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Ning Announces Price Increase - June 21, 2011

Ning Plus and Pro Pricing Increase

Just announced by Ning's CEO Jason Rosenthal, effective after July 20, 2011, Ning's Pro and Plus Subscription Plans will increase. You will have the opportunity to purchase your plans on an Annual basis to maintain the current pricing.
The new pricing will be:

According to Jason, Ning has added all kinds of new features in the past year, with major investments for an improved platform, better platform performance - - making Ning subscriptions more valuable.

He mentions the following features that have been implemented this past year:

Ning Design Studio, Social Sign-in, Leaderboards, Like Buttons and Ning Everywhere.

He then talks about the "up and coming" "Paid Access", which will enable Ning Network Creators to charge for membership for a Network or Special Content. Ning Network Creators may take issue or be confused with the mention of the "Paid Access" module in this announcement. There's an additional monthly fee to activate the new module when it's available: $19.95. It's not included in the "more valuable subscription" features.

Mr. Rosenthal completes the announcement with comments about the upcoming Activity Feed that will offer better member engagement.

My immediate thoughts are:

The new Activity Feed rocks, no doubt about it. Ning Members can add Status Updates from the home page, comment on other member's Status Updates, make comments on Photos, Videos, etc...play videos inline, and more.
The other new Features are great too. There's no denying it.
The platform has hit an all time high on uptime, instead of downtime, at about 99% uptime according to Ning.

But here are the questions:

How will Ning Network Creators react?
Is Ning soon to be the platform of choice for the larger player? Is it becoming too cost prohibitive for smaller business?
What do you think?

To be fair, I'll tell you all what I feel about the increase, in a little more detail:

I feel it's a bit too sudden for some NCs. And I feel the "paid access" should be included. Aside from those I'm okay with it - - especially if we continue to receive a stronger and better product. But, would I be okay with yearly increases? Absolutely not.

Ning provides a phone number for anyone who has questions about this upcoming change. Jason encourages you to give them a ring at 888-278-4386 if you are located in the U.S. or Canada, or 650-713-3158 if you are located outside of these countries.

Join the Conversation...

See original announcement on Creators

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by tomcallos on June 21, 2011 at 3:59pm

I run a Ning site for martial arts business / school owners. The new price increase for Ning still makes it the most affordable and valuable tool I have for my work.

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Permalink Reply by PiercingMetal on June 21, 2011 at 3:59pm

I gave up on my Ning account several months ago and that was based on my already maintaining a full on established website and blog for a number of years. I liked some aspects of what it offered but there was just no time to work with it and when it became a pay to use option I let it go. It does seem very quick that an increase happened after becoming a pay medium, so I hope for those who rely on it. Perhaps many users are better served by other online options such as a blog or site of their own and a Facebook Fan page to direct traffic. Good luck to all.

KP - PiercingMetal.com

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Permalink Reply by JenSocial on June 21, 2011 at 3:59pm

To be fair, I'll tell you all what I feel about the increase, in a little more detail:

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Permalink Reply by Lex Smith on June 21, 2011 at 5:37pm

I agree, and I think they will be doing yearly increases. But based on the problems I had with billing. This just confirms something I have been thinking about for a long time. I will be leaving ning.

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Permalink Reply by Carny Town on June 21, 2011 at 4:09pm

My initial reaction is one of anger. Yes, they have made improvements in the Ning structure, but always AFTER other competitors have made it necessary. The "improvements" are actually fixes, not additions. Because they have always taken care of us in the past, I have remained a pro user, although our use of the pro features are negligible. My take on the situation was "go ahead and pay the $50...they are getting around to fixing this stuff, give them a chance to make it right"... so to our way of thinking, we have paid WAY more than this service was worth, over a long period of time. I have yet to see the Status function but having read the thread on the Creators network, it does not look like it will function anyways near to the FB function and wall...and therein lies the problem. Going to do a show be back later.

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Permalink Reply by The Dusk Spot on June 21, 2011 at 4:10pm

My Repost From NC

*ANYONE WHO STATES IM JUST A COMPLAINER, READ ALL OF MY POST BEFORE YOU JUDGE*

Now that I got that out the way, my thought process on the price changes!

I have been a valued customer of Ning even before we had the paid plans. When you guys were going to implement that I told myself even though I'm coming out of pocket and sometimes it might hurt me, I'm going to pay for the Pro plan every chance I get. Now some may say $10..... Just like majority of the discussion authors it's not really price exactly. Two key things that stormed people up are the fact they decided a month before the change to hit us with this and the other tell us it's because of features (which they had in their roadmap anyway) have been added.

I was expecting a price increase, because I told myself they are going to raise the price maybe in November which would be a key time because the holidays are in and people tend to buy more then, in hence paid memberships would make sense. I feel sorry for Eric most because he will be the one getting blamed most for what possibly was out of his control.

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Permalink Reply by Martin de Goede on June 21, 2011 at 4:11pm

The switch from old NING with various paid services to Premium was actually a price decrease for us. So I think it would not be fair to complain about this increase. However I think the improvements are necessary to be able to keep up with what members are used to from the large free communities like Facebook etcetera and should not be used as a reason to increase prices. As long as NC's have a lot of requests based on what is standard on other networks NING should try to provide this without increases.

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Permalink Reply by solo on June 21, 2011 at 4:18pm

im o.k with it

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Permalink Reply by Wayne & Char on June 21, 2011 at 4:28pm

That's it for me, I am not paying an additional $5. per month.

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Permalink Reply by GapArt on June 21, 2011 at 4:41pm

Looks like NING wants some of the creators' Paid Access money in return for providing Paid Access!

New fees works out approx. £37 per month for UK creators who have Pro accounts (current exchange rates) . Which currently cost approx. £31; an increase of £6. I think we can live with that, for now at least!

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Permalink Reply by Enjoy Custom on June 21, 2011 at 4:50pm

I immediately abandoned ning when he announced the first payment plans, because it does not seem right that there is no longer a free version

I tried some sites like "spruz" and "socialgo", and then found wackwall (now called wall.fm)

Initially there were several technical problems and bugs, but then the situation has improved considerably.

Now I am very happy and satisfied, I am comfortable.

The free version is perfect, and even the paid versions are not too expensive

Also you can customize at will, with a minimum of CSS knowledge (I have also created a website dedicated to it Enjoy Custom), and in any case, the support forum wall.fm works great. support forum is the best I've ever seen

More info Prices http://wall.fm/pricing.php