I’m ready to be humbled by any response to this thread. Lord help me . I’ll start by saying that I’m an LTD holder here. Proudly. However…
The next update Bricks should eliminate (or jack up the price majorly in MetaBox fashion) of the LTD for Bricks for anyone who hasn’t bought in yet. If Bricks started on a platform of “communication first,” then the fact that it is now infrequent (according to some users standards—not mine fyi) means 2 things IMO:
Time to scale. Bricks workload has clearly reached critical mass, but the proof of concept has been undeniable for quite some time. By any standard, the team has reached a point where they could have (and SHOULD have) gotten rid of the LTD and moved to subscription a long time ago in order to create cash flow for dev team expansion AND incentivize development. You know your model and market better than I do, but continuing to bootstrap at this point makes zero sense to this outsider. So, number one suggestion is switch to subscription for future purchasers for cash flow and time management. Which brings me to point number two…
Serve the market that’s willing to pay you over time. A huge portion of the Bricks user community is “being cheap.” They buy an LTD then fume that devs aren’t moving/communicating/updating enough and yet few ever encourage the devs to start getting paid the true value for their workload, and they fail to see this major difference when they then begin to draw comparisons to the dev teams of some of the most bloated pagebuilders. These portions of the community essentially discourage development. This tells me there’s at least a slight mismatch of product-market fit. I could be wrong idk, but there exists an affluent B2B market that understands the value of and encourages the model of subscription-based builders.
If anyone disagrees with me, have a look at some of the users discussions in the FB group. They compare Bricks update frequency to that of Elementor, Divi, Breakdance, etc. All of whom have built out dev teams and the most bloat and inflexibility by catering to the masses—areas where Bricks completely dominates them. This is what I mean when I say “product-market mismatch.” Your target market isn’t going to compare you to these pagebuilders. Incentivize yourself to serve the market that will gladly pay you over and over for your already-high-quality product and understands what it takes to deliver from the backend.
A lot of “big dogs” have already validated Bricks 10x over, yet the team is continuing to offer a $230 LTD in March 2023. Make it make sense.
(Some of these more sophisticated buyers will never buy from a company that offers an LTD because of the poor incentives it creates. If you don’t believe me, do a search on WP subreddits and look at comments about this sort of thing.)
Rant over. Thanks for your fantastic product. Go get the $$$ you more than deserve.
Fine, I’ll add to my pointed gif. This topic has been discussed time and time again. The bricks team has stated time and time again that they will change to subscription when the time is right.
The time will be right when they decide it will be right. Not when the customers think that they are losing value and need reassurance that they’re not going to lose value in something that they invested in.
Please don’t flag a post just because you disagree with it.
Nobody knows the situation of Bricks, but as somebody who is involved in a few LTD products, as well as subscription-based products, and has worked with others selling with similar models, I think you’re missing part of the equation.
Unless Bricks’ is somehow an outlier, it’ll be subject to the same market conditions as the WP community. From what I’ve seen, and also read about from others in the WordPress community in general, these are pretty reasonable assumptions…
The moment it goes subscription only, you can expect daily no. of sales to drop by around 75%.
The yearly fee would currently need to be no more than $149/yr (same as Breakdance), maybe less.
Less than half of users would continue paying for a second year.
Lower entry-level price can mean more beginner users, which equals higher support costs. (also these are the people that are more likely only to pay once and create the most support tickets)
I usually avoid these conversations as it’s always just speculation and assumptions, but just to show the maths of what I mean to highlight the point…
10,000 new customers each year, paying current $230 LTD. Gross income after 3 years = $6.9mil.
2,500 new customers each year, paying $149 per year. (with half continuing to pay). Gross income after 3 years = $1.67mil
Obviously more users = more support, but support staff aren’t expensive. And most users only really need support in the beginning as they’re learning.
The point is, we don’t know. Only the Bricks team would know when it makes financial sense to switch. The current LTD could be the main USP and vital to giving it a chance amongst the bigger players, until it matures. We really don’t know. It’ll be great when they’re in a position to go subscription. But in these first few years, the assumption that ‘subscription equals more cashflow’ I don’t think that part makes sense. (obviously don’t take any of the above numbers seriously, it’s just a point to highlight how it could easily be the other way to what is being suggested)
A great example of this is Divi. They’ve been around for years and have over a 100 full time staff. And somehow they’re still surviving on what I would assume is mostly LTD income.
Of course, they do have a subscription model and some other sources of income. So it’s not entirely a fare comparison.
If you want to support Bricks financially, build into your business model for each of your clients to purchase a single site LTD. I think I remember Thomas making that suggestion way back in the early days. It is a valid funding model.
Exactly, we are actually considering that. Since our services are subscription based anyway we can just a €5/month to our prices and the clients wouldn’t even flinch.
. I’ll start by saying that I’m an LTD holder here. Proudly. However…
