Linnworks Price Increases

[IanDade]

With Linnworks announcing new price structures today/yesterday, what are peoples thoughts??

Seems to be a lot of unhappy Linnworks customers out there today looking at the popular forums, with some reporting huge price rises!!

There new 24/7 support seems to be causing the issues around the restructure of packages.

Not a Linnworks user myself, we use another provider which is great for what we need and their support is amazing (and free)!!

I am sure they will be speaking to many disgruntled Linnworks customers today!!

 

[WebDesires]

So this is an advertisement? Reporting.

 

[IanDade]

No,not an advert at all!! Simply read a lot of forums this morning and this was a common thread. Came on here, as i do most days and saw nothing, so just wanted to see what people thought. Happy to remove the name of the alternative provider, (done so now) but thought people may like my experiences of alternative software. No malice intended.

 

[WebDesires]

But your talking about cost and I see StoreFeeder is actually more expensive and does not allow infinite products like Linnworks does at a very low price.

So if your post was seriously about pricing then bringing that solution to the table just isn't logical.

 

[IanDade]

It wasn't!!! I was just after the thoughts of Linnworks users, i think you are reading too much into my original post!!! This is a discussion forum, correct? I was just interested in what people thought!!

 

[Gaz Walker]

I'm a customer and I think its just ridiculous after the year of crap we've had to put up with. They will lose 20-40% of the customer base for sure, but they probably will make double with the revised charges anyway. The guy playing devils advocate about this on the forum last night will most likely be right, its a smart move from them. Assholes

 

[kulture]

For me the price increase is a factor of 4. I simply cannot justify remaining with Linnworks. I am looking at Zenstores which is on the order of £25 a month. It does a lot less, but currently the net version of Linnworks is unusable for us. So less is better then nothing. Come January I will be leaving them.

 

[Richard Moore]

Interesting... Thanks for the heads up.

 

[FittedCommerce]

There are a lot of people who will get their plan cheaper but there are some (who are typically the ones who have been with LW for a long time) who will see an increase.

I did a video on my thoughts about it and the Pro's & Con's , I do waffle on a bit but it really came down to this.

There has been some hard times for older LW customers, ones who are fond of the Desktop Version but I think we are now over the bad spell.

Pricing for some will be a hit but existing customers won't have to change pricing until after xmas and you can technically take a 12 month sub on your current plan until the 13th September.

I would also say talk to them, they aren't a massive investor backed cooperation and they're decent people.

 

[Linn Systems]

Hello Everyone,

I can see a few comments about the new model we have adopted.

To confirm, the changes to our pricing is not an "across the board price change" to existing plans. Rather, this is a complete restructure of our business model and all older plans and tiers are being retired in January.

"What are these changes?"
Previously, we provided plans that came with varying levels of support by different methods
Ticket, Chat and Telephone support - But only our premium subscribers had access to all 3 services.

Now with the remodel, all customers on the new pricing will get the same level of support that was only offered previously to Enterprise subscribers. Additionally, we have increased our support availability to 24/7.

"Why are you making these changes"
In response to research and customer surveys, the bulk of our existing clients wanted these changes implemented. When on-boarding new clients, we want to provide world class support. Our current model cannot facilitate this.

"Who is affected by this change?"
At Linnworks we have customers who have used the software from day one, which speaks for itself in my opinion. Although we have increased fees for new customers over the years, we excluded existing customers from these changes, so they have benefited for this lifetime discount for many years.

Therefore as you can imagine some users are seeing a price increase, but by comparison they have not had to pay any extra fees for the lifetime of their subscription. In our years of trading we have acquired around 4000 active databases subscribed to our service so may customers are on this older rate.

As these older plans are due to be retired, customers will need to opt in to the new model by the 16th of January 2017. This is to avoid inconveniencing customers during the Christmas build up.

"The Positives"
The flipside of this change is that we are seeing a great deal of customers positively affected by this change, and are in fact saving money while gaining unrestricted 24/7 support.

To quote one of our positive reactions to the remodel...
"I'm new to linnworks this year and we only use .net - and apart from a few teething problems I really like the system - I will save £1920 per year with the changes for 4 users. So for me £2000 per year for this system works well for me with 24/7 support ."

Should anyone have any questions about the changes we are making, we would encourage you to contact us directly and we will discuss these changes with you in full.

Kind regards,

Richard Maxted
Business Development Executive
Linn Systems LTD

 

[kulture]

I would suggest that the vast majority of the older customers rarely use support unless there is a major bug just introduced by an update or a third party system (e.g. Royal Mail) has gone down or the linnworks servers have gone down. In the last few years the only times I have used support is when the linnworks system had problems or was re-configured.

So basically I am being asked to pay several thousand pounds more per year for an "improved support" that I don't use and don't need.

And as for saying that " a complete restructure of our business model and all older plans and tiers are being retired in January." is not the same as "across the board price change" is semantics. In real terms it is the same.

 

[fisicx]

I don't think I've ever had to get support other than google for an answer. So like @kulture in having to pay for something I don't need.

Quite happy to pay a fee for the application but to make support a core subscription feature just feels greedy.

 

[TPH1]

Can anyone that uses Linnworks.net rather than the desktop version tell me whether they've got it working well yet? Last time I read a thread about .net on here, several people were talking about it's problems and limitations. Just wondered if that's been sorted yet.

 

[Page]

Yes .net is okay now - and boy did we suffer

(**** (****) ****** ** *** ****) lol

Actually not a lol and far from it

It was a disgrace

Shame on you Linn

 

[Page]

I think we have to remember that linn has to have general policies that work across all users

As they have got bigger then they need to standardise and simplify things - and this is nothing to do with profit - but just in terms of running a bigger business with lots of staff and lots of customers

As always with any change there will be winners and losers

But at the end of the day it is a competitive marketplace so if we dont like it we can always move on - and lets all be honest would if there was something loads better/for less money out there

We are not interested in linn as such - nor are linn interested in us as such
But we are both interested in operating in a certain business area and as long as it continues to suit us both then we will both stick with each other

And hopefully Linn will help my business develop
And mine and other businesses will help the linn business develop

As always in business it has to be win - win to last

If you do jump ship - as opposed to fall back to channel tools with no stock syncing - then do report back and let us all know if we should be joining you

hey that is forum life

 

[ESUP]

We actually had no notice until about 2 weeks ago.

.net sucks, it doesn't have funcationalty that was promised a year ago, desktop crashes constantly, the delay in syncing orders has cost us orders/money. The attitude has always been one of contempt for customers. It is often denied but ask Linnworks customers and they will all say the same thing. I am pretty sure that most people who work for Linn have never worked in a real warehouse environment.

I am in charge of two companies that use Linn both in different ways and levels, one we have begun the process of trying a competitor, our switch over date is next month, the other we have started to develop our own internal system to replace it.

Now Royal Mail and DPD etc.. all have solid API's it has meant dev is much easier. Claming that 24/7 is good for everyone is just insulting, most people don't work 24/7 and to justify it by saying that people in other countries need support out of hours is not a reason to hike prices for everyone. Each country should justify it's own investment.

The implementation of the user limit with no warning etc.. put us out of action for a day, we had 5 users however only ever logged in using a couple as that was never a problem. Then bang overnight we couldn't access the machines. I was out of the country so the staff were stuck. It was a clear attempt to force money in a heavy handed way.

Unless Linn really up their game and fast and improve their attitude to customers they will become another yahoo as other people are on their tail, treating long term customers with contempt is a sure fire way to kill a business.

I wish everyone luck who remains... I suspect you will need it