Yes, envato is one of the best online marketing if you looking for WP themes, plugins for your business. Till Now I have purchased 32 themes for my clients websites.
Let’s go back to the main issue here. No one is telling that Envato is not a business. Of course they have to focus on the growth of their businesses. The concern here is how the early adopters are being treated in face of this change.
When Elements came as beta, there wasn’t anything so much valuable there. Every single early adopter subscribed to the service with the confidence that it would be a great tool someday. We did this because there was a promise regarding the pricing terms.
The early adopters are investors of this service. So, a minimum of consideration would be expected.
Now, we must decide in a very short term about switching to annual payment. As a bonus, the people who are subscribed to Envato since beginning was now accused that they would just download every Wordpress template in a month. It’s not fair.
There are options to make this billing change without treating so bad the early adopters. For example, you could offer an actual discounted price for annual payments or even remove the deadline to switch to annual in the current price.
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Been an early adopter of Envato Elements as well. You announced a long time ago that you’d be bringing Wordpress Themes and Plugins to the platform, so we’ve been on standby waiting. After a year or so, you get it to the platform, and then the only way you can access it is to get an annual plan. On top of that, if you downgrade from the annual plan, to the monthly plan, we don’t get to keep our introductory rate.
I get that there are two sides to the marketplace, but there are plenty of other alternatives. The way you’re treating early adopters with this change is a slap in the face. I, as I’m sure many others, may be looking to cancel subscriptions.
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We are not an elements subscriber and because of our inexperience with elements and envato it would be great if someone could clarify:
- when elements came out did envato officially say that the price or model was fixed? Esp. for when they added WP? Did envato categorically misled early adopters, or was it just that subscribers just assumed that WordPress would become an added category among the same offering?
- This is especially because in this thread from months ago they mention that this was all still being evaluated, and how different models suit different categories etc.?
- is there not a huge danger of authors losing interest and subscribers offering quickly depreciating if they are suitably rewarded? (For what it’s worth we fully side with other CMS authors points earlier about the similar value but that’s a different discussion).
- While we fully understand that every business is at a different stage and it is a big outlay for some, but it seems as if the amount being asked for is likely to be equivalent to a very small number of client jobs for any “business”, and therefore a logical or worthwhile investment?
Again a lot of this may be our inexperience here and we really appreciate any clarity people can offer, as right now it does seem a little like (please no one take this the wrong way - we do see everyone’s point) there is a mild level expectation which may be clouding the mutual respect and consideration for buyers, authors and envato which makes the marketplaces and elements so successful?
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Yes, the service was advertised and sold as pay $19/month and get access to everything. That is why most of us who have been here from the start are so upset. We feel that we were misled and that the service was falsely advertised.
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If we are paying the same (in the long run) all at once instead of in bulk. Then what is the difference to the author? They still get paid, just in parts instead of in bulk. Also, why discriminate between the CMSs? This is saying that the other CMSs are less important and of lower quality (which is not the case).
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For some of us it isn’t just about the cost/price. It is about the principal and that this sets the precedence that they change what they want when they want while users just sit complicit.
This would not be an issue if it wasn’t sold as pay $19/month and get access to everything, but it was and now they want to take advantage of us early adopters.
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Hi Envato Team,
one important problem from begin is that, as you can not guarantee that all items in elements are “100% up to date”, you should display the “Last Update” and “Created” informations in the elements item’s details!
Yes the total amount is so beautiful, i.e. for Shopify theme, there are 55 themes now, a good number, but if I click to download, many of them are out, their last update date are in 2015 or in 2016 or even in 2014, but now 2018 is coming!
Theme is not same as a graphic items, if a theme is too old and without continue update, the value of it is ZERO!
And without “Last Update Date”, if I want to know one theme has beed updated or not, I have to download it again, it is not good for us, and not good for authors too!
Now, before I upgrade to annual plan, if you don’t want to offer some discount for us as the early adopters, ok I can understand, but I must evaluate it myself, how many “really new themes or items with good quality” were added in last months.
And I want also to count, how many items in wordpress theme / plugins are really new!
I don’t want to pay more than $200 to collect so many old things!
The deadline is coming, just a few hours left and we do not have an answer, the early adopters!
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Just got a newsletter saying I have 8 hours left before the discount ends looks like I was right on my comment about only having a week to sign up.
Oh well I won’t be signing up then. Lol
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I prefer to stay with my current $19/m subscription for now, even if I won’t have access to Wordpress themes. There are a lot of great deals (including lifetime offers) for Wordpress out there.
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I must follow the same way, but we deserve an answer, do not you think?
Sure… They are probably waiting for the overall response from the last mailing where Envato warns us about the last chance to upgrade for a fake discounted price.
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I will not be choosing the annual package either, it was said over a year ago that WP themes would be coming to elements in the beginning of 2017, I can not point to a specific post or email about it, but it was mentioned. I continued to keep my subscription to this “experiment” with the belief that WP would be around and quality would increase with time. A year later we are told we need to pay a year up front to get access. You expect us to put “faith” in you guys that a year from now this thing will not be shut down in favor of another business model. I have been an elements supporter from the very beginning, and have spent lots of money on the “quality” marketplaces (Themeforest,Graphic River) in addition to the monthly elements for over 6 years. I see the value in the unlimited graphics for $19/month and would be willing to upgrade to $29/ month with current (not outdated) and more than basic WP themes. I do not have a good feeling about being forced to pay a year up front for it though, like I said, would I be reimbursed for whatever time I do not get access to these files if the authors decide to back out and the WP files are no longer available or worthless? It is not really about paying for it, hell I just dropped $60 on a WP theme on Themeforest the week before this announcement. I do not mind paying for quality work but it was advertised as “all you can eat” for a monthly price and that all this stuff would be added over time, not the case now.
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I’ve been in elements since the beginning also. I don’t have a problem converting to an annual plan since it is the same price as the monthly rate I am paying now. I understand the reason for making it yearly, though as others have pointed out, anybody who is getting elements at the $19 rate has been paying you the whole time now - you can’t drop out of the plan and get that $19 rate again.
So anyway, my issue would be this: You guaranteed that $19 rate. I don’t see that guarantee on the yearly plan, it is a one time $120 discount. If you will guarantee that rate for the people that have the $19 monthly rate I’ll be glad to convert. I shouldn’t have to pay at a rate higher than $19 a month, whether you collect that monthly or yearly I don’t care.
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I became an Envato subscriber way before Elements, when they only had the +Tuts subscription.
At that time they had a monthly pay, an annual pay and one option where you assumed an annual payment value split in 12 months.
You couldn`t cancel it during the course of this year. Game companies do that as well on their mmos (not mentioning which companies because of forum policies).
There are ways to solve this problem, some of them were even used by Envato in the past. Every interest would be protected and this weak excuse they gave us wouldn’t even be necessary.
So far, the only conclusion we get is that there is no trust in their community, in their products and no respect for their supporters.
I’m truly disappointed, even more after we got a message asking us to wait and then all we got was silence.
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The biggest thing we were told was that the price would be going up after the beta period was over, but our $19.99 price would be good as long as we didn’t let it lapse. What additional categories would be added I don’t recall being mentioned, just that if the beta was successful they were going to expand it, which they have. They were also suggesting that the price would rise significantly above $19.99 as they added new categories. The people who have been with elements since the beta have been here for years now, acting like we would suddenly quit and just come back the month we wanted a theme or a plugin is just silly. I can see why that would be a concern for new users, but if you have a person who has been paying you $19.99 a month for years, and you give them more selection, you can pretty much be guaranteed they are going to keep giving you $19.99 a month. Marketing wise, Envato would have been better off raising the price for new users then letting them in at a $19.99 rate on a yearly period. But that’s their decision. Someone in marketing really wasn’t thinking through what this would mean to their longest term and best customers.
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100% we have been overlooked here, its just another money hungry business model, what a shame!!!
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One other thought guys - you’re setting up this yearly plan to renew every Black Friday. The last thing I need is to load up the end of November with yearly renewals. If you still have the same price and want me to go yearly in January that would be different, as for now, getting access to a bunch of themes I’m probably never going to use (how many themes do you think a website uses anyway?) and plugins, well if I want one, I’m going to buy it. You can’t keep loading up a website with those either. Anyway, I’m going to give this one a pass at the moment. Ask me again in January, I might have a different answer for you. I’d rather spend the money on your half price Black Friday items, and I can’t do both.
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I won’t lie when this offer first came out I was gutted, but I honestly think Envato have made a mistake here.
The outcome of this upgrade to annual at a special offer on yearly DO IT NOW or LOSE OUT has kind of backfired.
Not only have they upset a load of loyal fans of Elements they have made people realise, WordPress Themes and Plugins are not worth the annual plan.
Your not going to need all these themes and plugins, yes it would be nice to have the choice but you got to ask is it worth the money and I believe NO!
If you want a good quality theme or plugin then its CodeCanyon. The premium stuff seems limited aka freeware.
Ill be giving this a miss.
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Still no update from Envato after being told we would see an update. Are they hoping that we forget about this and just move on while still giving them our money?
