The pricing model for XPipe has been updated to better align with user demands. The main changes are the addition of a homelab plan, a monthly subscription, and some changes to the one-year professional edition.
Note that everything described here only applies to new orders. If you have previously purchased any XPipe edition, nothing will change for you. Any prices and conditions will stay the same for you. The community edition is also not changed.
Homelab plan
In many cases, the community plan is enough for personal use, but in cases where users had a more complex homelab setup, there was a missing option in between community and professional. A new addition is the introduction of the homelab plan, which is essentially a cheaper alternative to the professional plan that should include all paid features necessary to operate XPipe in a larger homelab environment. If you are looking for a detailed feature comparison of what is included in which plan, you can find that information at https://xpipe.io/pricing#comparison.
Pricing model
The old Professional edition, which lasted 1 year, was always in the awkward position of not being easy to understand, mainly because it differed from many established pricing models. It required some bit of reading to fully understand. I think there were more people asking clarifying questions about it than actually buying it, which is not a good sign for a pricing model. And in the end, many customers who valued ownership of a product went for the lifetime variant anyway instead. I think its original intentions were good but just did not work out in practice.
So the pricing model has been changed to a more traditional subscription plan for monthly/yearly options, plus the already existing lifetime plan which stays the same. This makes it easier to understand for potential customers and hopefully easier to sell as well. And yes, in terms of what you get, this is a downgrade to the old model where you would keep the professional features you bought at the time forever. However, compared to the early stages of XPipe, you also now get a much more stable and feature-rich product. And this change has the bonus of being easy to understand for everyone. For anyone valuing permanent ownership, there are still the lifetime versions available for both the homelab and the professional plan.
Monthly plans
The previous pricing model required a commitment of at least a year, which was off-putting for some users. To improve this, there is now also a monthly subscription available for all plans, which will give you the chance to only commit for one month if you are intending to be more cautious. If everything works out, you can then also, of course, upgrade to a yearly plan that comes out cheaper over time.
