rtMedia PRO will undergo major changes

Posted by on in News | 6 min read

Almost 2 years ago we released rtMedia-PRO, our most popular premium product till date.

When we look back at all the feedback, specially complaints received about the product, they were mostly about:

  1. Price of the Product – “it’s too expensive” was most common complaint. In fact we received more complaints about pricing than feature. We believe price was justified considering number of features and small market size.
  2. Size of the Product – “It has too many features. Can I get only one separately?”. This is another complaint. Though we took care to optimize our codes, some people showed concerns about having unwanted codes on their server.

When we started rtMedia-PRO, our team was small and we wanted to get a great deal of work quickly. A single product (plugin) was easy to develop, test and manage. Also, we felt it was cost effective. Atleast for those who wanted several features!

Why the change?

Over the time, as we and customer base grew together, we felt we missed a few things by taking this path. Some are listed below:

  1. We did not have any clue as which features from rtMedia PRO our customers are using. So we had tough time prioritising future development direction.
  2. rtMedia (free/core) codebase could have been better if more number of addons would have developed for it. During this splitting we have learned to better ways to use WordPress hooks. Some addons apart from working with rtMedia free version, work with each other too through these newly added hooks.
  3. rtMedia PRO name itself created confusion. There were few support request where people deleted rtMedia free considering it is no longer needed.
  4. Some customers thought PRO addon contains all features. So they did not buy other addons but expected feature like photo-tagging and watermarking on their site.

As you have guessed that once we realized, we can improve things, we started working towards it. The project is codenamed “rtMedia PRO Splitting” internally. The result will be out in the first week of June.

This post is to help you understand impact of this major change for everyone.

What are the Changes?

Let’s go over the exact changes:

  1. There will be 30+ new rtMedia addons that will be available for sale in store. Starting from $19 to $49. Total value of all these addons will be around $600.
  2. rtMedia-PRO will be converted into EasyDigitalDownload bundle and will be put on sale as a bundle. The price for this would be much higher. May be around $300 (we are planning 50% discount).

How it will impact customers?

We have identified customers into three segments:

  1. Existing customers with valid license
  2. Existing customer with expired license
  3. Prospective customers – planning to buy but haven’t completed purchase yet. Pending orders will fall into this category.

Below are details as how these changes will impact each segment.

How it affects existing customers with valid license?

All existing customers will be grandfathered.

This means:

  1. They will get all new addons added to their existing order. Not only this, but they will continue to renew license at their old purchase price. So customers who have purchased rtMedia PRO at USD 49, will continue to get automatic updates and support for all 30+ addons at USD 24.5 every year.
  2. All 30+ addons have individual site license. This means you can activate different addons license on different sites.
  3. Our support team will help you manually move to new addons, including activating license for each of them. This way you don’t have to spend your time in copy-pasting license key for 30+ addons, if you decide to use them all! Please create a support ticket and we will do the rest.

Of course, if you wish to do upgrade yourself, we will provide you with help manuals and scripts which our support team will be using internally.

Why not use automatic upgrade?

You may wonder, if we have a script, why not just run it as part of automatic upgrade process WordPress has!

We tested script with automatic upgrades and it worked fine for us. But by design, if there comes a single issue, e.g  php timeouts, memory issues, conflict with other plugin/theme, which causes script to terminate halfway, rtMedia PRO related features may break on your site.

The problem will become bigger if your theme developer is calling rtMedia PRO functions without function_exists checks. A site’s front-end will break completely if it’s theme calls a function which doesn’t exist.

Though as a developer, one might be tempted to not think about developers who do not follow best coding practices, as a business we feel a bit different as we prioritise making it easy for our customers and their end users. This is why we decided to run scripts by ourselves with proper care.

How it affects existing customer with expired license?

If you are using rtMedia PRO with expired license, you can renew your license now and benefit from upcoming major changes.

However, if you are happy with rtMedia PRO and do not want further updates or new features, you can continue to use your copy. There will be no issues.

The only thing you won’t be able do going ahead is use rtMedia PRO with one of new “split” addons. As all new addons will be using codebase of rtMedia PRO, they will refuse to activate themselves. If you are a developer, you can modify codes and get things working on your end. All our WordPress plugins and themes are GPL. So feel free. 🙂

How it affects prospective customers?

If you are planning to purchase rtMedia PRO anytime soon, please ask yourself how many features you need. If answer is more than 5, it might be good idea to buy rtMedia PRO.

If you need less than 5 features, you may wait for few days and buy new addon(s) next week.

But in any case, once rtMedia PRO becomes bundle, old price and code structure (single zip file) will be removed forever.

List of New Premium Addons

Below is the list of new addons that will be available soon:

  1. rtMedia myCRED
  2. rtMedia CubePoints
  3. rtMedia Playlists
  4. rtMedia Favorites
  5. rtMedia Upload Terms
  6. rtMedia Moderation
  7. rtMedia Custom Attributes
  8. rtMedia Docs and Other files
  9. rtMedia Default Albums
  10. rtMedia Podcast (RSS and Atom feeds)
  11. rtMedia Restrictions
  12. rtMedia bbPress Attachments
  13. rtMedia WordPress Sitewide Gallery
  14. rtMedia WordPress Comment Attachment
  15. rtMedia Social Sharing
  16. rtMedia Widgets
  17. rtMedia Ratings
  18. rtMedia Edit Mp3 Info (ID3 Tags)
  19. rtMedia Sorting
  20. rtMedia Bulk Edit
  21. rtMedia BuddyPress Profile Picture
  22. rtMedia Album Cover Art
  23. rtMedia Direct Downloads Link
  24. rtMedia Upload by URL
  25. rtMedia Likes
  26. rtMedia Activity URL Preview
  27. rtMedia View Count
  28. rtMedia shortcode generator
  29. rtMedia album Privacy
  30. rtMedia BuddyPress group media control
  31. rtMedia Custom thumbnail for audio/video

There were 2-3 more small features which we could not consider fit for addon. They will be merged into rtMedia free.

Questions or Concerns

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to let us know them via comment form below or create a premium support request.

Useful Links

Links: Migration Guide | Premium Products | Support | Document

Update: The split add-ons are available now. Please check migration guide. You can do migration yourself or ask our support team to do that for you.

64 comments

    1. @Rico Yep. 🙂

      Our record indicates that you have renewed your rtMedia PRO license recently (Apr 2015).

      You will get free upgrade to all new addons.

      Thanks for upgrading. 🙂

        1. You will be able to renew license at same (old) price. In your case, it would be USD 74.5.

          Please feel free to ask any other questions you may have.

  2. This is exciting news and it speaks volumes for how great your customer relations are! Keep up the awesome work. =)

  3. This is an excellent decision. I’d much rather pick and choose the functionality and this is the perfect solution. Well done RTTeam

  4. hi there! really looking forward to getting to know all the great (new) features – and interested to understand how the new pricing-scheme affects me. keep up the good work. regards, Andor

    1. @Andor You already have rtMedia PRO license. So you will get new addons and support + updates for them till Dec 2014.

      After that, if you wish to renew rtMedia PRO (bundle), the charges would be USD 74.5 only.

      Please let me know if you have any other questions.

  5. i love the rtmedia plugin, i have the pro version, i am wondering it says new feature likes, does that mean it will have like and dislike now as a feature.

    1. @Robert At the beginning new addons will not have any extra feature as compared to current rtMedia PRO. But we hope to start adding more features to some addons.

      As you already have rtMedia PRO, you will get free update for them as well.

      Please let me know if you need any other details.

        1. You will get bundle free and automatically. If you do not want to upgrade, it is also possible.

          But we strongly recommend you to update and enjoy new features we will be adding soon.

          Also, if you are concerned about upgrade process, please let us know. Our support team will do your upgrade without any additional cost to you.

  6. Hi,

    I think it’s a very good idea about the addons, but the concern for me is that. Well, I have counted in that i need 9-12 addons, does it means that I’ll need to install 9-12 plugins? As I’m trying to get rid of plugins, I’m concerned how this will effect performance. If someone needs all the addons, there will be 31 addons/plugins? It feel that it may be a little bit to many addons that rtmedia pro will be split into. I think you should narrow it down a little. Between 15-20 addons of rtmedia pro.

    Also as you currently have published the rtmedia change to 3.8, I haven’t been able to update it. We did a lot of custom work before. Now I will have to pay developers once again to address the issues that comes with it, which means, changed of divs and classes.

    And finally, one of my biggest request, please make an addon for embedding, vimeo and youtube. I really really need it.

    All the best,
    Felipe Chamorro

    1. @Felipe

      Technically number of plugin is not a deal breaker as compared to the quality of code.
      One bad plugin can alone take down entire server.

      Personally, I also like to keep my plugin list as small as possible. But rest assured, number of plugins won’t affect performance.

      31 wasn’t a planned number. It could have been 10 or 50. We just tried to split each feature into a separate addon. Going ahead, we hope to improve code quality and performance of each addon as they are easier to manage now.

      About rtMedia 3.8

      We tried to make it backward compatible so there shouldn’t be much work for your developer.

      Can you please test upgrade to rtMedia 3.8 on a test server?

      In any case, please keep rtMedia (free/core) up to date.

      1. Yes, I understand your point Rahul, quality of the code goes in first hand. Still I feel like an addon each for example like, views and rating is a little bit to much. I think it should be one addon for those three for example.

        Yes, it have updated it in our developer site. The lighbox breaks, so the comment is below the image instead of the side and our fullscreen mode what I can see. Hopefully it isn’t so much more than this. I haven’t inspected the code yet. As we have done a custom wall, there is also concern with that. And, yes I’ll keep the core updated.

        Don’t forget my request 😉

        All the best,
        Felipe Chamorro

        1. @Felipe I feel sorry about issues you have faced. If you like our developers to talk to your developer, might speed up fixing, we will be happy to do that.

          You can create a premium support ticket and add your developer email address in CC. Our helpdesk support any number of people from your end. That (dev-2-dev interaction) might reduce time your dev need to make changes. It might cost you less. 🙂

          About your other suggestion:

          like, views and rating is a little bit to much

          We have plans for each of them. 🙂

          About embed feature request:

          I really think it should be done via oEmbed. BuddyPress already does that. Just paste a Youtube video URL in activity post, and youtube video-player will be rendered automatically. If I am missing something here, please let me know.

          1. Hi,

            Yes, you missed something. The big problem with using activity post is that it vanishes after while in the flow to never to be found again. That is the big problem! If the user could add to their library a video url with youtube or vimeo for example to show their showreel or demonstration of somekind. It will be there and won’t disappear. This is extremely important for our users, as people and companies looks at their works as well their showreel. Do you understand what i mean?

            All the best,
            Felipe Chamorro

          2. I guess you want to create an album with “links” (bookmarks).

            As of now, we have “Upload by URL”. This download files which is not allowed by YouTube and other services.

            But you don’t want to download. You just want to create collection of links. Something like delicious or pinterest.

            This collection (rtMedia album) can be visible on user profile. Am I getting it right?

          3. I would be nice to have an album where you can add links, and use the oembed feature. So the video can be visible for the viewer and can be played and looked at. Yes, so each user can add their own showreel to their own albums and so on. For the most artist use vimeo and youtube to show their stuff. It’s no idea for us to letting them upload the videos.

            Every profile has their own media library as usual but what i want is:
            1. In their album they can add their youtube and vimeo url to be displayed if the want
            2. So it’s visible for other to watch like images in their gallery

  7. Why do I have to have an error saying I have to mitigate this dose not sound proper at all. It sounds strange to allow someone access to a server to get more features for a web site how would you do this with other people that are hosting with major companies they will not allow access to the servers at all. So how would you get this mitigation done.

  8. Ok I did the upgrade, now I wouldn’t to migrate because I’m satisfied of rtMedia pro as well as it is at the moment, can I refuse the migration?

    1. You can refuse to migrate. Migration will not run automatically.

      However, if possible, please migrate. We can provide you any assistance if required.

      We have some exciting features in roadmap which will be available only if you migrate to new addons.

      Apart from features, migrating will help you get compatibility fixes and security updates (if any issue arises).

  9. I collected my first experiences with BuddyPress and bbPress and installed rtMedia free.
    I was looking for a plugin, which works with some other of my plugins. And rtMedia does it.

    Now, in MY WORDS, you do the following:

    You remove features that I was supposed to use and FORCE me to pay for them. Why? Because without these newly created Addons, I can not use other Premium Addons anymore.

    149 for pro was a big amount for people, that don´t earn money with WordPress. I am one of those. But I did not buy it, because the featured added via Pro licence are not very important for me.
    Now, raise this price to 300 (or more?) and that will do the following:

    There will be other plugins that do, what this plugin do, but via a platform like codecanyon, that means:

    – price max about 40 USD
    – LIFETIME support
    – LIFETIME updates
    – Premium support

    For me and my user, you just to one thing. You remove features they love! You KILL any purpose for using rtMedia. You KILL platforms. And you´re througing a free to use community software to Trash marking it as “premium by rtMedia”.

    You know what? There will be others with more customer friendly concepts.
    I will remove this plugin in minutes and will leave my very own rating for this.

    Thanks for giving up the normal users.

          1. Do you have tested to install my cred and rtmedia free? There are hooks inetgrated in mycred already.

            Well, what I want to say is:

            If I want to allow my users to mark favorites: 30 USD
            If I want to give points for that: another 20 USD

            Well, all these 20 dollar packages are so basic features.. like sidebars, widgets, moderation, tags… this is what I mean with “moneytization”.

            And pro is 399 USD… , well, really?

            This is a half of my income…

          2. If free hooks already works for you, why bother about premium alternative?

            About pricing – we set it considering many factors. We still don’t meet our revenue goal with rtMedia.

            I am not sure from how long you have been following this project. Back in 2010-11, we had to stop work on project for 2 years as there was no revenue.

            With premium addons, we can atleast able to keep free version updated.

      2. 3.8.2

        Updated Spanish, Korean, Portuguese and Danish translations
        Added Login popup for non logged in user on upload button
        Added quick edit/delete links on media gallery thumbs
        Updated premium add-ons content for rtMedia
        Bug fixes

        you mean that: ” Updated premium add-ons content for rtMedia”?
        I don´t see, how this adds anything to rtmedia plugin

        1. Added Login popup for non logged in user on upload button
          Added quick edit/delete links on media gallery thumbs

          Above 2 small features were part of PRO which were added to free version.

          Updated premium add-ons content for rtMedia?

          rtMedia free version has a page where we list premium addons list. We updated list as we have more addons. This makes it easy for site admins to see what features are present via addons.

          1. Added Login popup for non logged in user on upload button
            – not needed with buddypress, right? most themes have their own buddypress logins

            Added quick edit/delete links on media gallery thumbs
            – or use the wp media uploader that has this feature included as standard

            Updated premium add-ons content for rtMedia?
            – and again nothing that is really good for me… because I will pay 20 USD for a Like

          2. If you upload using wp media uploader, how it will show up in buddypress user albums?

            I am sorry but this discussion is not going anywhere.

  10. I am missing something like “search for rtmedia plugin – $19”

    There is a reason why this is a moderated comment section and there is a reason, why all these comments are positive, right?

    1. @Holger Can you please explain what do you mean by “search for rtmedia plugin – $19”? We never had any specialized search feature.

      About moderation

      I have approved your previous as well as this comment. Without a single edit.

      We have moderation enabled to prevent abuse and help us keep track of comments I need to reply to.

      I usually “Approve and Reply” once.

      Rest assured, we listen to constructive criticism very seriously.

      I am not sure reason, why you are unhappy with this decision. We did not take away anything out from free version. We have reduced entry to barrier by splitting a big addons into more affordable addons.

      If you have faced any issues because of this change, please let us know. We will do our best to improve your experience. 🙂

  11. @Holger Can you please explain what do you mean by “search for rtmedia plugin – $19″? We never had any specialized search feature.

    It was a little irony to tell, that there is really something, that is not moneytized… searching the plugin in wordpress plugin directory… well… it´s more a fun comment, sorry.

    Back to topic…

    Can you tell me, in details, why a user of a free version will profit from anything that has to do with splitting rtMedia in a hundred shards?

    1. Sorry. I did not get sarcasm. On other hand, you can see my seriousness about your comment. 🙂

      About your other question – first allow me to clarify that we did not split rtMedia (free one). We split rtMedia-PRO (the paid one).

      Splitting reduced cost of individual feature. So that a person who need 1 or 2 features has a choice to buy them only.

      Today only, a customer who complained about PRO price of $149 happily purchased 3 addons for less than $100.

      I reassure you that not a single feature was removed from rtMedia free version. If you find one, I promise here in public forum to add it back immediately.

      1. Maybe, this was a little misunderstanding.
        Sarcasm is, sometimes, just humor of the depressed 😉

        I just checked the addons…
        When I would buy all these single addons, I had to pay 330. If I buy pro 399.

        These are both double the former licence.

        I did not understand it right…

        When all your customers say, that 149 is too expensive and now it is 400…

        well… I am not able to pay 149 just now for a plugin. I was looking for do this in a months, but this plan is gone now^^ cause there is no 149

        1. I am sorry if sarcasm was not right word to define situation. English is not my first language so apologies if my sentence created misunderstanding.

          Original reason we did PRO was that maintaining smaller addon has a significant cost. We saw many companies doing smaller addons and creating bundle but we still went other way. It turned out that our choice had it’s own drawbacks (some of them mentioned in blog post already).

          About cost…

          We have 31 new addons. Minimum one cost is $19. So 31 * 19 = 589. Actual total cost is $689. So there is almost 40% discount on bundle price.

          Just wondering, if you need all 31 addons?

  12. Well, you´re closing all these comments and its ok.

    I am so angry, because I was a week or two before buying pro and now its more than double the price.
    Its just a kind of frustration and, seriously, the misunderstanding of what is going on here.

    Maybe, I am on the wrong way. I think, the way of creating something, selling it and changing it is different between continents and countries. And this way here is so foreign for me, that I am (maybe) not able to completely understand.

    But, well, I think the most anoying thing for me is the raise of the price. That kills all my plans and forces me not to become a customer.

    1. Well, you´re closing all these comments and its ok.

      It’s a really misunderstanding between us. I am not closing your comments. I think you mean you are not able to continue “replying” in a thread. This is limitation of WordPress. We cannot have infinite nesting for comment threads.

      I am sorry if our pricing change has created inconvenience to you. One of reason we published this blog post in advance, is to give people an opportunity to make a purchase when price was lower.

    1. If CSS customization targets original rtMedia 3.7 markup, there is very low probability of any issues.

      We made sure than markup doesn’t change much from 3.7 to 3.8.

  15. My feedback on the changes
    Love the idea of spitting up the pro plugin as I only use a few features and don’t need a bloated plugin, but I don’t like that you want to have my Admin, FTP and SSH logins. Seems like a very insecure thing to do.

    Ray

    2. @Ray I just talked to our support team. I wanted them to reach out to you but they told me that you already created support ticket and was given migration script.

      Please feel free to let us know if you face any issue. We value you being early adaptor to our products. 🙂

      1. Thanks, migration plugin worked well, very glad I was able to do the update without handing out my logins. Your product has been very good and keeps getting better. Loved the recent improvements.
        Cheers Ray

  16. Wow, this REALLY sucks.
    It took me weeks to convince a client of mine that we needed to purchase rtMedia Pro at $149 for his website. He thought it was way too much, but I said it was necessary for what he wanted done. He finally gave in, and agreed — but it took him a while to get me the funds for it. I ALMOST went ahead and bought it with my own money, but I’m a little tight this month so I decided to wait. My client FINALLY paid me the funds today….and now the cost has suddenly jumped to $399.
    This is insane, and now I can’t purchase this much-needed plugin for him. We needed the majority of features, so even buying piece by piece is going to be too much.
    This really really really sucks.
    And now I need to find another solution….

    1. @Rojo I am sorry about issue you have faced.

      We have published this post before actual splitting. Many users made their purchase in that window at old price.

      There is a discussion going on internally that 2-days window was too small. We might consider reverting to old price for few days.

      1. Well please let me know if you revert to old price for a few days. You will have an INSTANT sale. Otherwise, I will need to do my business elsewhere….

      2. Just saw you lowered the price temporarily again. BOUGHT!!!!
        Thanks, and now you have a loyal customer…

  17. I understand that you want to split it up a bit – makes it more affordable for users if they only want part of it, and of course it will generate more income for rtmedia. BUT splitting it up into too many fragments creates a problem withe users needing a much larger number of plugins – a real concern for most wp users, even with well coded ones. I’ve submitted a support ticket for this, but felt strongly enough about it to post here too. Cheers.

    1. @Jenny you can avoid migration for now. But we do not recommend that.

      We already tested our codes. There is no performance degradation because of splitting.

      For people who want multiple addons, we are planning to introduce new bundles soon which can reduce cost of purchase.

  18. I am so impressed by this post! It speaks volumes about your company’s costumer relations. This is the type of company I’d like to buy from. Can’t wait to begin purchasing the add-ons. Thank you!

  20. I am trying to view demo for all your addons but for every addon I get redirected to the same page with no relevance to the addon I am checking. Have you any dedicated link where each demo has its own separate demo?

    Regards.

    1. @Rasheed,
      Most of the addons features are internal (inside members page or media page) and that can be seen once user is logged in to demo site. Hence we have provided direct link to our demo site.
      Example:
      1. “rtMedia Custom Attributes” addon feature, you need first log in and then while uploading media you can select attributes.
      2. For bbpress attachment addon, we have provided direct link for bbPress forum page to upload media, as it is possible to show direct demo page.

      Thanks,
      –Nitun

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