New Pricing

[BkraM]

Is this for real? Starting Nov 1st? Didnt get the $ you wanted from the seats so now this BS with no warning so people dont have time to move.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: New Pricing

Yes it's for real, 30 days notice is standard and per our TOS.

If you read the literature you'll find that our pricing is now equivalent (and still often less) than our competitors, and this pricing also applies to third party hosting, so moving to another host but using Miva is not a plausible way to avoid this change.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: New Pricing

I encourage you to read this and the comparison pages: http://www.miva.com/miva-competitive-market-analysis

[cocalla]

Re: New Pricing

Wow, if you're looking for a sympathetic ear from MIVA I guess you are not going to get it. I, too, was shocked to read that the pricing has jumped by over 30%. Sadly, the tone of the email felt like small businesses had to suffer because large businesses couldn't follow the rules and abused MIVA's pricing system. I will certainly need to look elsewhere and I think there are plenty of solutions for those who do as little volume as I do.

Is this for real? Starting Nov 1st? Didnt get the $ you wanted from the seats so now this BS with no warning so people dont have time to move.

[entrepre7]

Re: New Pricing

Been with you guys for 7 years now. Exactly how does the annual revenue part work? Does it calculate the last 12 months prior and only bill the 249 on the months that your avg is over 100K? Or by calendar year? If this December have a really good month that pushes me just over the 100K mark do you go back and bill me for the prior 11 months difference? If next month is really slow does the avg go back down and I get charged 79.00 again? Or once I go over 100K I am stuck paying 249 forever?

[Rick Wilson]

Re: New Pricing

Wow, if you're looking for a sympathetic ear from MIVA I guess you are not going to get it.

I'm not sure Forums are a good way to communicate empathy and I'm not sure based on the original post there was any room for that.

I am very empathetic of the costs to run a business and I'm also keenly aware of how much lower cost we are when looking at the total cost of ownership compared to the primary competitors in our market.

We are also looking at a very low cost solution in the mid term for very small merchants (those doing under $10k a year, which is the typical merchant on something like Shopify) but our billing system isn't quite ready for our plan yet. Hopefully in the next few months.

Miva has poured over $50 million into rebuilding our company and platform in the last 8 years and all of it has come from the operating capital of the business, we have never become beholden to investors or the market and are able to make slower long term decisions, but we also can't afford to both charge less than our primary competitors (Shopify, BigCommerce and Magento) while they also have a lot of either public market money or Venture Capital money.

In most cases we're still charging less than they do for the same functionality we offer.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: New Pricing

Exactly how does the annual revenue part work? Does it calculate the last 12 months prior and only bill the 249 on the months that your avg is over 100K?

It's the trailing 12 months, and yes you can go down if your numbers drop over a 12 month period.

[ProCycle]

Re: New Pricing

I am almost too shocked for words. This represents a 30 times increase in my bill. Completely ridiculous. I only use Miva for the shopping cart functions. No hosting, no images, no templates. Only the cart. My company does perfectly fine with one seat. And now my bill will go up from $50/month to $1495/month. 30 days notice! Ha! Anybody in the business knows full well how long it takes to migrate to another system. In the meantime Miva has us by the short hairs. We'll be looking into other options first thing in the morning.

[Darin]

Re: New Pricing

A 150% price increase? That's ridiculous. And after so many years with a company. I don't need more than one seat, and I'm using no more resources that I have for the past few years.

[Keitho]

Re: New Pricing

Ok, Rick, noodle this. My current data usage is 1.59gb (and I have been gladly paying the overage which is primarily due to having a dev store). My last 12 months of Miva sales were $93K (and under $100K for 3 of the last 4 years per the internal Miva stats) but for some reason you guys rounded up to $100K. That took my small business with less than 400 items from $49.95 to $249.95 per month. Does this sound reasonable to you? $600 per year (which I agree was a bargain) to $3,000? My usage has not changed dramatically in 4 years, my disk usage is less than the new Starter Plan, but you ding me on sales volume. What if my average sales was 10 times larger? Then you'd put me in Enterprise Plan at $18,000 per year! That's why I dislike sales volume based charges. You don't know my margins so I think it is a flawed metric. l love the platform but can't see the value proposition for my situation. I'm sure that I'm not alone in this.

From Russ' email to me.

"Beginning on November 1, 2015, your store preparesmart.com will be on the Business Plan and your new monthly bill will be $249.95 a month, including 3 Admin Seats, 5 GB of Disk Space and 100 GB of Bandwidth (this is more than double the resource allocation of our legacy Warehouse plan)." [assumes $100k - $500k]

[Leon]

Re: New Pricing

I won't get into to much details as to the price increases, Miva have their reasons, though some smaller graduations would have been nicer to avoid such huge jumps in costs.
But a few questions for Rick. Are returns, order adjustments and cancellations taken into account for the turnover? What about what currency the store uses? We use Australian $, does your system convert? While we are way over $100,000, some might not be...

[gomblue]

Re: New Pricing

I think it would be helpful for those that will now be reconsidering carts if Miva would explain how they plan to re-invest the new revenue it will receive.

I'd like to see a massive jump in number of available themes. Also, a slick integrated point-of-sale system. Both of these options are available in the market today. I've also never updated the site for template changes since we switched to CSSUI in 2010. It would be nice if those were able to happen automatically. I'm sure it would be costly for us to have them implemented now.

BTW, David is a great asset. He alone might keep shop owners from switching carts, given his reputation to be highly competent.

From what I can see, many "average (per Miva)" Miva shop owners will see there costs rise from $50 to $750 per month. 15x increase.

I'm also a bit concerned that given this dramatic increase, what else might be coming in the future when it comes to costs from Miva.

Miva is highly customizable. Its order processing is fairly slick. It does have quite a bit going for itself. Miva programmers seem to be quite competent.

Bottom line, what can we expect in the future when it comes to specific improvements?

[entrepre7]

Re: New Pricing

Keitho did you add in sales tax and shipping? It said annual revenue vs sales. So likely those items added to your sales pushed you over 100K.

[lesliekirk]

Re: New Pricing

Keitho did you add in sales tax and shipping? It said annual revenue vs sales. So likely those items added to your sales pushed you over 100K.

The email has an asterisk next to Annual Merchant Revenue* that says

*= Gross merchant sales processed using Miva Merchant software

I'm thinking Gross would include all the taxes, fees and shipping verses Net that would not.

[lea-ann]

Re: New Pricing

We are also looking at a very low cost solution in the mid term for very small merchants (those doing under $10k a year, which is the typical merchant on something like Shopify) but our billing system isn't quite ready for our plan yet. Hopefully in the next few months.

That would be me. While I've been paying extra for storage, I have also been looking at cost effective ways to reduce my overhead. This price increase will push me away from MIVA, which I've used since at least 2002ish. and right before the holiday season is not when I want to move my website. Ugh!