We are relaunching our site today, using Joomla 4 and Bootstrap 5. From your point of view you'll not not notice major differences except that it's faster, some pages are more polished and the subscription experience is easier and smoother for you.
Improved subscription experience
We have changed the way subscriptions work on our site to let you combine any products instead of purchasing preset bundles. Any subscription can be “bundled” with another one — you get an automatic purchase and renewal discount when purchasing multiple products.
Here's a quick summary of the changes we made:
- There are no more preset bundles. You can combine the purchase of any two or more products and get a discount which is equal to or greater than the previously offered bundled prices.
- If you decide that any product you were previously subscribed to is not a good fit for you it's possible to opt out of its renewal instead of having to figure out a complex downgrade path to a smaller bundle or single product subscription.
- If you decide you want to add one or more new products to your subscription you can do so at any time without having to figure out if there's a bundle that suits you and ask us about the upgrade process.
- Subscriptions become suspended at the end of their validity period. They remain for one month before becoming expired. Suspended subscriptions can be renewed with the 40% renewal discount (the renewal will be backdated). You can opt out of that and pay full price, without your new subscription being backdated.
- You can align the expiration dates of your subscriptions so all subscriptions expire at the same time, regardless of when you purchased them.
- Prevent accidental purchases of the wrong subscription renewal by only allowing renewals of your subscriptions at most 3 months before their validity period ends.
No more preset bundles
In the past we had subscription bundles. For example, the Essentials contained Akeeba Backup for Joomla and Admin Tools for Joomla.
Bundle products were problematic. Figuring out how to upgrade and downgrade between bundles and how to best combine them was a puzzle for our clients and ourselves.
We decided to make things simpler.
We only list individual products. You subscribe to products.
If you purchase two or more products you will get a discount for any additional new products you buy and an even bigger discount when you renew your subscription to them. The prices are the same or lower than they were before this change.
Clients who had previously purchased bundle subscriptions will see that their bundle subscriptions have been automatically converted to product subscriptions. For example, subscribers to the Essentials bundle will see subscriptions to Akeeba Backup for Joomla and Admin Tools for Joomla on their user account.
Easier upgrades and downgrades
In the past, adding products to your user account could be a daunting process which could result in pricing disparity.
For example, if you had bought an Akeeba Backup for Joomla subscription in the past month and decided to add an Admin Tools for Joomla subscription there were two ways to do that:
- Purchase an Admin Tools for Joomla subscription for 50 Euros plus tax. Renewing both subscriptions next year would cost you 60 Euros plus tax in two different transactions a month apart.
- Upgrade to the Essentials bundle for 25 Euros. Renewing the bundle next year would cost you 45 Euros plus tax in a single transaction.
In both cases you'd get the same service but you were paying a different price. This was unfair and confusing.
Moving to individual product subscriptions with automatic multi-product discounts both on purchase and renewal mean that there is now only one upgrade path. You purchase an Admin Tools for Joomla subscription for 25 Euros plus tax. Next year, you renew both subscriptions in a single, bundled upgrade transaction for 45 Euros plus tax.
Likewise, downgrades were problematic in the past. If you had purchase an Essentials bundle but decided to only renew Akeeba Backup for Joomla you'd have to contact us before your subscription expired, get a coupon code from us, wait for your subscription to expire and the resubscribe to Admin Tools with the coupon code. That was very complicated and frustrating.
With the new site you can simply choose to only renew the Akeeba Backup for Joomla subscription for 30 Euros without having to contact us, without having to use a coupon code, without waiting unnecessarily for your previous subscription to expire.
Suspended subscriptions
All our subscriptions have a validity period. When this period is over you no longer have access to the purchased services (downloads and support). Moreover, when you renew a subscription within its validity period you get a discount.
In the past, if you tried to renew a subscription past its validity period — even by a few minutes — you would get no discount at all; you'd have to pay the full price. This was viewed as unfair by some clients, even though we did and still do send reminder emails 30 and 15 days prior to the end of the validity period.
We have now introduced the concept of suspended subscriptions. When the validity period is over, your subscription becomes suspended for one calendar month. You still have no access to the purchased services but you can renew your subscription with an automatic discount throughout the suspension period.
After a calendar month since the end of the subscription's validity period your subscription becomes expires. You cannot renew it; you can only repurchase it at full price.
Please note that when you renew a suspended subscription the renewal will be backdated: it starts counting from the suspension date (the end of the previous validity period) which is a date prior to your purchase. If you don't like this you can opt out of this during your renewal in which case you go to the previous status quo: the subscription renewal will start counting at the time of purchase but you will be paying full price (you do not get the automatic renewal discount). If you do the math, opting out of the discount is more expensive over the same time period. We decided to give our clients this option, even though it makes no financial sense, because for some people it will make emotional sense and that's all that matters to them.
Addressing wrong purchases
Most people purchasing the wrong product were simply confused when renewing one of their two or more subscriptions with us. We are implementing three changes to address that.
First of all, you can renew a subscription 3 months before the end of its validity period at the earliest. For example, if a subscription is valid until December 8th you can not renew it earlier than September 8th. This prevents the most common mistake: purchasing a renewal for an already renewed subscription.
Further to that, we give you the option to bundle the purchase of two or more product renewals in a single transaction. You simply choose which products you want to renew and we give you the total price to be paid. You pay it, all subscriptions are renewed.
Finally, if you have two or more active subscriptions expiring at different points in time you can align them: their expiration date will be adjusted to be today's date plus the total amount of subscription time left divided by the number of active subscriptions.
For example, if today is February 1st and you have one subscription expiring on March 1st (1 month left) and another one expiring July 1st (5 months left) you can align them to both expire on May 1st i.e. (1 month + 5 months) / 2 subscriptions = 3 months from today's date. Do keep in mind that this process is irreversible. Once done it cannot be undone, not even manually.
Coupon codes
As it has always been the case on our site, coupon codes are only applied to new product subscriptions and only if you are not getting an automatic discount, i.e. if you do not have another renewable subscription under your account.
You can, at your discretion, opt to have the coupon code discount applied instead of the automatic discount. Do not that coupon codes are always of a lesser value (10% to 30%) than our automatic discounts (40% to 55%). Therefore this option only really makes sense if you have received a free subscription coupon code from us, e.g. in an event's raffle.
No more payment overlays
In the past we displayed the payment page of our reseller, Paddle, as an overlay on the subscription page. This clashed with some browser extensions (e.g. NoScript), confusing our clients who would not be able to see the payment interface.
In this iteration of our site we no longer using an overlay. Instead, we forward you to Paddle's payment page. This is far more likely to work with the problematic browser extensions or, at the very least, give you a strong hint that you may have to make changes in your extensions' configuration to allow the necessary JavaScript files for the payment page to work.
Pricing adjustments
As noted, we have discontinued product bundles. To make subscriptions have a similar pricing to existing bundles we have adjusted the pricing and automatic discounts as follows:
- Purchasing your first new subscription: 50 Euro for 1 calendar year
- Additional new subscription purchases (not renewals), when you already have an active subscription: 50% discount (25 Euro)
- Per-product renewals when your account has just a single renewable subscription: 40% (30 Euro)
- Per-product renewals when your account has two or more renewable subscriptions: 55% (22.50 Euro per product renewed).
It's even more clear if we compare this with our old pricing for common subscription scenarios
- One new subscription: 50 Euro (unchanged).
- New two products subscription (formerly ESSENTIALS or WPBUNDLE): 75 Euro (unchanged)
- New three products subscription (formerly JOOMLADELUXE): 100 Euro instead of 110 Euro (you save 10 Euro).
- New three products subscription, not in a bundle (e.g. formerly ESSENTIALS and SOLOPHP): 100 Euro instead of 125 Euro (you save 25 Euro).
- New subscriptions to all of our products (formerly JOOMLADELUXE + WPBUNDLE + SOLOPHP): 175 Euro instead of 235 Euro (you save 60 Euro).
- Renewing one product subscription: 30 Euro (unchanged).
- Renewing two products subscriptions (formerly ESSENTIALS or WPBUNDLE): 45 Euro (unchanged).
- Renewing three products subscriptions (formerly JOOMLADELUXE): 67.50 Euro instead of 66 Euro (the only case you pay 1.50 Euro more; this is a fairly rare product bundle though).
- Renewing three products subscriptions not in a bundle (e.g. formerly ESSENTIALS and SOLOPHP): 67.5 Euro instead of 96 Euro (you save 28.50 Euro).
- Renewing your subscriptions to ALL of our products: 135 Euro instead of 141 Euro (you save 6 Euro).
A subscription is considered “renewable” when it's either active (before its expiration date) or suspended (within 1 calendar month of its expiration date).
Please note that if you had subscribed to two or more products and you let all but one of them expire beyond its suspension period you will be given the single product renewal discount for the remaining product i.e. you'll be paying 30 Euros instead of 22.50 Euros to renew it.
Disclaimer: The prices listed are subject to change without prior notice. The prices listed do not include any sales tax. Sales tax, if applicable, is calculated at checkout according to the local and international tax laws the transaction is subject to.
More login options
The previous iteration of our site only allowed you to log in with a username and password. As we've said may times over more than ten years, this is not a very secure way to log in; this information can be guessed or stolen. If an unauthorised party gains access to your user account they get access to the information you shared with us including your invoicing information (as they can download your invoices), your name and email address and any privileged information such as login details you have share with us in your tickets.
We have been letting you use Two Factor Authentication on your user accounts for the better part of a decade. This doesn't change.
What we added in this iteration of our site is the ability to log into our site using WebAuthn — the secure, passwordless authentication method which works with your device (e.g. Windows Hello, iOS/iPadOS TouchID and FaceID, Android fingerprint readers) or with an external, secure hardware token (any FIDO2 dongle, such as Security Key by Yubico, Yubikey 5 etc). You only type your username and use your authentication device. This is a very secure authentication method which also bypasses Two Factor Authentication. It cannot be guessed, it cannot be stolen except by physical theft of your authentication device (and that is only a concern if your authentication device does not use biometrics).
In the future we are going to roll out login integrations with third party services such as GitHub, Twitter and Facebook as well.
And the best part? All non-password login methods can be added to existing user accounts.
A better account page
All previous iterations of our site were using the default Joomla account page which is neither pleasing to the eye nor in line with what users are used to seeing in an account page. To put it mildly, Joomla's user account page is stuck in the early '00s.
We redesigned our user page from scratch. The default overview mode gives you at-a-glance information about your account and has quick links to the most commonly sought after pages of our site. It also makes it pretty obvious that we're integrating with Gravatar for displaying a profile picture and link to to Gravatar's page where you can edit your profile photo (it's a free of charge service).
The edit page has been polished and redesigned in a way which helps you locate the information you want to edit / change and do so without trying to hunt down the field in an obscenely long form.
For those interested in how this is done, it is a simple template override for the com_users component in Joomla 4. Feel free to use our site's account page as an inspiration for your own site builds :)
Tickets and search
Last but not least, we improved the ticket system's experience.
For starters, the search in our documentation and public tickets is performed through Joomla's built-in Smart Search (com_finder) feature. Unlike our previous solution, it can understand variations of words (e.g. “hide” and “hidden”) and combine words in any order instead of trying to find an exact match in our tickets and documentation. Moreover, we display an IFrame with the search results that has the ability to refine the search terms and narrow down what you're looking for. This will make it much easier finding a solution to your problem without having to submit a new ticket.
When submitting a ticket you will see that the additional information we ask for is presented in a much more understandable format than before. Further to that, if we need connection information from you we can enable additional ticket form fields for you where you can enter the connection information without trying to paste them into the ticket reply editor area. Each field area tells you if the fields in it are going to be public (visible by everyone) or private (visible only by you when you are logged in and our support staff).
Speaking of which, we are finally able to give you the option to make minor edits to the ticket itself anytime instead of just ticket posts submitted the last 15 minutes. You can decide to change the visibility of a ticket from public to private or vice versa on your own accord. You can also change the title of the ticket and edit the information you submitted in custom fields — be it the version of PHP or our software you are using on your site or the connection information to your site. This will help clarify tickets submitted in a haste or which had obvious typos only caught after clicking the button to submit the ticket.
Moreover, we have improved ticket attachments, allowing you to upload a bigger variety of file types.