Mythbusters: Three Things We Aren’t Doing on May 4

Since announcing that we are now focusing 100 percent of the company on enhancing the features and services we offer to paying Network Creators and plan to phase out our free service, we’ve received a lot of feedback from Network Creators. We’ve heard from free and paid, business and nonprofit, educators and artists. We’ve been interacting on Creators, reading your comments on the Ning Blog and taking in your tweets. And, we’ve been listening to all of your ideas, suggestions and concerns.

We’ll share all of the details of our new offering with you, including features and price points, on May 4. However, I know there’s been some confusion and a number of rumors circulating about what we will announce and then roll-out in early summer. I wanted to take a minute to let you know three of the things we aren’t planning on doing on May 4.

  1. Rumor: “Ning will shut down networks who don’t begin paying for premium services by May 4.”  FALSE. You will have at least 10 weeks to evaluate the new pricing structure and make a decision to move to the new paid service. We’ll be announcing the details of our new pricing structure on May 4. We plan to roll-out the new pricing structure in early summer and then give you a transition period to sign-up for the new offering.
  2. Rumor: “Only very large networks will be able to afford the new fees.” FALSE. I am confident that many of you, particularly those of you already paying for premium services, will be pleasantly surprised by our new pricing structure. Our goal is to set the pricing at a level which will make Ning an attractive solution for both larger and smaller Ning Networks.
  3. Rumor: “This change means teachers and non-profits won’t be able to continue to use Ning.” FALSE. As Jason mentioned in his blog post last week, it’s our goal to have a set of product and pricing options that will make sense for all Ning Networks — even those that have limited budgets. Specifically, we know how many non-profit organizations and educators use Ning, and we plan on offering an option that will make it possible and attractive for them to stay on the Ning Platform.

Hopefully this will ease your concerns (if you have any) and help get you excited about what’s coming up. I’m looking forward to revealing more on May 4 and answering all of your questions then.

About the Author:

John McDonald – who has written posts on Ning's Official Blog on Social Networking Sites.

Related posts:

  1. An Update from Ning
  2. Mythbusters
  3. A Few Administrative Updates
  4. The Perfect Way to Celebrate a Birthday
  5. Putting your best Main Page forward
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  • Anne Williams

    Thanks for the info Tom Smolka. Will be looking at that as well as other options. And thanks other people for looking into other ways of exporting data. It’s the unprincipled nature of this that is getting to me. All these people have put all this effort into creating sites on the basis that it was free. Bait and switch just about says it.

  • http://flanagan1959.ning.com Cliff Weaver

    There is no way we will be able to continue using ning for a very small graduating class from a very small farming community. Ning should be ashamed at what the are trying to do.

  • Sean

    not telling the people the price of the paid networks options at the time when telling them the free option goes away. Fail.

  • kenche

    booooooo! My 16 member ning site has been very useful to manage my hockey team. But alas, with so few members anything more than $25 year is impossible. I see the irony in complaining about something useful that was free, but what really bothers me is the amount of time and effort I put towards customizing my network.

  • estewart

    I have introduced my teacher candidates to the possiblilities of web-based software using NING. They will be your future subscribers, but I can’t make customers for NING if I don’t have use of the product. Consider continuing free accounts for educators…perhaps verify employment?

  • CICLÓPEA

    Hola, me enterado Que El de la posibilidad de desparecer gratuitamente this Red Social de Comunicación, poner mi peticion es poner en consideración la posibilidad de Que siguiera siendo gratuita, ya ofreceMúltiple Ques Otras Redes opociones Que no Tienen, ademas Por Muy modica Que la mar Que Lea la versión piensan ofrecer Creo Varios Usuarios no No estaríamos en Posibilidades de pagarlo, Lo Que ocasionaria Que Lejos de traernos beneficiosnnos perjudicarian , Y no quedaria Otra opoción eliminar nuetras cuentas, ojala piensen , recapaciten y tomen em cuenta nuetras peticiones.
    Gracias mil y reciban un mar de bendiciones.

  • http://freestepbystepattractionmarketing.com Jeane Annette Bates

    Now I don’t know if I want to continue with Ning, since I just started yesterday. I am just starting out and don’t have ANY extra money to spend.

  • http://tradwicca.ning.com Sean

    It’s May 4th where is our pricing info as promised?

  • http://womenworks.ning.com/events/april-meeting-happy-birthday Glenne

    I’m wondering how Ning Creators who don’t happen to be on this forum will hear about all this? I only joined some months ago because I had problems with ning trasferring creators otherwise I’d still be blissfully unaware of these changes coming up. Communication with all the NC’s would be a good start instead of hearing roumours.

  • http://takalar.ning.com Caesarleo

    Damn…i have no MONEY….I gues..someday..NING will turn into Social Moneywork

  • http://PigeonSite Ralph Toughladjian

    I am totally disappointed. I had been using a ning site for approximately 1 years before discovering how wonderful it was to use. Then I decided that I would create my own site and have people join from all parts of the globe. I chose Ning as it was free and after spending lots of time and effort to create it Ning has has distroyed our hope to get more people to join without paying. As I nor members make any money from this site it is pretty harsh to slug us with a fee.

    Ning wrong wrong wrong, you have gone the wrong path from free to “greedyness”. In my opinion

  • http://lynettebentonwriting.com Lynette

    This is very disappointing. I hope a different group can come up with a replacement.

  • AndyMc

    I’m surprised at this action by NING, even those not effected will now be wondering how long till prices increase and maybe wishing later that they moved there network.
    With storage space and bandwidth relaying that stored content, I do see why there needs to be a charge.
    But I think the strategy is very poor and this cost could have been shared amongst users also. Many Users will have and use there own pages on a ning network and this is where apps could have been sold, and more ability to customize through upgrading there pages.

    The Starting Price of $19.99 is fair also but shouldn’t be limited to 150 users, this is just silly nonsense, why bother settings up a site for 150 people. And I think they base there pricing stratergy on everyone else beign stupid and they being clever. It’s very obvious that the idea is to give trial free accounts, then make it cheap and easy to convert to non trial, then when the site is pulling members they can hold you to them with much more expensive services.
    Surely in the Ideas department when someone was brainstorming that they realised there are lots and lots of other FREE services out there, so anyone setting up a new site won’t want to put in the work only to have to redo later. And for this reason will choose a FREE site.

    I’m afraid I have already moved my site to http://ninjamers.spruz from http://ninjamers.ning.com
    It is very disappointing to lose the mp3 upload and player but not disappointing to gain back the better control of pages that ning confines people too.

    Out site is only small but still haves almost double the max users on the $19.99.
    Seriously who wants to pay for limitations? :S

    When I was told about this, it was 2nd hand paste of some NING letter on another site, I told the person no this can’t be real, who qualified to head a company would sack 50% staff then kill the one thing that made NING what it is today.
    Anyway I have decided to move from NING as it’s future is now limited or the current premier sites will be paying more and more to keep it alive.
    I don’t see long term future for NING now so i have to consider the long term future of our site.

    But I want to thank NING for the years of service they provided us and hopefully they will review and change the pricing in time to allow the non closure of our site Ninjamers.
    The pricing is fine, just the 150 user cap, 1000 would see better suited and if you get over 1000 users you would want to get rid of adds and use your own, so would want to upgrade.

  • http://www.250.org.ua Minelab

    Cool episode, Adam and Jamie thanks. We in Ukraine look at it with gusto.
    There is this idea: Is it possible to hide the metal from the metal detector!
    I know that if you can hide it in a different metal (forgot the name – the guy came to us he had a metal bracelet of large size and it did not react to metal detectors)

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