Explaining the recent changes to the Ultimate Plan

We recently introduced a change to how the Ultimate Plan works and some customers have expressed concern at these changes which we'd like to address. I want to take some time to answer your feedback and explain why we have made these changes.

How do the grandfathered plans work and am I going to have to pay on my store?

Webstores who were subscribed to Ultimate or Enterprise before the 16th March 2017 will keep their unlimited monthly transactions even if they cancel their existing plan after the date the limit was introduced. Customers on the Starter and Premium plans now have the transaction limit if they decide to upgrade to Ultimate in the future.

Why are you increasing prices for servers who are generating large amounts of revenue?

The additional increase in price for our commercial Minecraft customers is as a result of the changing nature of the Minecraft Server industry. Due to changes in the Minecraft server economy with the EULA and the rise of bigger servers, there are less smaller to medium sized servers as they used to be - once our main source of revenue. Buycraft as a company still needs to grow and this is not possible without us changing our business model.

We have increasing requests for features and improvements to Buycraft, however, it is not possible to employ staff members and invest more into the product, without an increase in price. To improve the product we are moving to a percentage system at 1% of revenue for customers processing over £7,500 a month on the Enterprise plan. To servers who are processing tens of thousands each month we are of course flexible depending on your processing amounts. This money will be invested back into the product and we will be keeping all customers up to date with our plans going forward and any changes such new additions to our team. Over the last few days, I’ve been closely monitoring social media and a running theme I’ve noticed is that people assume Buycraft is “cash hungry” and that this increase in price is to simply generate more profit for us. I’d like to reassure all our customers this isn’t the case. The additional revenue being generated is solely being used to improve the platform and the service for you, our customers, through more staff, new features and infrastructure improvements.

Servers who are processing large volumes of money each month generally expect more from our product and a vast amount of resources are put into developing new features for larger customers. Customers who process tens of thousands of dollars rightly demand superior uptime, customer support with fast response times and a constantly involving feature set to help increase their revenue. This is perfectly reasonable and expected, however, the Minecraft server industry is extremely niche and we cannot provide this with the current pricing model. At the moment the pricing model treats every customer the same if you are earning £100 a month or £10,000. A percentage based model allows us to properly scale the business and offer the right amount of support to all our customers and results in smaller customers paying less, and larger customers paying more, which enables us to dedicate resources in a much fairer fashion.

How can I tell if I have been grandfathered in on the old unlimited processing?

If your account is grandfathered for unlimited processing, you can find this information displayed on the plans page on your control panel.

How does the limit work?

Customers who process over £7,500 GBP in two 30 day periods in any 90 day window will receive an email asking them to upgrade to the Enterprise Plan. If you do not upgrade within 2 weeks, your webstore will no longer be publically accessible. This means that customers who go above the limit one month may not actually have to upgrade, to account for having a good month and holiday periods.

If I have unlimited processing on one store can I get it on another store?

The unlimited processing is only applicable to existing customers. If you create another store, you will not receive an unlimited monthly transaction limit.

Why is the limit at £7500?

The limit has been chosen after carefully looking over our customer base, taking into consideration the growth in resource requirements as a customer expands and trying to balance the number of accounts that could be affected with the need to ensure continued stability. Based on this limit, we have also revised our plans and the 1% fee will only apply on earnings above £7,500 each month. As such, for a customer earning at the £7,500 mark, the only increase in fees will be the upgrade from Ultimate to Enterprise - only once they begin earning over £7,500 will the 1% apply. In other words, a customer earning £10,000 a month will only be charged a percentage based on £2,500. Existing Enterprise customers will also have this allowance applied to their existing plans.

Moving into the future...

Over the next few weeks, we have several large features being released, including a rebrand of Buycraft which we have been working on for some time now. We are currently in a hiring process for new designers and developers and I look forward to introducing you to new team members. If you have any further questions regarding anything in this post or you would just like to chat to a member of the team, we are always available via support@buycraft.net and we'd be happy to help.