Invanto has well been known in the LTD (lifetime deal) space as an affordable online course and membership site builder. They're a low-cost provider with very little flexibility and customization, but as they've begun to exhibit higher asperations, their procing model and rigidly developed service has created limitations. Now, they're abandoning the thousands, or possibly tens of thousands, of lifetime deal customers they've attracted over many years. They cite the monthly recurring costs for video transcoding, storage, and even CDNs as a reason for abandoning their lifetime deals.

An "Important Update" advising LTD holders of the need for a subscription was published in mid-September, giving users only 10 days to act before the 25 September 2020 cutoff.

Those who do not upgrade by September 25 will be locked out of the administration area of their courses, member sites, and other sites powered by Invanto. It is said that the sites will still work and that members won't observe any changes, but no new content can be deployed, nothing can be edited, and the administration settings will exist in a static state unless a recurring subscription is acquired.

At the same time, Invanto is doubling the cost of their minimum subscription tier. The old minimum of $10 will become $20, and Invanto's Important Update claims that the subscription price will increase again after the September 25 date. The notice also mentions that subscribers on old plans (likely the $10 plans) may also be effected and need to upgrade to a new plan.

While shutdowns and bait-and-switch tactics are some of the downfalls of LTD purchases, they still seem to be minimal risks and quite infrequent. The Invanto switch, however justified from a financial point of view, is concerning because as recently as a few months ago, Invanto was hyping a new wave of LTDs and indicating that it was the last chance to buy into the new system they're building out through updates. Those users are being cut off as well. The dollars-and-cents may demand this action be taken, but that just shows bad leadership and poor planning on the part of Invanto and it's leader, Deep Arora.

It is worth nothing that Invanto has had trouble before. After a 2017 AppSumo deal, they locked out all AppSumo customers sometime in 2018 claiming problems with payments from AppSumo. They terminated service for all AppSumo purchasers despite admitting that they were paid for those 2017 customers.

With a simultaneous combination of all LTDs being terminated, a price hike, and poor communication from Invanto and its leadership, it's likely that Invanto's presence in the LTD community is now coming to an end.