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Notice of 2016 Storage Limit and Pricing Plan Changes

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.

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  • HEY! don't believe it when/if your buddy on the NING Advocacy Team tells you that there's nothing to fear about the membership cap or the pricing jump . . . if you are able to get a reply at all it was likely the typical canned tripe:

    Thanks for the question. Did we reach out to you or the Network Creator directly regarding these changes?

    If we have not, for the time being, don't worry about your storage usage on Ning. If and when anything changes, we'll reach out to you directly and let you know.

    If you did receive an email from us and would like more specific information and to speak directly with a manager regarding these changes, you'll want to email theningteam@mode.com.

    Quite the contrary!  I am an administrator and moderator for the Rhett & Link Kommunity http://rhettandlinkommunity.com and had been monitoring this situation quite closely since the initial pricing plan announcement hit in Dec-2015.  We were already well over the 100k membership limit and 480% of the standard allowed storage for the Pro 2.0 plan we've been on for the past 5+ years, and it looked like the cost would jump from $60/mo to $500/mo to keep everything running smoothly. 

    But Ning assured us that we were safe. The same standard "form letter" everyone else received.

    Then, in January, our counterparts at the Nerdfighter Ning site notified us about Hank Green's post stating that they're closing down the site based on Ning's pricing changes: http://nerdfighters.ning.com/profiles/blogs/very-bad-news   NOTE - this link no longer working as the site is down

    Asked Ning about it again, and again was told not to worry.

    Then on April 7th, suddenly and without warning, we were no longer able to approve any new member requests. 

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    3238886?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024

    Even when supplying the Ning help center with photo evidence that the membership limit had cause a lock-out, they insisted we would never be affected unless they sent notification first. Six (3) e-mail exchanges and three (3) phone calls later a Ning representative finally admitted that it was an issue, but they could not (i.e. would not) allow any exceptions to the published pricing plans, and our options were to either pay the 10x price increase or begin the long and very tedious task of deleting nearly 8,000 inactive accounts one at a time in order to free up space and reopen the membership. By the time the situation was investigated, a plan developed and space freed up, there was more than 500-member backlog awaiting approval.

    I can understand your frustration with this. You can refer to: https://creators.ning.com/announcements-from-ning/notice-of-2016-sto...  for our announcement, but please note that when you signed up for your subscription, the Pro plan does specify it allows up to 100K members (a limit that we are working on having a hard-coded enforcement for).

    Please also review that link above for the details on the pricing plans available beyond the Pro plan and let me know how'd you'd like to proceed.

    P.S. - - if you happen to have over 100,000 members and try to export your member data in order to sort for inactive accounts - - - I used an Excel worksheet and compared DATE JOINED to LAST VISIT dates in order to identify one-time "lookey-loos" who joined but never returned and made no contributions - - - be prepared to wait at least 4-5 days for a Ning rep to download thru a back-end report, as an admin-engaged export simply will not work for a file so large (22.9MB raw unfiltered data).

  • You're raising pricing while 2.0 hasn't even been working right for weeks???? Are you insane?

    Get me outta here!

  • All — 
    Have you seen what Gina Bianchini (founder and former CEO of Ning) just launched with her company MightybellWith the new Mightybell Entrepreneur plans, they seem to be offering something for creators to build a community and a business on their own branded native apps. 
     
    We moved Hairbrained.me from Ning to Mightybell a few months ago and the response from our members has been fantastic. We even did a video for Mightybell here: https://mightybell.com/community_entrepreneurs 

    The launch was covered in Wired, Fortune, and Gina wrote something up for LinkedIn too. 
     
    Happy to answer any questions you might have about the move. We’re not looking back. 
    Thanks,
    3238870?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024
    • I think their target market is bigger business and the mobile apps (but even some of those would baulk at $2999 per month), then if they can pick up smaller/hobby sites at $99, all well and good, but then, ANY of the Ning alternative CMSs offer a lot more features for a lot less money!!

    • NC for Hire
      Are you paying $2999 a month to get the apps? I think that is a different market to the one most Ning Creators fall into.
      • We have been able to monetize our community with Sponsors and E Commerce, we built that on Ning but we could not grow further with out app/mobile support, so for us its worth it to get to the next level in 2016 and beyond.

      • $2999.00 OR $29.99???

        • Just checked on that $2999.00 at: https://mightybell.com/pricing 

          That's the PRO level on MightBell 

          • and that's the only way you can have a 'mobile' apps and SSL from what I saw.

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