🚨 Podio's New Business Model Update
Dear Valued Podio customers,
Â
We are writing to inform you about important updates regarding Podio, including changes to our business model and pricing structure. We are excited to introduce a new business model that brings simplicity and efficiency to defining employees and external clients. We are moving from a variable pricing model to a fixed license model as part of this transition.
Â
New Business Model:
In our ongoing pursuit of simplicity and efficiency, we are introducing a new business model for Podio. This transition involves moving from a variable pricing model to a fixed license model, allowing for streamlined user management and improved collaboration within and outside your organization. This brings in changes to the below-mentioned areas.
- Email Domain Requirement
- External/Client Permission
- User Management
Â
Domain Requirement:
This new model eliminates the dependency on email domains for determining paid user licenses. Instead, licensing will be determined based on user capabilities. This change offers greater flexibility in collaborating with individuals, regardless of their email domain. When inviting new users to workspaces, you will now have the option to specify if they are employees or external clients. Please refer to the image below for a visual representation. It's important to note that these changes do not affect the current employee network logic, which still relies on the email domain associated with your company.
External/Client Permission:
As part of our efforts to enhance the user experience and align with the new business model, there will be some adjustments for free external client users. We are reducing the capabilities of free external client users to align with industry standards. This change allows us to focus on delivering exceptional value and features to our paid users while maintaining a high level of service for everyone. If you have any doubts regarding the new permissions of employees and externals/clients that will go live on August 30, 2023, kindly review this help center article here.
Â
User Management:
To provide flexibility in managing your users, the organization admin will have the ability to move employees to externals/clients seamlessly and vice versa. This enhanced user management tool will be available starting from August 1, 2023.
If you have any further doubts, kindly contact our support team here.
Packaging Updates:Â
In addition to the new business model, we have updated our packaging structure. We are transitioning from a variable/pay-as-you-go to a fixed license model. You will have a more predictable and streamlined billing experience. You only pay for the necessary licenses and use them as you see fit. You have peace of mind knowing exactly what you will pay each month. You are in control of the bill. Contract Owners can easily update the license count whenever required during the billing cycle. This change ensures fairness and consistency in pricing for all our valued customers.Â
All existing variable plan customers will be moved to fixed plan on August 1, 2023. If you need further clarification on managing your plan, kindly review this article here.Â
Â
Should you have general questions about user permissions, using the user management tool and workspace user permissions for employee and external client users: please contact Podio support at https://support.citrix.com/cscase/ams/podio and choose "General question" as the issue type.
If you have any billing-related questions for your account, please contact Podio support at https://support.citrix.com/cscase/ams/podio and choose "Billing" as the issue type.
We are hosting live webinar series to review the reasoning behind the changes, and overview of exactly what is changing.Â
- Webinar August 9 - 13.00 PM EST (19.00 CET) - sign up here.
- Webinar August 16 - 8 AM EST (14.00 CET) - sign up here.
Deadline update; extended deadline to August 30, 2023.
Roll-out timeline:
- We will initiate rolling out new workspace user permissions August 30 for a small part of the user group and organizations
- We will continue the roll-out for remaining users and organizations during the month of September
Thank you for your continued loyalty and support,
Podio Team
-
WTF - Podio has just evicted many of our External users - and I am unable to re-invite them back into Workspaces because its saying I have reached my limit of 5 free employees - and we are Platinum account holders.Â
This launch date of 15th August seems to have become a partial launch, where they are eliminating non-domain account holders - but not allowing us to adjust the 'fixed plan' either - as it has us linked to only one of our workspaces and we can't change it. And the new types of workspace member types are also not listed... cos its not the 15th yet.... Nightmare!
Â
Plus the first time we found out about this new Billing structural change was when a huge lot of Users disappeared from WorkSpaces. I have checked with the Account Holder and they have said they received not email or notification!  How was this possible?
I've been left scrambling around trying to find reasons for this occurrence when I came across this Product Update. And I also wish the Podio help was monitored 24/7 because we are based in the Southern Hemisphere and I suspect everybody is sleeping right now!
-
Good morning , How does this change affect external applications such as procfu. We have an app in progress that clients connect and can see or modify their data
We do not understand this radical change, they could have put a lower price per external user etc. and with so little time to allow people to migrate.
Thanks very much
-
Hello, your upcoming changes are difficult to understand, and I have not yet assessed the implications for my company, but I will tell you that if our business, which has been using PODIO for the last 10 years, is affected economically, we will have to derive economic responsibilities through our legal services. We wish in good will that this situation will not happen if it is unavoidable. Please do not make this change at this time, in the middle of August when all the staff is on vacation. The decision and the way you are executing it is very irregular.
-
I'm very sure you are "EXCITED" to force people to pay more money in 15 Days. We've been developing this platform for over 10 years and now you expect a major shift like this to occur this quickly. I hope Podio understands respective platforms that have this type of pricing model actually have a true support team / call center / extensive feature - I hope this will be ready in 15 Days. On that note, please fix you latency error with all the extra support money you have now.
ALSO, you have a MAJOR problem "Gents" [PODIO]. This is important for everybody to know. When you switch an "External User" to "Employee" It erases their entire dashboard setup. So people like Marc Payan will have to contact 300 people to reset everything and restore their homepage dashboard.Â
-
My first contact to get updated pricing was July 19th and I've exchanged 19 emails with myÂ
"account manager" since then and I still do not have the contract for the additional users. No offense to her because it looks like she is trying to take a vacation that she's still working through (got an away message that she was out of the office for a couple days) but if there isn't a simple way to more than double the user count, that's a problem. I'm going from 230 paid users to probably 485 users for a year because under a month's time is not enough to recover from a structure that has taken 10 years to build.Also, please stop calling them "employees" just to be able to create items. I have subcontractors setup up with Podio accounts and there are very strict rules for the balance between a subcontractor and an employee put in place by the IRS. This issue alone is driving up my user count and causing way more problems than I think Podio realizes.Â
Done properly, this should have been announced with 6 months for accounts to evaluate how best to handle the situation. You would have lost less accounts had you done that. Now, you're going to get a spike in paid users for a year but when those licenses run out, I'm betting you see a steep decline.
I get making the change for new accounts just being created but for those of us that have been here for a long time, there should have been a better understanding of the implications for your loyal customers who feel like the loyalty was not reciprocated.Â
-
Deeply disappointed in the way you treat your customers on this matter! giving everyone NO TIME to find out how or what to do in the middle in the summer holiday time, but that might be part of your master plan to hope that users/administrators don't see this in time and automatically get changed to subscription on ALL external users.
This must be the most devastating news for those loyal customers of Podio and seems like a very desperate attempt to create a larger cashflow - maybe podio is being prepared for sale?Â
Absolutely disrespectful and heart breaking way to treat you current users! horrendous in fact!
-
 Tanya Taylor, we have reached out to you direct via chat and support and working on a solution as you know. The issue is due an old partial upgrade where only 1 workspace is paid for, we will work with you to fix the account. Sorry for the trouble.
Administrador Chris Manfredini, this change should not affect external apps like Procfu, you can continue to use this as client portal. We are working with partners and developers to ensure they continue service as normal.
Miguel A Manrique Ordax we understand the need to transition and our team are happy to help support, please request help from sales if you want to review pricing and options for your plan: https://podio.com/webforms/28796677/2324700Â
Chris Manfredini, we will reach out to you to learn about the dashboard changes, sounds like a bug we should fix - thanks for alerting us. Also we spoke to Marc Payan and he can continue to invite his 300 partners to workspaces for free in his current need, the partners only need light collaborative access and they can use webforms to create items - so Marc's 300 users should not be affected by the change.
Â
Â
Â
Â
Â
-
Jason Martin, we are following up with you 1-1 to support the transition. Feel free to direct concerns with me in Podio chat.
Dellent, thanks for sharing - team is investigating the same issue based on reports in customer support. Hopefully we can find a solution for this.
Sanne ANF, please get in touch (links above) to help us review your account and work through the transition. We are also considering an extension to give everyone time to review with the vacation season. It is never easy since we also have holidays during fall, winter and spring timeframe.
Â
-
I'm confused how you can release this update in two weeks and you do not even have the most important part done - successfully transitioning External Users to Employees - which we will then be paying for. This is beyond absurd, and not sure how this was even caught. All previous dashboard information has been erased when transitioning. Just speechless right now.....
::::
I believe it's only right for a "Grandfathered" in approach for the customers who have been dedicated for years to this platform - or have more than just 2 pricing structures.Â
:::
I would highly suggest you consider an extension to this change with the most recent glitch.
Â
-
Hey Sara Høeg Højlund-Rasmussen, I also just paid for a year subscription and have many external users. We removed as many as we could but still don't see this working out well for our current user base. Can you have support reach out or just let us know we can continue at least through the full year we paid for with unlimited external users or at least the ones we have.Â
Thanks!
-
Same situation here and I've had no response from Podio when I reached out. Our organization is a nonprofit professional association and our 'clients' are volunteer members who collaborate on association programs. This is completely unacceptable. We have been Podio users/customers for many years and recently paid for the annual license in June.Â
A response would be appreciated.Â
-
Same situation here, we are in the paid plan for years and only have 3 external users since 2022/DEC.
They are really light weight users, only few activities per day. Â I don't know why Podio made this decision.
Also we encountered really slow Podio page loading issue, it also effect upload / download attachments from  Podio. I called and submitted the tickets since last week, haven't got the formal answer.
-
Sara Høeg Højlund-Rasmussen our company is in a situation similar to many of the others described here already. We have a sizable number of external users that will need to be converted to paid users, which will result in a significantly higher cost. Aside from the more expensive subscription, I am concerned after reading messages here from people saying their "upgraded" users lost dashboards or other settings. That does not instill confidence.Â
Further, I received an email from Podio today "extending our gratitude" but also warning me that I am an external user in need of an upgrade to Employee status. I am definitely not an external user. On the User Management page I'm in the Paid Users category with member type "Employee, Organization Admin."Â
I hope this email does not foreshadow additional problems with paid users losing access as well.Â
Lastly, I agree with Jason Martin's opinion regarding the "Employee" designation. Not all paid users are employees. This member type title needs to be changed.Â
-
We are a professional organization that has been using Podio for a number of years. Our members, especially those that use Podio, have different email domains but are involved with managing, creating and updating Podio. This new model would basically make Podio worthless to us and anyone else in a similar situation. Requiring everyone to have an email account with the same domain (as if they worked in the same organization) would require creating a bunch of dummy email accounts. The capability of having users with different emails domains but are members of the organization was Podio's strength which you are now doing away with.
-
"This is a good time to panic".
This change is a disaster for some, but not for us.
However I've got to ask myself: what's next? How short notice next time? Is podio available and economically feasible in the future.
I'm a long standing user of Podio. I love it despite its shortcommings.
We've invested a lot of time and money in developing a system that fits our needs.
It's a system that saves us a lot of time and money and to be honest we almost consider Podio to be one of our staff.
As an employeer I'm willing to accept a lot from my star-employee. There is however a limit that can't be crossed. You have to stay loyal.
Now, my Podio star-employee isn't the same any longer. I'm loosing faith. Perhaps it's time to look at alternatives?
And yes you can tell me that it's for the better. You can tell me that you'll be fitter, stronger and more supportive.
Question is: do I trust you?
I'm not so sure any longer.
-
This is absolutely unacceptable. I have a business model that targets contractors that have to manage multiple contractors. They will not pay, nor would it be feasible. One client has over 40 contractors that they are managing.
They have depended on this system for over 2 years, and I have been generating workspaces for companies for over 3.5 years. Webforms will not work, because there is a verification processes. 2 weeks to find an alternative is INSANE.
I understand that the model of Podio allows for multiple users to essentially go unpaid, and that updating your model for growth is important. However, I would need time to understand how to use the tools available to not totally screw my clients or destroy any profit that I may have.
-
Thank you for your comments! I want to make it clear for everyone - we are not removing the option to invite free external client users. You can continue to have free (unlimited) external clients invited to workspaces, this will not change. The big change is the permissions of those free users invited to workspaces. Paid employee users will be able to create apps, workspaces, update & create items. Free users can continue to participate with light collaboration activities. See details here.
I like the idea here that we might consider changing the name for "employees" to something else, thank you for sharing.
Please ensure to add your details/email to this webform if you would like to speak to team member to discuss pricing and options for your account: https://podio.com/webforms/28796677/2324700
If you are still waiting for help, we apologize and should be able to get back to you tomorrow.
We are also looking at options to extend the deadline to give everyone time to review their account.
Ryan Duffy, if you are working a lot with contractors who need edit access but not a paid account, I can recommend looking at a custom client portal like https://procfu.com/ where clients can interact for free.
Â
Â
-
In response to Sara Høeg Højlund-Rasmussen:
“… we are not removing the option to invite free external client users. You can continue to have free (unlimited) external clients invited to workspaces, this will not change. The big change is the permissions of those free users invited to workspaces. Paid employee users will be able to create apps, workspaces, update & create items. Free users can continue to participate with light collaboration activities.”
I’m trying to understand the motivation for the change. If you’re trying to now charge for all full Podio users by making them employees do they have to have the same email domains? We tried updating my account today to be an employee with a different email domain but that was rejected. Was it because of the different domain or that that function isn’t available yet? Changing the business model to charge for each individual user that can still use Podio’s full functionality creates some administrative issues, as those accounts need to be updated, and has a potential financial impact. Requiring those users to have new email accounts to have the same domain is just not feasible. It will render Podio unusable for us with little time to find a replacement much less convert to one.
-
I am shocked. You can not change a business-model in this way, with this big financial consequences!
The details are vague, how would I know how much to pay from next month? I have several clients working with Podio, I need to inform and give them a opportunity to have a choice!
Please contact me.
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
188 comments