What do enterprise users have access to with this weeks business plan? The pro subscription would now be in the same ballpark as a small business enterprise subscription right? Would enterprise users have access to the ad binaries too?
Guys don’t compare Unity with Corona.It’s a comparison of apples and oranges.
Corona SDK is the paradise of the newbie.The chance to become from zero to hero.
Charging hundreds of $ for monetization plugins is going to ruin everything.
Rob I deeply respect you but this looks bad.You don’t have enough GOOD monetization plugins to pull that move.
If you don’t add more of them into a paid model then Corona SDK might have a chance.
As someone that has over a billion ad impressions I can safely say that applovin has the best ecpm of any company I’ve ever used. So to say there aren’t any good monetization plugins isn’t fully true.
Hi @greenblueinteractive,
Let me address a couple of points:
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While we offer easy-to-learn-and-build features that are incredible for new developers, we can’t overlook the fact that we have some incredibly successful studios using Corona as well. Some of those studios range from small two person operations to studios with well over 100 employees. We need to have business plans that are attractive to all Corona users, from the hobbyist with a dream, to the small startup, to the successful large studio.
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As far as the “good” plugins are concerned, if you look at various Top 10 and Top 20 lists, we are well represented. Consider
http://blog.soom.la/2016/01/top-20-mobile-ad-networks.html as an example. From that list we offer:
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AdMob
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Chartboost
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AppLovin
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Vungle
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AdColony
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Supersonic
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InMobi
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RevMob
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Kiip
Take out the three new paid plugins and you’re left with 6 in this list’s top 20 (and 4 in the top 10) that are free for you to use. Our plugins that didn’t make this list frequently show up in other lists, i.e. Appodeal and AppNext, or they have specializations that make themselves great to use for certain types of apps (KIDOZ and SuperAwesome for child-friendly apps, for instance).
There is no reason a developer who is starting to grow their business can’t be very successful with our suite of free-to-use plugins. Then, when you begin to gain momentum and you feel ready to step up to one of the flat-rate plugins (AdMob, Chartboost), you can do so.
Rob
By “good” monetization plugins I mean the data I collected using them in my apps for weeks / months and hundreds of thousands ads.
“Good” may be completely subjective but that’s how I saw it in my apps.
One ad network could be in position 4 and another in position 5 but the difference in revenue chaotic.
As I said before, if you don’t make more of them paid it might work (newbie developers have some monetization tools, corona increase income etc etc).
I strongly support Corona :D
If I do not use build later than 3005, will I still be able to build apps with a free admob solution?
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.
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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)
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We encourage users to subscribe to the Corona Professional Bundle (which is our new version of an annual license)
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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.