Changes to our Payment System

Posted by Ninua, Inc. | Filed under announcements

As you know, NetworkedBlogs is offered as a free service and will continue to be so. We love helping our users find new readers and get visibility and distribution on social networks. To cover the costs of running the service, we also offer paid plans with extra features. Your payments allow us to keep the site running. Thank you.

Until recently, we used Paypal as our only payment system to handle subscriptions to our PRO and Premium Listing plans. And, while Paypal worked really well, we needed a payment system that's tightly integrated with our application so that when a user signs up or changes a subscription, the updates are reflected in the app immediately. We also wanted to make it easier for our users to check the status of their subscriptions and manage them from one place. So we spent the last few weeks working towards that goal, and I'm happy to announce that we just launched our new payment system, and with it, we also released a new set of premium plans.

The new payment system and plans introduce a lot of improvements. Now it's much easier to sign up, change your plan, cancel, or update the features you use. And we now offer annual plans that come with a good discount off of the monthly price. And, we're also introducing new premium features (such as tab themes, priority support, and custom blog thumbnails) that we'll cover in more detail in the next post.

So how does that affect you?

1. If you're using NetworkedBlogs for free, you're not affected.

2. If you have a subscription to the PRO plan ($4.99/month), then you're not affected. You can keep your subscription through Paypal going and you'll continue to get the same features you signed up for (fast feed updates, faster support, and custom cover images for blog profiles). If you like, though, you can switch to one of the new plans and get more features.

3. If you have a subscription to the Premium Listing plan ($19.99/month), then make sure to read the next section as well. Generally, though, you can also keep the subscription going and continue to get the features you signed up for, except for one: promoting the blog in the directory and search results. Instead of that feature, you'll now get the ability to use custom themes on Facebook pages and you can upload custom thumbnail images (the next section explains why this change). Your plan is now equivalent to the new Plus plan.

Bonus for Users with the Premium Listing Plan

One of the features of the Premium Listing plan was to highlight the blog in the directory and search results. But due to changes triggered by our big update in October, we couldn't offer that option since then, and we might not offer it again for a little while. So we owe you this missing feature for the last 3 months. And, as we mentioned in one of the threads earlier, we want to compensate you for that by offering you one of two options:

a. A huge discount of 50% for 6 months that applies to any of our new plans. With that, you can switch to the new Plus plan and get the same features you get now, but at half the price. This offer is valid if you upgrade in the next 14 days. (Pro tip: if you sign up for the annual plan, then you lock the 50% discount for a whole year). Click here to get the 50% discount.
b. The other option is to get a refund of part of your payment that corresponds to the missing feature for the last 3 months. If you prefer to have the refund, just let us know by opening a ticket, and include your Paypal email address and blog URL.

Summary

If you don't take any action, then your plans are automatically adjusted to give you features corresponding to the level of payment you're on right now. But if you have the Premium Listing plan, you can get a 50% discount for 6 months if you switch to the Plus plan. Even better, signup for the annual Plus plan and lock in the discount for a whole year.

FAQ

Q. How do I know if I have an active subscription to any of the old plans using Paypal?
A. Login to your paypal account and check if there is a payment sent to Ninua/NetworkedBlogs in the last 30 days.

Q. Do I have to cancel my current subscription that's done using Paypal?
A. No. It'll continue to work and you'll continue to get premium features. We recommend that you switch to one of the new plans, though, because you get either a good discount or extra features.

Q. How do I switch from a Paypal subscription to any of the new plans?
A. Do that in two steps: first, login to your Paypal account and find the subscription and cancel it from there. Second, visit our new plans page and signup for a new plan. If you're eligible for the 50% discount, you'll see a message indicating that.

Q. How does the old PRO plan compare to the new plans?
A. The old PRO plan gives you fast feed updates and the ability to upload a cover image for up to 100 blogs. The new plans offer additional features (tab themes, custom thumbnails, ...etc), but they cover a smaller number of blogs (most users don't have too many blogs to manage anyway, so most users are not affected by this limit).

Q. How does the old Premium Listing plan compare to the new plans?
A. For the same cost, $19.99, the Plus plan is the best match. It offers the same features of the Premium Listing minus the highlighting of the blog in the directory, and it adds new features such as the ability to customize your blog tab on your fan pages and the ability to upload a custom thumbnail image for your blog.

Q. If I have a Premium Listing plan and request a partial refund of the last 3 months, how does that affect future payments? Can I get the refund and also the 50% discount?
A. If you request a partial refund, we'll refund $15 of your monthly payment of the last three months. After that, you'll continue to pay the regular $19.99 monthly fee until you cancel the subscription, and during that time your plan is equivalent to the new Plus plan. You can either get a refund or a 50% discount, but not both.

We started a discussion thread about this topic. If you have questions or concerns, please let us know on this link.

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