we don’t help these people with customizations deeply out of the support boundaries, some of these people becomes ugly and arrogant, threating us with bad reviews or leaving them for real. You understand that we are kind of forced in making happy anyone, as bad reviews kills the sales.
  • Any author can anyway choose to offer whatever support they want, and in case the support period expires, now that it has an expiration, we can chose to keep on supporting customers or not. But actually in this way all the people who always acted in a bad way to obtain support, can be cut out of the system without breaking any rule.
  • At the price that a theme is sold, paying a developer to offer on average 10 minutes to support a customer is a nearly impossible expense. For this reason rules has been created.
  • consider anything you buy has a normal warranty and an extended warranty you buy separately, and same is for themeforest. You can anytime buy support for items even after they are expired, from what I saw (someone can let me know if I’m wrong)

All that said, if you are a good customer and speak in a polite way with authors, and don’t ask for tons of free customizations of html, php, js and css, probably the authors will keep on answering your questions, but if they doesn’t consider that the value of what you buy with a theme is highly under the price of whatever other software you can buy out of themeforest that costs same effort in development as a themeforest theme.

And you can’t compare themes of other marketplaces as the validation process on themeforest is the hardest regarding quality of design, typography, coding and functionalities.

You basically get a software that would cost 10 to 20 k in development for few bucks, so if is a problem paying 20$ for the support, consider that is the best alternative you can get in the worldwide market, and maybe will not appear as ugly as you thought in the beginning.

Developers are people who must study as a surgeon, a psychologist or a rocket engineer, but are considered as people who cut ham at the supermarket.

Still of your same idea as before?
Just to let everyone think about this, for me a very wise decision from Envato.

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I’m not exactly sure what changed, it’s pretty much the same as before, except it’s written that we offer 6 months support.

In 99% of the cases that’s when the support questions are asked.

You don’t pay anything extra, the price is the same as it was before. And I’m sure the established authors will still answer questions after your 6 months support expires if they care about their business.

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If paying an extra $20 if your client has an issue with their website six months later, ruins your business model, then your business model might not have been that great to start with.

"And I would gladly pay them something when I need support. Something equal to the amount of support I need."

I’m sure most authors would be happy to charge you an hourly rate for support, as and when required.

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Normally other developer charge at least min. $50/hr for any customisation, but the support pack is toooo less if you compare with that.

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We have another account with over 300 purchases.

We too are authors, as well as buyers here on Envato.

Personally, I do not find an issue with paying for support as it’s worth it and improves the quality of that support.

Knowing both ends of the stick, some buyers are extremely rude, aggressive and ungrateful.

They expect you to do everything for them and half the time those concerns are already address in help files.

When there is a cost associated with support, I think it helps all parties involved.

It ensures buyers get the support they want and the quality they need. More importantly, authors are nicer :smile:

Same applies to buyers - buyers are nicer because they’re receiving the support they deserve for the product.

More often than not, there are many buyers out there that make offering support very difficult.

It’s not always common to see respectful buyers, or ones that really take time to learn what they’re doing.

However, as an author, I know I’d much prefer to charge our hourly rate, verses the support rates offered here.

As a buyer, I’d much rather pay the small amount being requested instead of hourly rates of $50.00+/hr USD.

Personally, I think it benefits all parties involved and giving past buyers 6 months automatically, is a good call.

Sorry that you feel otherwise.

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@QantumThemes +1

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you said it nicely.

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