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:
- 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.
- 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:
- 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.
- 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.
- rtMedia PRO name itself created confusion. There were few support request where people deleted rtMedia free considering it is no longer needed.
- 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:
- 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.
- 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:
- Existing customers with valid license
- Existing customer with expired license
- 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:
- 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.
- All 30+ addons have individual site license. This means you can activate different addons license on different sites.
- 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:
- rtMedia myCRED
- rtMedia CubePoints
- rtMedia Playlists
- rtMedia Favorites
- rtMedia Upload Terms
- rtMedia Moderation
- rtMedia Custom Attributes
- rtMedia Docs and Other files
- rtMedia Default Albums
- rtMedia Podcast (RSS and Atom feeds)
- rtMedia Restrictions
- rtMedia bbPress Attachments
- rtMedia WordPress Sitewide Gallery
- rtMedia WordPress Comment Attachment
- rtMedia Social Sharing
- rtMedia Widgets
- rtMedia Ratings
- rtMedia Edit Mp3 Info (ID3 Tags)
- rtMedia Sorting
- rtMedia Bulk Edit
- rtMedia BuddyPress Profile Picture
- rtMedia Album Cover Art
- rtMedia Direct Downloads Link
- rtMedia Upload by URL
- rtMedia Likes
- rtMedia Activity URL Preview
- rtMedia View Count
- rtMedia shortcode generator
- rtMedia album Privacy
- rtMedia BuddyPress group media control
- 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.
