Custom packages

[Guest]

Before the introduction of Packages, we were able to separately buy the premium options that we wanted. At this point in time, I would like to remove ads on my forumotion forum. To do that, I have to buy the Advanced package. As far as I can tell, the Advanced Package will enable/improve these features:

• 4 newsletters per month, instead of 2. The thing is, I don't plan to send more than maybe 1 newsletter a month. More than that would just be spamming my users email address(I have 2185 unread emails on just one of my email addresses, caused by random websites that love to let me know what's new on them daily). These would also only be simple newsletters, where I can only customise the text, which sounds boring to the programmer in me
  
• 10 push notifications per month, instead of 4. Another feature that I don't really have a use for, and even if I do, 4/month is already more than enough. In fact, where even is this option in the admin panel? I couldn't manage to find it.
  
• 500mb of memory for attached files and gallery. I don't use the gallery on my forum, and I plan to use an external host(that I already use for storing the javascript and css of my forum, since that allows me to edit those files in an IDE) for my users to upload files.
  
• External Domain Name and Custom Domain Name. I would consider buying a domain name, but probably not through forumotion, since I would expect buying directly from the provider, and esentially cutting out the middleman, to be cheaper. That being said, I don't plan to do this anytime soon, and my understanding is that these 2 options(what even is the difference between them?) don't mean that I get the actual domain name, I just get the opportunity to buy a domain name, for even more credits.
  
• Creation of public or private Channels in the Chatbox. I don't use the chatbox at all.
  

All of these options, which I don't need, would cost me 3600 credits/year. Paying for these features is a prerequisite to getting the feature that I want, which is the removal of the ads. The ad removal itself would cost me 5260-3600=1660 credits/year.

1660/5260 is approximately 0.31. So less than one third of the money that I would spend on credits would actually get me the features that I want. The rest would just be features that will stay unused, buried somewhere deep inside of the Admin panel. This is the reason that I, and I would assume other forumotion users, don't feel like buying a package is a good deal. I can very easily justify to myself that spending money to remove ads is a good idea, but there's no way I can convince myself that spending money on something that I wouldn't use is a good usage of my money.

The solution that I propose, is custom packages! Give us a list of all the features that can be bought, and let us pick and choose what we want! This would solve the fragmentation issue(premium features being in 100 different places in the admin panel) that I remember one of the staff members used to justify the introduction of the packages, it would allow people that are not so well-off financially to improve their forumotion forum a bit, as well as make people like me that don't feel comfortable wasting money on features that they don't want, spend money on the features that they want.

And hopefully, this would encourage more people to spend money on their Forumotion forums, so that the company gets the revenue that it needs and deservers!
For us users, I don't see any drawback to the introduction of custom packages! Lets be united and vote for this suggestion!

[TonnyKamper]

I agree

[Guest]

To the person who voted no:could you please explain why you think this suggestion is not good?

[skouliki]

hello

i think that option will make many members see the packages with a more friendly eye

[Ape]

I think it sounds good BUT sadly I can't see this being changed anytime soon.

This was hard to put in place for our host they never wanted to do it but had to, it was that or the host would have to go paid and not free.

[Guest]

@Ape, fair enough. I was hoping with this suggestion more people would buy credits for their forum, and that would offset the fact that they would spend less. I'm not sure that would be the case tho

[Ape]

My saying less is more and I think more of the world now say the same.

Old UK sayings I think. You would think making a change to lower the package would help more as more members of the public have way less money now thanks to covid and lots of people have now lost their jobs as well.

Less money for a pack = more people paying for things. More money for packages = less members paying if you ask me as they don't have the money.

Well that's my thought on it.

I am lucky I have a good well paid job and I am still working every day.
Some of our members no longer have money from a paid job but love our host and would like to keep them Free like I do.

[Liesbeth*]

I vote for it because many want an advertising-free forum. The push notifications I do not use the mass email either.