Notice of 2016 Storage Limit and Pricing Plan Changes

[The Ning Team]

We appreciate your business and the opportunity to bring social media services at competitive rates.  However, like all companies, we face increases in costs each year.  We have a percentage of uniquely successful customers with large numbers of memberships that require the storage and delivery of large amounts of content.  As a result, it has become necessary to increase rates on those networks requiring larger storage space on our servers.  

In order to continue providing the best service to our top tier customers and our network as a whole, we are compelled to adjust our subscription plans in 2016 to address the increasing costs associated with maintaining our Ning infrastructure. As a result, we are taking the following actions:

• Instituting a 100,000 membership cap and a 500 GB data storage limit on the Ning 2.0 Pro plan
• Instituting a 10 GB data storage limit on the Ning 3.0 Basic plan
• Instituting a 50 GB data storage limit on the Ning 3.0 Performance plan
• Instituting a 100 GB data storage limit on the Ning 3.0 Ultimate plan
• Implementing a new tier of subscription plans to support our top tier networks

As of January 1, 2016 the new subscription plans will go into effect for both Ning 2.0 and Ning 3.0 networks and our subscription plan structure will be as follows:

Ning 2.0	Mini	Plus	Pro	Business Plus	Corporate*
Price  (Monthly)	$2.95	$24.95	$59.95	$500	$1,000
Price (Annually)	$19.95	$239.90	$599.90	$5,000	$10,000
Member Limit	150	10,000	100,000	100K - 1M	1M ­ 1.5M
Storage Limit	1 GB	10 GB	500 GB	501 GB - 1 TB	1 TB - 3 TB

 

Ning 3.0	Basic	Performance	Ultimate	Business Plus	Corporate*
Price  (Monthly)	$30	$59	$119	$500	$1,000
Price (Annually)	$300	$588	$1,188	$5,000	$10,000
Member Limit	1,000	10,000	100,000	100K - 1M	1M ­ 1.5M
Storage Limit	10 GB	50 GB	100 GB	101 GB - 1 TB	1 TB - 3 TB

*In the event these limits are exceeded, custom pricing shall be negotiated.

We’ve begun reaching out to the Network Creators of the largest networks and will continue to reach out to Network Creators currently exceeding either the storage or member limits in the coming months.  If you have not received an email from us regarding your network's member count or storage, you do not have to select a new plan.

For those who have received an email, you will have the following options:

1. Elect to continue your Ning subscription under one of the new plans. The new plan will go into effect on the date specified in the email you receive from Ning, and your monthly invoice will reflect the new rate.  Your plan will renew monthly until canceled (you can reference our cancellation policy here: http://www.ning.com/billingpolicy/).  Previous annual plans will be credited for the amount of any unused portion. Payment for the new plan will be collected from the default payment method associated with your account.
2. Elect to remain on your current plan, removing members or content to remain within your plan’s stated limits.  Removing inactive members and their content will lower your network’s member count and storage space on our servers.
3. Elect to cancel your Ning subscription. If you elect to cancel your subscription, you may do so at any time before the date specified in the email you receive from Ning.  (You can reference our cancellation policy here: http://www.ning.com/billingpolicy/). Annual plans will be issued a prorated refund for the unused portion of your subscription. 

Prior to canceling your membership, you may contact Ning customer support to assist with archiving your network’s content.

Please notify us of your election to continue your subscription under the new plan or to cancel it by replying to the email address contained in the email by the specified date.  If we do not receive your election by the date specified in the email, we will deem your membership cancelled and will terminate your membership effective the specified cutoff date.

We regret having to take these actions, however, we have no choice in order to maintain the Ning service for our members. We appreciate and thank you for your understanding in this matter.

[Chazz]

One thing that blows my mind is that people have offered to get rid of my inactive members for me. I have had several offer that. It kind of ticks me off though. My membership ceiling has not been reached at all, and deleting members that seem inactive would save me no money what so ever. It would be more likely to anger members who come on the site and read things without commenting, and their friends who are on my site. Why invite trouble when it isn't necessary? Fred St. Laurent also makes a very valid point about the price suddenly doubling.

[Garfield Archivist]

Hi Chazz,

I would definitely go in the direction of not letting anyone convince you of getting something you don't need. You are absolutely right to not remove members if you don't need to.

Garfield

[Chazz]

Thank you. That is pretty much what I told the people who offered to do that for me.

[Fred St Laurent]

This didn't last long, so I guess we can count on regular price increases and data plan changes now... 9 months ago we were paying one price that has now doubled

[Josef Essberger]

With Garfield Archivist's help, we recently reduced the number of members from approx 140,000 to under 100,000 by removing 50,000 inactive members. It took some time but all went smoothly, and brought monthly costs down from $500 to $119. Ning offer no help in bulk removals (or so they have told me), and doing this manually is impracticable.

[Garfield Archivist]

NCs interested in removing inactive users so they don't wind up paying extra for it should contact me.

I am currently working with a client and in about the space of a weekend I am about to remove 50,000 active users. 

This is not easy work but it is doable and will be particular useful to very large networks which I feel I've started to get a good handle on managing. However, if you are small network you may benefit from this at a much quicker pace. A few things to consider:

• I will require admin access to do this work
• Ning has already said to my client this isn't something they can help networks with.
• During the time this work is being done it's important that new members are not approved or removed.
• I estimate that I can remove about 50k inactive accounts in about 15 hours.
• Just to imagine the scale of this if you were to remove 700 accounts an hour it would take you about 3 days to remove the same amount.

If you have any questions feel free to contact me.

[Kevin Acosta]

Would love to learn the "secret" to these bulk removals. Ning also told me it was not possible in any way, shape or form so I've been systematically going thru and deleting abandoned accounts one by one... over 12,000 already done to get back below the 100k member limit and maintain a small manageable cushion of 2000-3000 for new members.

Problem is that from day 1 the previous admin team required a membership to see anything beyond the HOME page --- many thousands over the course of 6+ years would join, tour around for a half hour on day one and then never return. And no moderator was ever tasked with maintaining the membership base to kill the one-timers. To stop that from happening, we opened up all pages to view only (except of course those which a member has flagged as "friends only") while still requiring membership to comment or contribute. That dropped the daily average "joins" by two thirds and greatly reduced the percentage of non-returns.

To avoid "hurt feelings" among membership, the Excel download we used to identify onetimers (date joined minus last signin equals zero / more than six months elapsed) --- easily identified approx 40,000 of the 108,000 membership at onset of the project!

[Garfield Archivist]

Sounds like you have a good plan. Your method for Identifying inactive members is not that different than Josef. I don't envy the work you need to do to remove them one by one. Inactive members should not be getting the kind of one on one time that active ones do.

[Chazz]

I too have to admit that I am a customer who feels abused. Our Network Platform service continues to decline in a truly horrible way. We are now told we face even further limitations due to  your changes, as well as yet again having our cost suddenly and steeply increase. Some of us are far from pleased with how it is going. Actually, I would say some of us is an understatement at the very least. The factual statement would be, "Many Of us, Are Not Happy With The Big Problems and Growing Costs."  Especially when we aren't honestly allowed full control over our own Network Content because of your overly astringent, and narrow minded T.O.S. Are you purposely trying to price yourselves out of business? Greed can cripple a platform the same way that intelligent and reasonable pricing can build it's strength. You do realize that, don't you?

[Fabio Colasanti]

How can I reduce the storage place my network is using?  I added a large number of files and this led me into the danger zone.   I have deleted many files I had added, but this does not seem to have had any effect on my storage statistics.

What could I do to regain some storage space?