Corporate memberships going up

Sad to see the news this morning that corporate memberships are going up in price. If this is a sign of things to come for other iNet services due to the buyout, you're going to run this place into the ground. $1200/year is already ridiculous for the "stuff" you get with corporate membership.

Let's go down the list of things corporate memberships currently offer: · Reduced Ad Forum Post Waiting Time - This is the best thing. · Free Industry Announcements Forum Posts - What is this? Isn't it available to everyone? · Additional Keyword Alerts - Ok? Google does the same thing for free pretty much. · Occasional Ad Forum Upgrade Discounts - I've never seen a forum upgrade discount. Has anyone? · Discounts on HostingCatalog.com Advertising - Useless. · The Brand New Company Account feature. - ??? Useless. · New Benefits Coming Later This Year! - Like ? Again, useless. So pretty much, we're going to be paying $1400/year to advertise more often, even though the number of potential customers on WHT has gone down significantly over the past few years. Sounds like a great deal.

There is no best membership. There is only the membership that's best for you. Sorry - My signature is entwined with everything in my head regarding hosting. If you read this thread or others scattered about the forums, you'll see members who find great value in Corporate membership and members who (whether they've tried it or not) don't agree. You can't just purchase membership and expect it to do the work for you. As funkywizard pointed out, "to make effective use of a given channel, you need to put the time in to know how to take advantage of it properly". Of course, I'm just another member who has never used the product in question. I can only go on the feedback I've read and heard from paid membership users.

Do you report these? Those with membership are *not* above the rules. They, like any provider, are allowed to defend themselves and their business, but if they go too far they will also hear from us.

True, you will never be able to offer assurances or guarantees, hosts will still go down the chute as they always have in every sector of business when they were seemingly doing ok. But something that most seem to agree on is simply that the client quality from WHT is pretty much **** these days and getting worse. WHT has lost most of it's quality and it's getting worse all the time, also agreed from most that the Corporate membership really offers little benefit especially for the increased cost coming. The truth here is that more and more are giving that badge up so the cost is being increased to compensate. The cost of being a paying member is increasing, the quality of the posting population and client base is decreasing. Something needs to give. Little has changed here over many years, we keep hearing "tell us what you want" but seeing nothing returned.

They have been available for a few months now

Another reason for this...everything has all been said and done. Most new posts are from people who just don't take time to research to see that the questions were asked numerous times since WHT existed....and answered multiple times within the thread by multiple members. Most good posts with quality answers already exist. The only new posts are those of people complaining about a host....and even that has grown old. It was fun until it became a weekly thing. Even when a host becomes a train-wreck, there's one threads for everyone to saw there piece....not a new thread every 3 days. That alone shows that no one does any research or such threads wouldn't exist...or at least be less of.

It's funny when companies do this. My wife and I cancelled our phone service with a major company years ago. For almost 2 years they kept sending please come back or we miss you letters...even when we moved. They also sent some of the letters in different envelopes to appear it was from a friend. It was to the point that we made jokes that one day we'll be shopping and someone will pop up in the produce aisle yelling please come back and buy our services!!!

Indeed. Was just discussing this with a few other corporate members and we're not best pleased

Others have to pay.

The 20% price increase does seem quite high in one go, but since the service hasn't increased in price since launching in 2008, it looks like it works out to about a 2.8% increase year-on-year over the past 7 years.

You know dat's right! Especially when it comes to 'bear'. ;-)

Part of the issue is all the providers that have only enough time to post things like "what's your budget" and include a signature. That in itself is harming the quality of the forum. Self inflicted. There's a host of hosts , and more starting up all the time. The new ones think they need to compete on price. $1 year for unlimited they can't deliver and hooray, we're a business! The more that offer those, the more that show up to buy those. No checking, just "who's cheapest?". They either turn out to be fraud/spammers/scammers or the "host" does. Forum quality suffers as a result, as does customer quality. Not what I'd call a result of anything we've done, other than being popular enough to attract so many new "hosts" that it's harming things.

how can I get one? how do they work?

Perhaps a 'similar threads' addon such as this one ( http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=201651 ) would decrease similar threads being posted, since it would display any similar threads before the user gets to post their new thread, unlike the current 'similar threads' system which displays them after the thread has been posted. All though it's possible that a number of people would still ignore those as well.

Business 101: It' easier and cheaper to KEEP an existing client than gain a new one. /2cts

It was $900/Year right? Why is it increased to $1200/Year

Yes, for what you get it honestly is not worth it IMO. The only thing of value is the reduced ad posting time for Google links

Says the guy that doesn't have any membership. 20% is fine, if the features warrant it. However, it was priced too high when it came out, so an increase to it without any features to match the price increase is a joke.

Ask Bear and a few of the mods. I've had to sit in the corner a few times. 2015....no corner...I'm a big kid now!!! Yes...and in some cases you've had to close those threads. Other times, you mentioned that "they" weren't breaking any rules....which then makes the rules be questioned. Rules, ByLaws, and polices are always changing. Hosts never mentioned Minecraft in their TOS years ago but have to now. Were cool. It's all opinions. But that's exactly it. I know Memberships are not above the rules. If fact they have more rules. Also look at it this way; After signing up to WHT and creating 10 posts, someone could then start advertising. The 10 posts could have been complete fluff. The 10 posts now means they are a "valid" host. After those 10 posts..the same person could easily buy a membership. This now also means their "valid" host. How is a host valid after 10 posts and a couple days of being a member? Perfect example. Some people will work and buy studio equipment. Could take a few years...but along those years they're practicing to use the equipment. Years later....they open a studio and make money and get referrals because they know what they're doing. Someone else...their parents invested in them and built a studio with all the equipment during one weekend. Did they know how to use any of the stuff...no. Clients couldn't work with them. They still had to hire a trained engineer to come in and work with the equipment Throwing a kid $1000 to buy a membership is not a lot of money. I could do it for my children, but I wouldn't. I would make sure my children are trained in what I'm buying into since it should show them how to generate an honest income....and not just throwing money to make them happy.

WHT isn't at fault since WHT doesn't run any hosting brands. If WHT ran a half dozen cages and sold servers that fed on those bottom feeders, then sure, they'd be at least partially at fault. There's been a comment/request a few times now where people said 'make people hide their sigs in the VPS/webhosting discussion sections', just to see how many people would still take part. I wouldn't doubt a very large portion of WHT's traffic is inbound search engine hits, so the admins/owners going HAM on some of these sections isn't going to really hurt the community, if anything it'd probably help curb where some of the market has been heading. That's my take on it at least Francisco

Member Control Panel > Manage Users http://www.webhostingtalk.com/profil...ompany_account

I doubt that reducing the number of threads and posts is really well aligned with the business goals of WHT. I do agree that a lot of threads are repetitive, even predictable. XYZ person asks for a recommendation, host A asks what their budget is, host B asks if they have a location preference, host C says that going with a provider with redundant transit connection is essential, host D recommends someone because they like them or have heard good things about them elsewhere, XYZ person may or may not even bother replying in the thread, but if they do, the responses from everyone else will also be predictable at that point. But hey, that's life. At work, more or less the same stuff happens every day. Someone orders, someone cancels, some abuse complaints roll in. It's boring sometimes. So what, that's life. The people who "ask the same questions" are the customers. On WHT, they are the reason people pay to advertise. They are the reason anyone bothers to reply to the threads anyway because there's a good chance they want to buy hosting. At work, we call these "sales leads". On WHT, you see people saying "what can we do to stop this from happening", even though it's precisely this activity that generates the revenue for WHT and its participants. It seems rather of a bad idea to try to find ways to put a stop to the very activity that makes the community viable in the first place.

I think you also need to weight out the dollar value of your membership. $450.00 x 4 annually = $1800.00 * Do you gain $1800.00 of business off of WHT to cost justify that dollar? * Would you be better off giving away free or discount vps's for that same dollar? * Could you do better with $1800.00 in adwords or some other promotion? * What about giving $1800.00 worth of discounts or coupons to new sign ups? Each of those above have different benefits and retention. You need to find out what is the best fit for $2k worth of ad money, which is essentially what this comes down too. It's more than a badge and all of that other yoke. It is part of your corporate ID and advertising budget. However, keep in mind, you're not spending $2k to make $2k, as that makes little sense. You spend $2k to try and make $4k/6/10k off that investment. Only you can decide if that badge and membership of $450.00 every 3 months is worth it to you and your company. If you are gaining more than $450.00 in PROFIT over that time period. More than $1800.00 per year off of WHT and those ad dollars.

It's currently $1200 per year and is changing to $1440 per year as of March 1st.

Well said! That pretty much sums it up completely.

Yes, point taken. Just wanted to point out the year-on-year increase in case that helped soften the blow.

If you disagree with the assessment even after hearing from us, please do point out there what about the rule needs changing. To some degree members shape the community, and we will always listen to that. We tend to remove those when we see them. To me that means they bought membership. I try to judge someone by their actions and reactions, not by having spent some money here. How is it a sure thing they aren't? Sometimes it just took them a while to find WHT.

Indeed, however one of more obvious ways of tackling some of this has been suggested several times over the years and again here. For normal members, you can post in the offers section less frequently, perhaps once or twice a month, premium more so and corporate more so again. Thinning out the offers in this way will generate more income from memberships but those $1 hosts won't be able to afford that investment and thus we will see them less frequently. Of course that will not necessarily increase the number of quality providers or sensible offers but thinning out the crud is a necessary evil to reward the paying membership for longer visibility of their offers. I still believe that value in terms of posts is driven by the community view. A reputation system where people can add or subtract is a valuable thing more especially for a forum like this. If your next post is "Hi, good luck with finding your new host" and that gets down voted several times because it was clearly just a signature spam then those people will soon learn to stop doing that. You don't want red banners next to your username that says people don't rate you posts and you especially don't want it visible beside your name in an offer thread. Never mind reporting everything you see, let the community vote on whether a post has value. The whole thumbs up thing was a waste of time and effort. Edit: And of course it provides the incentive for people to post interesting, informative and useful posts to get a better reputation which increases quality levels and feels like a reward to get people up voting your posts.

wooo!!!!1111ONE

the following not aimed at anyone, the quote is for reference to general opinions " To a hammer, everything looks like a nail. " If all we see when we read is "what's your budget", then we notice those more, and it becomes kind of like blinders. There is a very large number of providers here, both new and old. Odds are anyone looking for hosting will be "set upon" by those competing for that one sale, but they just don't feel they have the time to add anything of value other than a signature, with the hopes they will get clicks. It does happen. We do our best to weed those out, but still it happens. Aside from disabling signatures forum wide, there isn't a clear fix. Doing that would likely reduce overall participation while stemming the sig spam, so not a great solution. Not seeing any good topics? Start one. It's as simple as hearing about something elsewhere and posting here. Engage; don't just complain about how things have gone downhill. Participate; don't just sit by and watch things fall apart because no one is posting and the "same old thing" with sig spams and ads are the bulk of what's being posted. Ask for opinions and begin discussions, not just say "game over, man". Help steer things away from "the same old stuff" and it may just improve, or at least help drown out the "what's your budget" parrots. Forum participation comes from it's members. If you want it to thrive and remain viable, be part of the solution.

I must agree. I would like to have a Corporate membership, but do not see enough benefit to justify the cost.

Is more than $1,400/year in revenue generated from advertising on WHT or roughly $116/mo?

I was discussing this with another WHT member right after they were purchased. We suspected that the prices will go up especially for corp members. If they increase the WHT stickies than a lot of customers will also cancel those. The ROI is not what it used to be. - Daniel

Yes that is why i asked, for me Premium Member work best and i plan to upgrade for more better result, right now i try to look what benefit i get after upgrade, Sticky Posts is way out of budget as Tmzvps told however still WHT is much better place for advertisement instead of wasting of hundreds & thousands of dollars on google or facebook

Cool True...but sometimes they leave a footprint. Others might have seen my "newness" when I first came on here, but I still had previous business knowledge to back it up. Business is business, no matter the end product. Others, they will leave a trail of breadcrumbs within the site with questions as "what are these functions" to "what to name my company". Put it this way....if someone just signed up for WHMCS last week, and customers cannot reach the host due to a misconfiguration in their WHMCS...they haven't been around to long

Common gripe I hear is the QUALITY of customers that are generated from WHT leads. There are issues with buy-in amounts, short retention, high fraud/abuse. Much of this is VPS specific. The $3k a month pin stick is more suitable for dedis or colo in my opinion, but I haven't a clue of the prices for different categories. Do the math on VPS income even on managed plans, stick it with 3 month retention to be kind. Even if squeezing $20 out on profit side, talking about 50 signups to break even on 3 month retention. $20 profit is way gracious for most and 3 month retention is becoming more uncommon. Issue remains that WHT runs an open market and no great advantage in membership aside from greater frequency in ad posting - for most. More is NOT better, in opposite actually, and this applies to members and non members - to everyone posting offers. Companies need to step up their offers. Better messaging, better offers (not just cheaper) and keep things fresh. I see survival re-posting of ads all the time and lots of ads that just very flawed / unprofessional. Discouraging heated comments on the ads also encourages more of the bad behavior by bad hosts.

I can't hit that URL.

I have to agree.

Additionally think of it this way: You have $2000.00 to spend a year. Do you think that discount coupons for new sign ups? Purchasing a sticky in B&S? Discount shared/vps via a few break even servers in hope of upgrade? Doing an Ad Words campaign? Premium ad placement on some web forum? Possibly a $2k pay off to some developer to be 'recommended/featured provider'? ...or a corporate membership will give you the biggest bag for that buck?

Means removing the discount they are offering on annual price.

We've had a sticky since 2010 or so. It used to be awesome, used to generate a ton of sales -- now it's practically useless. #sadpanda

Speaking as a former corporate member the membership is effective and probably undervalued - The only problem with the cost is the perks the free members get make it harder for them to post its an absolutely disgusting place the advertisers area - and start collecting more information from advertisements allow your users to narrow down threads for gods sake to find the most suitable whatever they are after. And reduce the post frequency for free and premium members isn't a shiny badge enough for a premium member anyway.

Honestly I think the best way to make the corp/prem stuff worth it for advertising would be to make it so freebies can only post once every 2 weeks or once a month digitalpoint style. Sure, there's people that 'wont post anymore' because of it, but they weren't really contributing anything to the community itself. Many of them only reply to threads to display a sig and many times they'll necro old threads with pointless replies. Doing this would give the corporate members an immediate 'worth' since they don't have to compete for the same floor space as the company doing $1/year cPanel and won't be here next month. It's not really nice to them, but it isn't very nice for us to have to pay a hiked price for a completely flooded section. Lets be real here, no ones going to pay $1000+/year just for alerts. People pay for it for the speed of posting, nothing more. The extras are nice but the only reason anyone is going to demand them now is because the owners are trying to justify a price hike for it. Pins appear worthless at this point as they get minimal views. You'll see pins in the VPS section that only get a thousand or two views in over 2 weeks. There's no promise that they're getting better leads than someones post going back a week or so that's also getting the same amount of views. Francisco

This is a very valid point. I point you to the vpsBoard folks and their screening for Verified Status (which is free, but has some benefits): https://vpsboard.com/topic/127-becom...fied-provider/

Neither can I, get the same error message. Are "all" corporate members supposed to be orange now? Some appear to be orange, then some appear to be normal color.

+2 to this as well. I think my issue....I'm old school and the forum caters to all age ranges. For me, going into anything meant doing research and reading. I grew up going to the library after school and on weekends. For all the posts I've done on here, I've read ten times more and have learned a lot. Some of the new school cats will post asking what to name their company, how do I get customers, and how do I manage a hacked server....and the best one I remember was a member pretty much asking everyone how to run there business...was exploited...took no advice....and then bad-mouthed all the members and then bad-mouthed the mods and was banned. Sadly I seen that too many times. No respect. Maybe it's just me Also, there's people on here as you said that have years more experience. For instance....wp-login attacks. There was one very critical thread created about this around Spring 2013. Creating another thread with the same solution is somewhat stepping on the shoes of the person who created that thread. Anyone who comes here asking, I give them the link to that thread. The lounge section is easy to create new topics since it could be anything in life...hosting or not...or even the hot news items for the day.

yes agree its now to much and no news of add-ons to increase business for us in regards to being a corporate member

Well they lost one corporate member here. It was already pricy for the limited features you get, but now it is just getting out of hand.

I think they should introduce the new benefits at the same time of the price increase.

I agree. Perhaps change free members from 7 to 14 days and premium from 6 to 7 days, and leave corporate as is. It would be nice if the upgrade option for highlighting a thread was made free for corporate too, giving corporate members a bit more visibility over others. Right now corporate members have nothing that distinguishes their threads from those paying nothing or $50/yr for premium.

What exactly does that mean?

Interesting thread. Has that old time WHT feel about it. Didn't know Dennis was getting off the horse hanging up his guns. All the best with those health issues Dennis. Our body is an amazing machine, but not so much fun when things start malfunctioning!! Congrats to iNET on the buyout too.

Make sure you are identifying as a Corp Member: http://prntscr.com/67cldk

I think paid memberships should be removed (or price reduced) and all non sticky ads cost $30.00 - Increase front page to 40 or 50 posts 'may' bring in more revenue per year for WHT than membership does, and reduce the '1cent offers'.

Wow 1400/year that's massive. I am not sure how many forums charge that amount for corporate membership in a year. But still there are too many corporate members I can see here. That indicates people are getting much more return from this forum.

That's unfortunate, where did you find this news?

I just want to say: http://media.giphy.com/media/9V0fLlhmqzhtK/giphy.gif

I think this is a great idea of how to increase the value of the corporate membership. This would slow down the number of posts in the advertising section in a big way. Maybe instead of the highlighting, there would be some way to incorporate a corporate badge into the listing. I feel if they did something like this, they would get a lot more corporate and premium members.

I agree with you on this suggestion. Once a month, or once every 2 weeks since they do not have a corporate membership would be delicious and immediately added value back to the membership. Those paying a premium should get premium benefits.

^^^^^^ That's it right there...and that's why some things slide a little. Saying it in the nicest way without being sent to the corner Put the onus on the person signing up. The music industry has a similar approach and has been in place from when I started.....in 1993...and that was for a small project. Who knows how long they had that process beforehand. I know it sounds simple...but the paperwork we had to fill out....let's just say you had to put aside 48 hours or more to make sure it was all correct. If you really want access to those resources, one WILL put aside those 48+ hours to fill out the forms....BUT...now those forms are online...to fill out for free (or you could still do the paper method for $25). It's basic questions like; Artist/Group Name (Host company name) Members (people running the host) Based (where is your company located) Type of music/genre (what are selling shared, vps, servers, etc) Performances ( where are your servers or accounts located) Estimate of how many cd's sold (estimate of customers) **** This could also include searching the forum to see if there's been any complaints about this company. I don't remember all the questions, but fly-by nights wouldn't be able to fill out the form...and if they did, they would get a polite response saying why they were not accepted. For instance needing to have performed for 2 years and you only did a year and 3 months. Contact us later and we will review your application. Also...applications took 6-8 weeks to process. A serious artist WILL wait those 6-8 weeks. If a company is serious about hosting, they WILL wait 6-8 weeks. 6-8 weeks is a miniscule fraction of time if your running a company...and those weeks really fly by......of course if you're "running a company" when your 17, 6-8 weeks would still feel like a lifetime. The point of running or opening a company is to have something sustainable for many years. Plus the submissions really took a few minutes to verify.

oh cool - didn't even know that was there.

There is one forum I visit where you have to pay to post and you can 'bump' your thread every x days by re-paying to show up on the first page. I think that's a good idea, it'll get rid of the kiddie hosts and make money for iNet.

$1400/year for a legitimate business is nothing and there are no forums that can compare to WHT, so there really isnt a basis for comparison.

I heard Dennis was outta here. My guess is they want to spend a little more money on his replacement. Smart move, do not make the same mistake twice.

We were letting ours lapse already, ads generate very little in sales not to mention the quality of the clients we do get is god awful. We have a near 100% retention rate from all of our other channels whereas with WHT it's probably well under 50%. I'd rather spend $200 per client on adwords. They'll stick around and go for the upsells.

This is actually a very very good idea. Something the new company should look into. - Daniel

Yep. Corps would have to cut back from 3 to maybe 4 days due to the lower posting volume, and premium's would have to go to 10 - 14 days, it'd still be a very large net positive for premium+ members. If you left premiums at 7 days there's no real reason to bump your membership more. Why pay $1000+ extra for the ability to only post twice as often? The amount of available floor space is massive and it'd still be better off with it. Premium's to 10 days I think would work, corps to 4 - 5 days. Francisco

New color on corp membership username... good? bad? opinions/ideas?

Just chucking it out there, but I think, similar to what's been mentioned before, it would be worth 'vetting' corporate members, even if it's just like you need 5 positive reviews / customers to vouch for you, similar to how a lot of the old web design guilds used to work. I know that @ bear did mention that corporate/premium memberships come with no guarantee etc from a customer point of view, but as an outsider I can quite easily see someone seeing the badge/status and thinking 'oh he's obviously legit'...

Announcements Section? And apply this idea on all Advertising Forums?

Agreed! Gave you a thumbs up. This forum is super active. I like the activeness!

Not sure about others, but I had an email with the subject 'Upcoming Changes To Your WHT Membership' today at 14:15 GMT.

How long you lads think until pins go up? Francisco

I really like that one. Thanks! Will have to give the minimum days between threads a little more thought though.

I would disagree in terms of the value of posting more frequently. There are numerous reasons to want to post more frequently, even into a "flooded category", or even if the category no longer becomes flooded. Even if everyone else was set to a 2 week timer, I would still pay $1400 / year to post every 3 days if that was still an option. Heck, I would gladly pay $3000 per year right now today if it meant I could post every 1 or 2 days instead of every 3 days. It's way cheaper than any of the other advertising options on WHT. People are paying $4000 / month to get a sticky post in some sub forums. Are those people crazy? It all depends on the customer lifetime value. One customer may keep a server for 12 months. If that server costs $150 / mo, that's $1800 in revenue. A lot of hosts have idle inventory so that extra sale may well go straight to the bottom line. It doesn't take many sales to make the $4000 / mo sticky make sense, let alone the far more affordable corporate membership. If you're not getting an extra 1 sale a year from posting every 3 days instead of every 7 days, maybe you should do everyone a favor and stop advertising on WHT because it's obviously not working for you.

Worth? Francisco

I don't see that happening nor would I want them vetting people based on the current lack of moderation going on. Lot of rule violations that go unchecked these days. I don't think I've gotten a response back from a single report I've done recently.

Don't suppose you are referring to Warrior Forums...

Just arrived in my inbox - save 20% on the new 20-30% higher prices! Tried it years ago for 3 months, when WHT had more traffic, more potential customers etc. and found it was a waste of money then. You'd have to be crazy to buy it now. Whether or not $1400/yr is a lot to you, if your business is about profit, you'd do better to leave it in the bank.

It was in your email around 2 hours ago.

Don't they always? Or is that just in certain sections. I used to get the sticky every week in the Design Offers Forum when it was $25 - then it became $50 and I bought them less - now its $100 and i never buy them.

It's a zero sum game. If corp members can post frequently AND get free highlighting, then all the threads will look highlighted and the whole sales forum will just look irritating. The highlighting is valuable because it helps you stand out, and if everyone looks that way, you won't. Judging from the forum, it looks like a decent number of people are paying for that upgrade, so if you don't want to pay the "ridiculous" price for highlighting, then don't. edit: although perhaps there could be *something* that distinguishes corp from regular posts, even if it wasn't the current methods of highlighting that people pay for.

If I am a corporate member, I want to post every 3 days not every 5 or 7. I pay for this advantage for a reason.

Woah when did that happen - Orange! It definitely stands out on a primarily blue website...

Much better colours for the Community staff

Most likely.

Okay! I am bit confused here. You found it waste of money years ago but what about present stage? Are you suggesting to buy or not to buy?

@ Ethernet Servers & @ BlazingSwitch found it, thanks!!

I've heard that the VPS section is $1000/week give or take and i'm betting it'll probably go up soon too. Francisco

That is why I thought the idea of some kind of simple badge on the thread listing would be sufficient.

For us WHT still works, but I shouldn't have to be pulling charts out to find out when i'm going to get bumped multiple pages in a single day. I just feel that the corporate members aren't being given what they actually want. They're being forced to pay more for a membership many already question, & you now have to fight for frontpage section space against people that we all know won't make it. You said it yourself, you're only interested in more frequent posting windows, not features. Speaking of features, we never ever heard anything more on the 'company accounts'. There was an email we were supposed to hit to get it setup but it fell on deaf ears. Is this price bump to pay for a feature thats been promised for a while and even had the signup process in place? Francisco

So now we can see customers yelling at an Orange profile instead a Blue Profile. That should help!

Lack of moderation? Of the 130 tickets of yours in the desk, stretching back to 2007, 2 are unanswered ; one from the end of January and one from the 15th of this month, both asking us to look if someone has experience with a provider they recommend. Have I missed something?

+1 Another good idea.

Sad news. I doubt they really would care unless they lost enough memberships to make them rethink this decision. Saying "new benefits coming later this year!" doesn't really add a lot of value for a decent hike in membership prices. While I doubt there is any feature that is going to make most happy, they would have done better to release those at the same time as the hike. Agreed. It was a premium for what little was offered as a true 'benefit' as it was.

The new owners at Penton need to fabricate some actual new features or benefits (good luck). The list of new things was mainly more advertising (which this site doesn't need more of). That's all the acquiring company cares about and what content these days is, a means to collect ad income. The rates for the stuck / pinned ads are embarrassing. I can't blame iNet for it, I blame hosting companies who insist on robbing themselves. Folks must run the numbers at least quarterly to remain sane, and to detect changes in the market. If anything rates for membership and ads should be DECLINING. Because the customers aren't here in quantity or aren't converting for a lot of people. Is it an indication of WHT slumping? Or is it larger global economy? Doesn't matter, less costs less, and forget all the hyper inflation must increase rates stuff, because that isn't sound economics nor sustainable. Hey it's not all bad. Penton is hiring in mass: http://hire.jobvite.com/CompanyJobs/...spx?c=qgl9Vfwp Whole lot of monetization and content analysis roles listed.

That would be interesting. This could flush out the kiddie and hobbyist hosts.

I agree, company accounts is the only feature other than increased posting frequency that I would actually pay for. It would be nice for my staff to be able to post on behalf of my company without having to worry that years down the line when they work for a competitor all these posts and ads etc will now have my competitors Sig line attached to them.

I do prefer the orange but I hate the bright green for Community Guide & Content Curators ... Someone needs some taste

It's funny TonyB should say that because I noticed that too...and only noticed due to the other issue. There was one thread from our usual soap opera/reality show host where verification was asked about the members making statements towards the host. Nothing was ever mentioned if their domains were verified. It's a cause an effect syndrome. If we police/regulate/(add a less harsh word here) hosts to not have easy access to advertising....it would then cut down on the circus threads....thus leaving mods to do valuable things with their time instead of babysitting daycare host threads. I know not everything is a field of flowers, but isn't a waste of time on your end to moderate ONE host every week. At that point the price they paid for corporate membership is imbalanced since lots of time has to be invested in cleaning up their mess. I haven't bought a membership and have brought more value by referring outsiders to here when someone is looking for a service outside of my services. The other host just brings playground drama....and paid to bring increase that drama

Yeah, but that's kind of the beauty of WebHostingTalk.

Absolutely. They're going to lose a lot of corporate memberships on this poor decision.

Well Said! 2 months. We pay almost 3K a month for our VPS sticky. - Daniel

Several similar comments that stop short of suggesting what could be included and would make the investment worthwhile. (ignoring the free highlights comment) Only the existing, former and potential corp members can really answer this question so .. What could be included that makes the investment worthwhile? I'm far from being able to promise it'll happen, but without knowing what you'd like then we have nothing to propose on your behalf

True dat funkychicken

I like it...

And this is a thread about the cost of corporate memberships. Let's just let it get back onto that.

Meh, WHT's beauty went away a long time ago ;-)

20% increase basically translates into the fact that even if they'd lose 1 out of every 6 corp members they'd still not be losing any money, and 1 out of 6 is an alarming number which would never happen, meaning they're sure to make a profit out of this any way you want to look at it. But I do have to agree with the rest of the folks here when saying the new price is not backed up by any features to match it.

I think the value of the corporate membership isn't necessarily the features that come with it, but perhaps the "exclusivity" associated with it. The badge I feel was designed to instill a bit more confidence into prospective buyers. The fact that not everyone can afford or is willing to pay the fee alone creates the exclusivity and not seeing every member say "Corporate Member" is a plus. But I feel it's reached the stage where the effect the badge has, has seriously deteriorated. The prominence of the badge leaves a lot to be desired and the effect I think corporate members would have liked for it to have no longer exists. Raising the price won't do anything in terms of increasing that exclusivity because it exists already but the fact that the badge is easy to overlook defeats the purpose of exclusivity in the first place. The membership colour is only a slightly darker shade than premium members and speaking honestly, that's just no good. It needs to stand out properly with perhaps a better more distinct colour. I myself and can see others as well have opted out of having it in blue in the first place and that could be for the reasons above. It's at the point where I'm struggling to justify the cost of it. Affording it is one thing, nobody wants to throw away money and if you cannot justify it or you begin to question its value, then that's when you'll start seeing people cancel. It won't be in protest of the price increase, it won't be protest of a WHT policy, it will simply be a very easy business decision. @ stablehost , I totally agree with the value of sticky's.. they are nowhere near what they used to be and iNet did a good job of devaluing sticky's while increasing their price. Before it was a max of two sticky posts, now it's 7-8 of them.

Perhaps a corporate member directory? Basically a list of hosts by category, who must be a corp member to get listed. The corp member would be required to list the major types of services they provide (vps, shared, dedicated, colo, etc), and can submit a description of their company, link to company website, and other contact details, for approval. WHT staff would not be responsible for populating the directory except to approve or reject submissions made by corporate members. I know in the past a directory is an idea that's been kicked around, and probably the time investment vs the value of it didn't make sense, but perhaps if it was corporate only, it would 1) be less effort to maintain, and 2) maybe it would encourage more corporate memberships and therefore lead to more revenues.

All a part of the 10 post count plan. So many times I'll see a thread alert of someone posting "great advice"..."well said"...."the cereal split on the server and it feels cold ". Then when I go to the thread...it's from 3-4 years ago. I've unsubscribed from old threads for that reason. Then the other classic scenario...once they're able to advertise....that's all they do. Look up their history...all ads and no contributions to any conversations. It's even worse when people are complaining about them and they just keep posting ads....never going in the thread to address the issue, or in some cases, going in the thread and ................... +2 I know some must hate my music references, but community radio (and some commercial stations) are somewhat the same. You can pay for ads, or you can go to the radio station and do some free promo. Difference....paid ads will run frequently whereas you can only drop by the station for free promo every few months. If a business is doing well, they won't be dependent on posting ads every week.

Confused me when I saw it as guides have historically been orange(ish)...bit of a doubletake with the person involved

+1 to the decrease in posting frequency for free and premium members

Do you have a corporate account thingy? If so, can you link to a post from it?

You don't suppose the price increase is to the following? From here.

Excellent point.

It's a forum, so jacking up the prices and trying to introduce "new" features to justify it is going to be hard. As others have mentioned, the "features" that corporate members currently are supposed to get are pretty much worthless. The discounted advertising is non-existent, the ad forums are already inundated, and the results of any money spent advertising on WHT has done one thing consistently: go down, year after year. This place used to be a great source of potential customers, now it's just a thrift market overrun by kiddie hosts and those looking for hosting for next to nothing, for the most part.

Just log in with different IP's and create different user names and different company divisions. Because that's not been done before

Community Guide & Content Curators needs more contrast against the light background colour. I have to squint to read them

Not trying to argue....but it is about Corporate Memberships. If there's no type of guidelines, then anyone could join....even people who aren't in any type of web hosting related business. The cause and effect has already been demonstrated by others in this thread; Cause - change posting duration times Effect - more effective and quality ads in the ads section Double Effect - less nonsense ads from nonsense companies Triple Effect - less moderation The left hand and right hand playing together nicely I haven't advertised in almost 2 years, and I wouldn't mind every 2 weeks. WHT cannot be my only source of acquiring a customer...and within those 2 weeks, it would give a new host a chance to look over their operation.

Ha. You mean that ticket I opened 30 days ago about getting access and it's still sitting there waiting for someone to respond? Yeah.... good times.

Of course that's why the price is increasing and I expect to see all pricing going up shortly.

If it does indeed reduce some of the postings in the ad forums then the price raise is a great thing! The ad forums are already swamped as is.

The unlimited... stuff didn't help either.

Wait, what? People do that (and are still with us)?

I just don't look at the bottom now lol, why couldn't they be something like Purple or a different green

What are company accounts? I cant access that link.

I don't see any ticket about you getting access to something that's open. Is there a ticket number you can give us?

I wish they would leave all the existing members on the current pricing and all new signups on the new pricing.

HAHA! That is one way to look at it Gordo!

Excellent summation.

I wouldn't be surprised

I like the new colour!

@Moderators - is there an internal discussion going on with Penton now about changing the posting frequencies of different user types? Just curious -- I would be really happy about that as a benefit of Corporate accounts.

Yep, sent via PM.

Sorry for not jumping in sooner, but let me work backwards on this thread and see if I can answer any concerns. This has been in the planning stages way before there was any mention of Penton. So this would have happened with or without them. This is the first price increase of Corporate membership ever. New features coming, but I don't have a date. But then, I don't believe it was the building of new features that precipitated the price increase. When iNET first priced it out, they didn't plan on the price remaining the same for the life of the product. I don't know what new features they're talking about in the email. I do know about some HostingCon discounts and coupons that are a part of it. I thought I explained that when I wrote about it. But let me try again - My decision to pass the torch to someone younger was my decision. I have health issues, and the last thing I'd want to do is leave WHT without notice. We haven't worked out all the details yet. But as soon as we know how, we'll know when. And when we know how and when, we'll let you know. Until then, you'll have to put up with this mistake . This has absolutely nothing to do with Penton. But I'll pass the concerns raised in this thread onto them.

Absolutely agree with you. If the higher price means fewer corporate members, that in itself adds value to the corporate membership. Right now an ad in dedicated offers drops off in under a day unless you post on a weekend. For example, if you cut the number of ad posts in half, that itself would nearly double the value of posting. I'm in favor of the higher price. There's not much in between corporate membership and full blown banner or sticky advertising, so I don't mind the higher price as I feel that Corp membership is already a great value for people who know how to make the most of it. For those who aren't seeing the results they want from WHT ad posts, feel free to post less often =D

So nothing has changed there in the last 14 years

Perhaps the price increase should also include WHT actually making the effort to properly verify a "corporate" member in that some DD is carried out to give additional comfort to those who want to buy from them. Premium and Corporate badges give a false sense of "These people must be ok to buy from". Well it used to at least.

And that is all I see here now with a Nexus 7 tablet. The corporate badges aren't being displayed on this mobile device.

I'd be surprised if there wasn't. I doubt they can say much. With it being such a huge cash flow, i'm sure the owners want to put some feedback in. Then again, for corporate's having more floor space to sell on, i'm sure that'd increase signup rates which is always good. Francisco

We recently renewed our corp account this week and from what I can tell, we have not been upgraded. How long does the process usually take? I thought I recall int he past that the process was instant after payment confirmation.

Who is Dennis? J/K Dennis I wish you the best in sorting out your health issues and any other endeavors you choose to follow. BTW getting old doesn't suck. It is the falling apart of the body due to getting old that sucks IMO

Meanwhile I could spend $200 on AdWords and get nothing out of it. Every marketing channel can work if you know how to make the most of it. It's a lot of work to master one marketing channel, nearly impossible for a small business to make effective use of several marketing channels at once.

Ha! Point taken

You'd think they would considering they've been chargedback on memberships before I'm sure. There was a VPS brand (uptimeVPS i think?) that ran a 100% scam operation and they had corporate on here. I highly doubt that payment held clean. Francisco

In Offers section a simple note like "[CORPORATE]"(in orange colour) before actual advertisement title could bring a lot more attention. I am currently happy with my Premium membership and I post ads every 6-7 days, I only hope my company and other non-corporate companies won't be buried after Corporate's get their features. I know this won't happen, but Corporate membership pricing should be based on company income. I believe no big and stable business/company will have problem paying additional 20%, while small businesses/companies will be hit the most with that percentage. I a have feeling like all those who want more features, can actually pay additional 20% and still generate good profit, but they want everything handed to them. I don't mean to offend anyone, this is just my honest opinion.

Its the same for me as well. Wondering how they work.

It should be. I'll see if we can get someone from iNET on this.

Is it just me or did the "new stuff" they said you will get (in the email) already exist for Corporate Members? I do not see anything new, while they claim in the e-mail that it is (hence the pricing going up according to iNet).

That's because adwords is not a good place to market your product (unmanaged dedi) on a small scale. I wouldn't touch that one. Some marketing channels simply do not work for some things. I don't care how smart you are, you're not going to do well selling dedicated servers in the yellow pages. And the ROI on here is just not very good anymore for what we do. Especially when it comes to corporate membership and ad postings. I'm sure there are exceptions (if you have brand recognition and/or constant recommendations in the main forums) but none of them apply to us at this point, so I'll save the $1,200 or $1,400 or whatever it is and spend it elsewhere and probably double or triple it.

Sadly that is how the world is. Customers or end-users are always going to complaint....not realizing the resources cost more...thus the increase. If the top increases, everything below has to follow. The only unfortunate thing is hearing the complaints from reputable members. If members look up to certain individuals, and those individuals are complaining........................... My usual music reference. In Toronto, there's a few festivals during the summer months. Two of them...I can't even explain. Here's the breakdown (had to go back and check my notes); Festival Downtown, a table that weekend, $100 for a small business, $400 for a medium business, access to millions of people that weekend. I performed at one of them and the business it generated afterwards....well worth it. East-end festival, a table for the weekend, $1300 for any size business, access to a few thousands....very few thousands. The East-end model is a desperation move. Either to weed out people with common sense, or to generate profit from very low numbers. Speaking of desperation moves.......and it's one of those silent issues that I guess people on here are afraid to talk about....con-artists with corporate memberships. When someone has a corporate membership that bring no form of benefits to the community, it make the membership look like garbage...to the community and to the visitors. Sorry, another music reference. As fun as music looks, the music and fun is 10% of it. 90% is all business. There are organizations that state that an artist/musician/label must be in business for at least 2 years and know what they're doing (recordings, shows, publicity, etc). It puts the brakes on people who think their artists...which those people always fail.....always....and if someone does "get around the rules"...if caught, memberships and resources are revoked. Part of the reason I don't miss that industry (although I do with the policies it had)...now...someone is famous from their bedroom via youtube. They have no clue about anything. Recording in a studio where time is money, hitting the pavement to promote, interviews, dealing with humans, potential fans....all lost. Hmmmm...sounds like a certain host. No customer service skills....no technical skills....nothing. Remember....many musicians had jobs while doing music. Those jobs were building life skills like working and dealing with people. They're humble at their job since they know acting a fool would get them fired which would lead to no food, a place to live or money for their music....and their humble to their fans....of course until they get a break and make millions.....but there are those that even with a boat load of money will still walk around and hang out and chat with anyone.....humble...and always respected. To sum up my rant. Raising the membership could be a good move. Weed out the nonsense. Stop giving memberships to people who don't deserve it, OR revoke it with a refund....which is being nice since most places would never give a refund for breaking the rules. Refunding $1000+ to someone isn't going to break the organization. It just won't. The complaint about features and price are just the surface. If people behind a membership are reputable, and someone else with the same membership is a train-wreck bringing down the value of being here...why would anyone buy a membership after the price increase. Other forums have cleaned up the mess.

And what do you propose that due diligence would be? Bear in mind that paid memberships are in no way connected to the moderating staff, as they're handled by the folks in the office, not us. All we see is someone is now wearing the color /badge, just like you do.

By marking 'corporate' in the title/etc you're more or less making the Corporate badge a mark of trust/etc from WHT. Basing it on income is also silly. Why should I pay more to have the same access as someone else? Not only do many of the newer hosts go hardcore deep discounts to try to cover their dues, now we're stuck paying 20% more than them too? It's a very fast way to bleed memberships and completely devalue what little we get with corp already. Since the new owners are doing this purely as a business thing and not to 'better the community' (no one wants your 'new' features, we still dont have the old ones we were promised and been paying for years for), then the new owners should do right by the corporate's and make it worth it to have. Chop back non membership users heavily to 4 weeks, push premiums back to 8 - 10 days, push corps back to 4 days. It chops back the mountain of offers that get dumped in there and gives us some value in our new found price increases. Francisco

Yup!! Make the real money from the advertisers and the legit members/visitors... the "visitors" who are just hosts themselves that come here to spam their stuff but not contribute, are not a real asset in terms of pageviews/adclicks to the forum anyways.

Thank you. I submitted a ticket on 24-Mar-2015 with no response yet - BWV-411726.

Yup. There lies the rub. It's funny that when I was 23, an orthopedic surgeon said I had the bones of a 93 year old. I wonder how old them bones are 40 years later now.

Obviously some channels are better than others given whatever you're trying to sell, but the point I'm making I still stand by, that to make effective use of a given channel, you need to put the time in to know how to take advantage of it properly. Often that time is more valuable than the dollars you put in to the advertising, so sticking with whatever works best for you is usually the way to go.

So what you're saying, although I think is a weak point, would be that raising the prices will eliminate some of the kiddie hosts from being able to clutter up the B&S with their .50ct hosting offers every few days? Essentially you are paying more to pay staff, as we know the hosting bill is not going up, for the benefit of less perceived competition?

Might be best to add a note or a (?) next to the membership buttons that links off explaining that the badge isn't an endorsement by the staff of WHT, but rather simply grants them additional perks Auditing every provider, while the best course of action, would require a lot more staff that I doubt the owners want to bring on. Plus, there's the liability that WHT "approved them as a good host", etc. It's obviously not uncommon for old hosts to go tits up - Burstnet & that one leaseweb reseller come to mind. Francisco

This is very true, the only one real value of Corp Membership is the lesser time between advertising posts... but this is all buried under mountains of other posts. A new structure in time between posts for normal/premium/corp would indeed be a great thing and would increase the value of the Corp Membership.

I just did a run down in the VPS offers section and here's the break down for posts listed as 'today' for me (GMT -7, west coast NA) - 15 Corporate - 12 Normal - 6 Premium If you look into the day prior: - 18 Corporate - 18 Normal - 2 Premium That's a lot of normal posts. To be honest, it seems people buying Premium are just doing it for the tag and not really the better posting speeds. That's a lot of normal postings though, with other days likely being even more so. Francisco

Sometimes PayPal payments get marked as pending and don't complete. I processed yours and it should be available to you now.

I need to go find me one of those emails. Do they really say that the price increase is due to new features? Don't answer that. I'll go find an email so I can talk about the email.

Well, point taken. And I probably haven't put enough time into trying to make WHT work, but at this point I don't care to put too much into it when I have other options that make money rain down from the sky in comparison - with even less investment than what I have put into WHT. Hell, forget the cash, time is money too and I have well over a thousand posts on here. That being said, I actually do have some plans to make WHT work for me - but they have nothing to do with buying a corporate membership. Once we have some more brand recognition, I may re-evaluate.

Essentially yes...and I think your response is sarcastic (in a a good way) so don't take it the wrong way if I'm not reading it correctly I know there's many sides to the fence and no perfect solution, but as someone pointed out in another thread...there's no policing in this industry. I've seen companies charge $85 a year for a .com domain just because they can. My point almost invalidates my point, but why do you think overall it's a weak point? Certain memberships are laughed at, and others actually do a good job of weeding out idiots. A membership doesn't have to be some form of elites status, but it does (or should) separate those that know what they're doing. If you owned a home and had a family and needed work done to that home, you would probably hire someone trained and certified. Of course we all have a cousin that can do it on the side, but certain jobs needs a skilled person or team...and that skill comes with being a member in some form of organization....that validates the person has the skills and training to perform the job. Even within all of this, it still doesn't address the customer service issue. Someone with a corporate membership should not be allowed to berated customers on a public forum. Essentially this means a corporate membership has less rules. When members go after each other, all sorts of infractions show up..but yet a corporate member could do the same and be bullet proof?!?!?!? If one did this at a job they would be fired, but because one never had a job, that skill has not be learned....thus they have no idea how to deal with customers. Those same customers now look at the host as an idiot, but also look at WHT as being idiots for allowing this to occur. At that point, why would they trust anyone with a corporate membership?

Well you get those folks in the office to work out what DD would be required to hold a corporate badge. Perhaps those that go through a process will get a different coloured "verified" corporate badge, same for premium. That could be for example that you pay the office $50 and hand over all your company documents and personal details for directors. The aim is to confirm the company is legit, pays taxes, the people are real, linked to the company and checked out, yada yada. It may take on a different form, I have not really thought it through, I just come up with the ideas, WHT makes enough money to figure it through. It's not an endorsement, just a checklist to confirm to the prospective client that the house is in order as best as can be identified. Only the genuine ones will want to do it.

That's all any corporate's want. I'm positive the amount of corp's signing up for word alerts is extremely low, if non existent. The only other feature I'd love to see is the company accounts one but that got rolled out and into a trash bin within the same week. Francisco

I should probably add that I'm not trying to stick it to the smaller hosts that can't budget $1400/year for an advertising channel, but rather try to deal with the drive-by posters that are only ever in the offer section. I didn't count but I can take a pretty safe bet that the very large majority of the 'normals' in the offers section are < 50 total site posts, usually hovering ~30. I think if the new owners/mods/powers that be, want to increase the amount of good content they could award some memberships out every year to people that really help contribute good content (and not just a random post here and there) as a way to boost moral and such. I don't think there'd be many people contesting against someone that really gives back to the community getting some extra privileges for it. I know there's the 'Content' member group but I'm not sure if that gains any posting privs or if it's just for show and ability to submit things to twitter/add thread TL;DR's. Francisco

I know a few who have not renewed. I am still on the fence and have not made a final decision. I have had a few reminders to renew now, so at least they are keeping you on the radar asking you to come back despite the no real added value to the price hike as discussed in thread.

Hey Dennis, I think the confusion is about the following sentence: "As a Web Hosting Talk Corporate Member, you know the value that a WHT Corporate Membership can bring to your company.Since we launched Corporate Memberships in 2008, we have added a number of new benefits to Corporate Memberships including:" I now get that they meant to say that since 2008 a lot of upgrades have been applied. Correct?

After reading this thread i have a question a straightforward question "Is corporate membership really worthwhile now a days?"

I was being serious. However as long as you did not take it negatively, we're good.

I guess if you did limited verifying it'd be OK. Again, this doesn't help much since we've seen multiple large hosts go belly in the past year. Francisco

What would they be?

The only reason I pay for prem is to support iNet (Now Penton) I never paid for Corp mainly because I never saw the value in it. (That is just my opinion and others can and would disagree) but I mainly come here to keep abreast of what's taking place along with get a couple of laughs now and again. I do advertise just about every day (rotating my ads every 7 days) and it works for me thus far. I do agree that the free users should definitely get less options when it comes to the advertising forums because they cloud the forums with 1cent offers which is ridiculous which is probably why the ratings for WHT has dropped. I quickly see WHT becoming one of those forums you just advertise in since even the value in the main forums have dropped. I have even stopped seeking posts to contribute to because of that. There is another forum I visit which was once great for designers etc to contribute industry standard information but has since become a place for marketers and spammers to post their "latest" offers. I really do not wish this for WHT and hope something can be done about it

Do you feel you get a decent ROI from your corporate membership? I just don't think we'd see a 2x or 3x return?

Correct. It was pretty bare-bones in 08. Has it really been seven years? Yeah - So it's some marketer writing the email and simply including too many words! I would have just said, "We launched this product in 2008 and have continually improved it. It's now 2015 and we believe those improvements (along with any impending) are worth an 8% (or whatever it is) price increase. I purchased my first brand new car in 1963 for $3,100. The same kind of car is available today - for $61,000. Sorry, but prices can't remain the same." Don't get me wrong. I feel your (anyone upset with the new pricing) pain. We hate any price increase on anything. At least I do. But it's simply the way things are. Costs go up / prices go up. Don't get me started on the day I was managing a bar and raised the price of a draft beer a nickel.

Never has been the only nice thing about it is the keyword alert, that's why I was only a Premium Member until I just thought I could spend the money elsewhere and stayed just a member.

I have never seen this happen. Heated exchanges, sure. That being said, I think the corporate member is typically an established hosting business, not some kid purchasing a $5.00 hosting plan and wanting butler service. My point is, if some no name with less than a 100 posts is bashing some ISP over their reading comprehension of laws and AUP, then the benefit of the doubt is given to the ISP which has nothing to do with membership. It has to do with some level of common sense. Again, this is not bashing you, but membership of any kind of not some sort of "BRO club" where they are above the rules.

I'd guess that would be seen by the folks that purchase these (good and bad) as a slap in the face (thanks for your purchase, let's just make sure no one trusts you more because of it). It's clear the badges are a paid service, by virtue of simply reading the page that sells them (linked to from every badge). All paid membership shows is that they either wish to "give back" to the forum for their success from it, or they want the extra perks. Though it's possibly looked on as they're "more trustworthy" as a result, it's in no way implied as part of it. I do get that it generates that feeling to some, though. While I'm sure they'd be happy to discuss additional fees, I'm just as sure that's a lot more than $50 work, records keeping and additional liability.

Company accounts? That ones been promised/hinted/etc for ages. We sent an email for it way back in the day and were told the only person that's able to enable it was on vacation and given i've seen no one else with it, it's safe to assume it's not prime time ready like the roll out hinted. Francisco

Because too many are concentrating more on how many ads they can fit in instead of having interesting discussions?

- I enjoyed getting notifications when my company was mentioned. - I liked being able to post more often than not having it (3 days versus 7). Beyond that, I did not see a lot of value per se. If I would have been able to post more often then every 3 days (or those without could post much less), included in a web hosting advertisements where it actually drove business, if I could have received discounts on the highlight/bold/sticky promotions or something more that was a value ad I would say it's a no-brainer. As it stand right now, there is minimal value for the price hike beyond the 'sign of the times', 'staff salaries' or 'inflation' whatever reasoning behind it was.