July 12 is approaching, and I wanted to write an article about what you and other ManageWP subscribers can expect to happen, and how to get the most out of this transition.
I’ll break the article down into three parts:
- The current status
- July 12, the Orion launch
- August 1 and beyond
The Current Status
Right now our feature set has been locked in. Multisite support will be added by the end of this week, email & event notifications in the next week. I published a detailed article about the July 12 launch, and another one that talks about the pricing update and our bundles.
The TL;DR version of the pricing update goes like this: we tried very hard to keep the ManageWP prices in the same ballpark, even though the operating cost is higher than in the Classic version. You’ve got two pricing models at your disposal that you can mix and match however you see fit:
- Per website pricing is more flexible and perfect for people managing up to 25 websites
- Bundles are for people managing 25+ websites, they come in blocks of 100 websites and have a fixed price
July 12
We picked Tuesday for the launch because you’re always super busy on Monday, and we want to make the transition as smooth as possible.
Your legacy plan will remain active
You based your business on the Classic payment model, and any abrupt changes would jeopardize your business. We know and respect that, that’s why you can remain on the legacy plan indefinitely. Once you decide that switching to the Orion pricing model might be a good idea, you can start using it for a couple of sites without having to cancel your legacy plan, and gradually switch to the new model at your pace.
Here’s what each of the three plans will get in Orion.
Standard
- Monthly Scheduled Backup, with manual backups (this is the custom version of the Scheduled Backup tool that reflect the functionality of the Standard plan in the Classic version)
Professional
- Daily Scheduled Backup, with manual backups and cloning
- Advanced Client Report
Business
- Daily Scheduled Backup, with manual backups and cloning
- Advanced Client Report
- SEO Ranking
- Uptime Monitor
- White Label
The mirror and the Classic dashboard will still be here
For now, the mirror and the Classic dashboard will be available, in case you still want to use something on the old dashboard, or maybe upgrade your legacy plan.
You can now add websites to Orion, for free
The option to add a website in Orion will go live. Websites added in Orion dashboard will be on the Orion pricing model, and will not be mirrored back into Classic (because the number of websites in Classic is limited by your plan). If you want that website on a legacy plan, you’ll have to add it in the Classic dashboard.
Orion pricing model will go live, but you won’t be charged
So far everything has been free of charge in Orion. On July 12 the pricing model will go live. Using Orion until August 1 is completely free, but if you want to turn on a premium tool, you will be asked to enter your payment card. This is because we’ve had a lot of abuse in the past, with people endlessly cycling through Trial accounts so they could clone and back up websites for free. We wanted to stop the bad practice without punishing everyone, so we did 3 things: we built a strong and usable free tier, a pay-as-you-go pricing, and we’re collecting the payment data at the moment when you start using premium tools.
New ManageWP website
The new website will focus only on the Orion features. We’re also upgrading our blog to make it easier for you to find relevant articles and guides. We’ve also recorded a bunch of videos that show you how to get the most out of each ManageWP tool.
Orion dashboard is now the default one
New users, and those currently on the Free plan, will only be able to access the Orion dashboard. If you still use the Classic dashboard, don’t worry: you’ll be given the option to switch back to Classic when you log in.
Lifetime discounts will be honored
Hey, a promise is a promise! Just bear in mind that a lot of you will also get a loyalty discount (10% for each full year as a ManageWP subscriber, up to 30%), but the loyalty discount does not stack with the lifetime discount.
Domains become websites
In Classic, the plan limit was calculated on a domain basis. So, if you had example.com and store.example.com, it was considered as a single domain. This posed a huge problem with the Orion pricing model, so we switched back to the per website model. Each WordPress installation is treated as a website. Each subsite in a multisite network is treated as a separate website. Since you can add an unlimited number of websites into Orion for free, in 99% of the cases this shouldn’t be a problem. However, if you have e.g. Professional (10) plan and 30 websites on your Classic dashboard, all 30 of them will be on the legacy plan in Orion, but you won’t be able to add more websites to the legacy plan until you remove the excess websites.
August 1 and Beyond
The Orion pricing model starts working
If you’ve turned on premium tools or bundles in July, the system will start tracking usage from August 1. Since this is a postpaid model, you will be billed on September 1.
Your legacy and Orion pricing are separate
Classic subscriptions are on BlueSnap, Orion is on Stripe. Each has its own cycle, rules and the active card. If you want to move everything to a single invoice, I recommend cancelling your legacy plan and moving everything to Orion.
Cancelling your legacy plan
When you cancel your legacy plan, you still get to use it until the next renewal. If you’d like your money back, or if you’d like to transfer the pro-rated credit to Orion, just open a support ticket and we’ll make it happen.
Disabling the mirror
You’re done with Classic, and don’t need the mirror? Since having a mirror means that any websites on a legacy plan need to be added through Classic, soon after August 1 we’ll work on a way for each user to turn off the mirror and shut down his Classic dashboard. At that point you’ll still be able to retain your legacy plan, but you’ll add and manage everything exclusively from Orion.
In Summary
In case you skimmed through the article, here’s the most important info:
- You’ll keep your legacy plan for as long as you’d like
- From July 12 to August 1 you can play around with Orion tools for free
- You can add as many websites to Orion as you’d like
- Mirror and the Classic dashboard will be around for a while
Let me know if you have any additional questions, so I could update the article and help make the transition smoother.
Thank you for helping us make Orion what it is today, and what it will be in the future!
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