I said there aren’t enough…
Maybe you should read my post again or maybe you just wanted a chance to let us know about your ad impressions 
I’m not going to write about networks performance here.
Besides it’s not that simple.
Hope it’s gonna work this time and good luck to all.
For the time being you can still use the old AdMob (we aren’t just suddenly switching it off), but you should really decide what solution best suits your needs going forward. It seems like a better solution for you would be a non-paid alternative like AppLovin… that is not a “fly by night” provider (despite what some in this thread have suggested our non-paid ad plugins are); AppLovin is a respected and long-standing solution which offers interstitials, video ads, and rewarded videos. You might also consider Appodeal as a full mediation-based provider with high fill rates and eCPMs.
Best regards,
Brent
Hi Brent
Good to know that you guys will not immediately shut it off for the time being. As mentioned, I have always been supportive of Corona’s initiatives (prior to splash screen plugin and all the recent disappointing news) and have appreciated you guys adding new ad networks. I have also tried majority of them including Corona Ads but the result is far from satisfactory as compared to Admob. I am not considering Appodeal because it requires us to add our Admob account which may cause account suspension if there is any illegal click activities going on.
I am going to be honest here. My current plan is to put on hold all development of new apps and to migrate all my existing Corona apps out to native codes in the next few months. While this move may greatly impact my revenue (holding off new app and feature development) but I have lost confidence in this platform moving forward. Do you know what is worse than charging us premium price for the plugins? That is to hear from you guys that you will be shutting down Corona and we can no longer update our apps.
I wish you guys success in this new business model.
Nice to hear we have some time to plan. Phew. When is the cut off date?
I’m happy to pay to keep Corona running, but is it possible to have a little more communication around changes this big? I was ok with the splash page being added last minute as it’s fairly cheap, but it’d be nice if major changes like this were announced a few months in advance out of consideration for us poor devs who still love you. The more notice you give us, the more we can trust you.
I was able to quit my corporate job and make games full-time thanks to you and the team, so I’ll always adore you for that, but to speak as myself from 18 months ago, those lump-sum payments are impossible to justify for a newbie. As a newbie or hobbyist, Unity or even LÖVE would be my default choice until a monthly payment model is offered. Your price points are fine, but that lump-sum is ugly. There’s no question Corona must charge for use, but please consider keeping that barrier low so our community is free to grow.
Newbie hat off, I’ll buy the admob plugin. Will I receive a discount on upgrading to the Professional Bundle in 2-3 months?
Thanks for your time, all the work you’ve done, and this gift of a tax write-off - happy holidays Corona bros.
thanks for your answers brett and rob.
I do have another question, since admob is staying, is doubleclick still being released as part of the paid tier or in some form? I would still like to test the claim from the last thread that they are similar in a real world app.
I’m happy with the price point and will buy the Admob plugin. Basically, I get what I need (Corona + Admob), at a price that is fair. Big thanks for sorting that out.
However, as others are stating, I think you got the segmentation of your users wrong. You can (and do) have newcomers using and wanting to use Admob or Chartboost. And you seem to have established users who prefer other ad networks. This new model alienates the former and doesn’t capture value from the latter.
I’d encourage you to continue, in discussion with a representative subset of your users, to explore other segmentation possibilities and pricing models. For example, I’m not too familiar with Unity, but isn’t their pricing model based on how much money a user is making? I’m sure you have reasons for not doing it, but imho something like that could let you welcome newcomers with no restrictions, and then capture value if/when they become successful. Or, keep track of the package names used for builds, and let someone build up to X package names without cost for plugins. Or whatever. Basically somehow finding the metric which fairly reliably indicates success, and use that to segment your userbase.
Merry Christmas all,
Per
I’ve been using Corona for years and I do think that this is a tool of great value both for newbies and professionals alike. It’s almost weird that you can use it for free so I absolutely understand introducing a business model that will let you earn well deserved for the great job you’re doing with it.
Still, the sudden $1000 is not going to happen for me. I might swallow the $495 but it will bite a considerable chunk from my revenue. Let me tell you why: I come from Poland and I develop mainly apps for the local market. This is different from when you develop world-wide or for the US. If you are super-successful and get like 1-2 million installs then you MIGHT get the $500 a month for some time (this is actually good money because of the different economy, prices, currency etc.), then much less once the interest falls down. I’ve seen that happen to my apps a couple of times (and some of them occupied the first place in the local Google Play charts for a month or two). So if you are a not-so-successful developer I can’t imagine being able to afford this price and hope it pays off in what? 3-6 months?
On the other hand, you can’t really use anything other than Admob in local markets because smaller ad providers simpy don’t have enough local providers, fill rate, etc.
So in the end this is a bit of a bummer.
Frankly, I don’t think the price of a single plugin should surpass the price of the Apple Developer membership five-fold. For small local developers $99 a year sounds perfectly reasonable. $299 sounds ‘oh well, I guess this is a good investment’. But $495 … I don’t know. I guess you guys really thought it through but this is expensive.
This is all a little disappointing for freelancers like me who don’t directly make money off app/ad revenue but need to offer a range of ad networks to potential clients in order to remain competitive in a very competitive marketplace.
I understand the developers on here that own a portfolio of profitable apps that are willing to pay, for them jumping platforms would be a huge ball ache. For someone like me though, in terms of value I feel that I get little from it. I spend an extra $1k per year and can offer pretty much the same service I did when I paid the original $349 a year and the same service I get now that is free.
This is why I asked about enterprise, I would much rather throw $1k at that and be able to offer so many more options to potential future clients as well as a couple of decent ad networks.
I’m happy to pay for Corona to keep you guys, and myself in business but this weeks pricing model just doesn’t feel like it quite fits for me.
In honesty, I’m sat on the fence. I’m losing confidence in you guys with all these knee jerk decisions being made so often. My perception is you are not thinking your business decisions through properly, you’re just throwing ideas out there in the hope they stick. As an example a couple of weeks ago a $99 splash screen could keep you going, this week its a $1k annual subscription, it just doesn’t add up.
But still no word on what’s going to happen to any / all monies that Corona Ad’s are already holding on behalf of developers - since the monitisation dashboard disappeared a few day’s ago I’ve no idea how many impressions I’m currently getting or what kind of fill rate / eCPM values either.
Seeing that your still showing ad’s through the plugin (and presumably still making revenue from them), where does that leave us, if I’m below the payout threshold by the end of January will I loose everything, what about active accounts less than three months old?
I can see why Corona have made this decision as it’s in their best business interest but I still feel we haven’t had enough notice - I’ve now got to get new ad networks integrated into my app and with iTunes connect closing from the 23rd to 27th Dec that leaves almost no time to submit / wait / release / test / resubmit if req. before the end of January.
Had the announcement been made three months ago or at least given us until the end of March to make the change then I think there would have been less backlash.
Another thought about capturing value - I’d be willing to pay to expedite some of my feature requests. This type of revenue stream isn’t particularly reliable for a company, but perhaps there is some additional money on the table for you while still serving the user base as a whole.
For example, I’d happily pay to sort this out: http://feedback.coronalabs.com/forums/188732-corona-sdk-feature-requests-feedback/suggestions/16089571-android-builds-ability-to-disable-multidex-to-red
Yet another thought, offering priority support?
Cheers,
Per
Admob is the bread and butter of ad monetization. there is NO other provider that can offer the global reach and depth offered by admob and this is the reason almost any app on store using ads has their SDK in place. It was free on corona from almost day 1 and it was promised to stay that way in numerous posts in the past. Now it isn’t. Credibility is all you have.
I will be happy to pay 500$ for yearly license for corona as I did in the past for pro license. I will NOT go down the path of paying 500$ per plug-in. If I wanted that there is Unity which is far more popular, has 3D support and a huge 3rd party code and asset store.
Hi, Corona Team!
In my opinion, almost $1000 for the Professional Bundle is very high and unjustified price. For many developers, especially in developing countries, this price is unaffordable. At the same time, Admob for them is the only platform that shows good results and with which they can withdraw money without any problems. I hope you will reconsider your decision or at least reduce the price to acceptable values.
i’m reasonably satisfied with this plan, because i need admob and won’t rev-share it, though I think the price point is a bit “odd”, versus a couple of historical benchmarks…
the “pro bundle” now costs more than enterprise small - pro bundle term 1 year, enterprise small term 1 month.
the old cirrca 2014 pro-without-feature-limitations (and the same $500k limitation that enterprise small has currently) used to cost ~$600 ($49/mo) before the free-at-GDC move
it also “nags” me that the splash screen is still only priced separately. you have yet to convince me that this is a “feature”. this junk ought to be like how most apps implement “remove ads” – buy it by itself OR any “bigger/more-meaningful” purchase automatically includes it, so buy ANY Corona ad plugin (or the bundle of all three) and you’d get splash screen for free.
all that said, I think maybe $300 individually, each with splash thrown in free, or maybe $700 for the bundle of all three plus splash – might have been more equitable. (and might have also simultaneously partially addressed the “steepness” of the entry-level concerns expressed here)
who knows, the next GDC is just around the corner! 
Appreciate all the comments/thoughts. Unfortunately there is no one-size-fits-all “pricing” for newcomers, hobbyists, professionals, etc.
Here’s a very simple way to understand how we will be operating into the future:
Anything that we add as a paid feature will exist in two ways:
(1) As a single paid plugin/asset
(2) As part of the Corona Professional Bundle ($995/yr)
We will not increase the annual fee for Corona Professional Bundle.
Any new plugin/asset that is offered paid will *also* be offered as a feature in the Corona Professional Bundle (thereby enhancing it’s value over time)
We encourage users to subscribe to the Corona Professional Bundle (which is our new version of an annual license)
We are evaluating a month-to-month for Corona Professional Bundle (with annual contract) as this can help “smoothen” finances for developers
We understand that for some/many, this doesn’t work and that you have other options. You must do what is right for your business as we must do for ours. We are not alone in solving the complex puzzle that makes up the platform business. I encourage you to look at Unity’s blog posts this year (link 1, link 2) around their evolving change in pricing and specifically the community discussion that ensued. As a business that is over 10 years old, raised $280mm in funding, they are still figuring things out and adjusting.
We thank those of you who have supported us as we have as well.
Hi Roj,
Hi Roj,
Short question. When you say “add as a paid feature” are you considering new functionality or are you considering exisiting functionality as well?
/Joakim
Joakim - new functionality specifically
I have some questions:
If i continue to use builds older than 2016.3005, does it mean i can continue to build with Admob V2 plugin? Or is there a cut-off date too for continuing to use this plugin too
Please give more details about the new Admob plugin. Which Google Mobile Ads SDK version is supported for both iOS and Android.
Ben.
First of all, I am happy to see that there is now a flat fee.
That said you are still taking 5% from applovin. Why can’t you add Applovin to the bundle too? I would be happy to pay a bit extra for the bundle if it comes with applovin. If someone is making 100k+ from applovin he is still paying you 5k per year to use a plugin. This is not acceptable. Flat fee option should be available for all of the networks.
I built and updated my apps recently with build 3007 before this was announced. Whats going to happen to my apps now? Will Admob v2 still work normally?
How does this affect the corona enterprise plugins?
Finally, I have very recently bought Corona Enterprise (one reason was getting the custom splash screens). Can I get some credit towards the purchase of the bundle? Can enterprise users get discounts?
Hoping for the best.
Re: AdMob V2 plugin.
How long will we be able to build with this and what is the current revenue share for it? I can’t recall if it is 5%, 0% or something else.
Thanks.
I totally agree with you. You guys are totally forgetting about international devs. I’m from Mexico and I also make apps for the local market, this means that only Admob can deliver a good amount of ads for my market. Also, admob is the only one that has local banks withdrawal so if I use the other plugins I will have to use PayPal, which will get a 5.5% cut and a awful exchange rate.
I do understand you have to make money, but putting us in a corner like that is a horrible situation. We don’t want everything free, it’s just that the price is way way over the top. Just to give you an idea of how it is for us in Mexico, the $495 fee is more than 2 months of rent. It seems you are trying to get the most of something you are giving up on.
I have about 30 apps that make such a little income each one, and now I have to update all of those (which is a big cost, time is money). Do you understand how much time and money you guys are forcing us to spend? this is not the way to go, there must be better ways.
Adding this to the $99 plan would make almost every developer to upgrade but you guys are instead ripping out the trust we had in you as a company and platform. I’ve tried many times to work with Unity but ended up going back to Corona (for about 3 years) because I love the way it works and how easily I can share my code with my partner, but now it seems the best investment is in a Udemy course for Unity.
You are giving us an untrustworthy feeling that might be hard to overcome. I was very excited about the marketplace, but with this decisions I can’t see a bright future with Corona. I hope you reconsider your plans and pricing, not all of us are getting rich at your expenses.