Don’t worry, Christina. As you can see from the folowing tweet/thread, Brian Gardner and StudioPress is a totally different league. Your lifetime Genesis license is going to last forever.

http://twitter.com/bgardner/status/363017045027192832

For me, and for you from what I read above, the support option is secondary. I worry instead about the future updates to the systems of my own and the ones I have set up for clients.

Now we have to find an alternative solution within two years or pay the renewal fees. And how am I supposed to explain to a client that the software I used then now comes with a renewal fee?

Woo made me look like a fool in the eyes of some of my clients (or perhaps it was me myself that was a fool in the first place for not being able to forsee this change?).

I am one of the annoyed Woo customers that will try to find alternative solutions for some of my online projects, since some does not even generate a reveneue, thus making it hard to argue for paying for a renewal license. Especially since I bought the item for its lifetime updates option in the first place…

On a side note: I am a WooCommerce contributor and think Woo has made a very nice job with WC, so I am not just your regular Joe that is crying his eyes out over a price hike 🙂

I too feel the right thing to do would be to keep the lifetime updates but not lifetime support, but who am I to judge, I don’t run their business. It just seems their punishing people for supporting them and using them.

[P.S – By the way after your “fewer” and “less” post the other week, your use of “could care less” instead of “couldn’t care less” is one that drives me a little mad. Unless you meant that of course 😉 ]

Were they wrong to use this model in the beginning? I don’t think so. I think that it helped them get to where they are today. Did they continue with that model too long until it possibly jeopardized the companies existence? It appears so.

I think the whole thing could have been handled very differently and in a way that kept Woo strong and growing, the vast majority of the their user-base happy and even advocating the change, and criticisms to a minimum.

A change had to take place just unfortunate for every one, including WooThemes, that it went down like it did.

I’m not a Woo customer, but as a client/customer of many others, this is what I’ve received and expect. Not because of entitlement, but because it’s what I paid for and all businesses should honour their transactions.