Announcing Team Calendars in Confluence Cloud Premium

[#1]

**Update**

Team Calendars is now a Confluence Cloud Premium feature. Read more about it here! 

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Hi everyone! This week we announced to our existing Team Calendars for Confluence Cloud customers that Team Calendars will become a Confluence Premium feature on February 1, 2021.

As you may know, Team Calendars helps teams share their schedules so they can stay organized, communicate availability, and track projects easily. Team Calendars in Confluence Cloud Premium is getting an updated look and feel as well as CalDAV server support for third-party app integration. Examples of popular third-party apps include Microsoft Outlook, Apple Calendar for iOS and Mac OS, Google Calendar, and more.

Here’s a sneak peek of what it will look like!

Since Premium features are designed for scale and advanced use-cases, Team Calendars is a great fit for customers managing complex projects. Premium also includes features like analytics, bulk archive, inspect permissions, admin key, unlimited storage and more. There are also many new features coming to Premium soon including release tracks, Sandbox, external collaboration, and automation. Check out the Confluence Cloud Premium roadmap to learn more.

All existing Team Calendars for Confluence Cloud customers may continue to use the app through January 21, 2021 and will receive an extended trial of Confluence Premium, giving them continued access to Team Calendars through an introductory period. Team Calendars will no longer be available for purchase as a separate add-on to Confluence as of February 1, 2021. Please check your email or the FAQs for how these changes will impact your team and subscription billing.

We know these changes come with additional considerations for our customers and appreciate your adaptability as we provide customers with an enhanced Team Calendars experience.

[Jens]

"You appreciate our adaptability"... That has to be the most condescending thing I've been told in a long time.

You remove functionality, auto-upgrade me to a much more expensive product and I must opt-out to avoid a large price increase.

I definitely get why you want me to be adaptable.

[Sean Lively]

Fantastic. I didn't install Team Calendars, I'm not paying for Team Calendar, but it's on my instance anyway. I can't uninstall it, and I can't pre-opt out of the "Free Trial" jamming into Premium.

Great way to treat existing customers.

[Paul McMenamin]

@hilarydub I note that is says the following and I have chosen not to go to premium.  

Team Calendars will no longer be available for purchase as a separate add-on to Confluence

Will my existing subscription, which I have had for years, still be honoured or will team calendars just stop working on 1st Feb?

[Philip Colmer]

I am very unhappy with this decision from Atlassian.

We are not huge users of Team Calendars, and I think that we could make do without it by embedding Google calendars on pages.

However, there are now a number of Confluence features that are only available in the Premium plan and I think that not allowing customers to "pick 'n' mix" the features that meet their needs best is going to be detrimental in the long run.

There surely isn't a technical benefit to moving Team Calendars into the Premium plan so the upshot is that customers currently paying for it as an app are now being forced to pay a heck of a lot more just because it is part of a larger bundle.

The fact that Atlassian can, on a whim, remove an app from the Marketplace and only make it available to customers on a plan that is twice the price worries me. We're currently staring at our self-hosted instances becoming end-of-life in a few years and therefore facing a very important decision - stick with Atlassian or move to other products.

I'll be very frank here - while this specific change may not affect us too much, the fact that it is happening may push us harder to looking at non-Atlassian products rather than take a risk on what other decisions Atlassian may make down the line that would affect us ...

[Tom Golden]

Taking a feature available as an add-on at the Standard level and making it a part of the Premium level (and ONLY the Premium level) amounts to a 75% price increase to your users who are reliant on that feature.

Not to mention you completely bungled the rollout of this change.  You emailed us in November saying that this was going to happen. Then you emailed 5 days later saying, oops that was a mistake.  And then two months later, we get a "reminder" that it's happening in 10 days.     

As a software vendor, I can't imagine doing any of this to our customers.  It just speaks to a complete lack of respect you have for us.  The only thing keeping us as an Atlassian customer at this point is the lack of bandwidth to switch to another vendor, which I guess is exactly what Atlassian counted on when it made the calculation to do this.  

[hilarydub]

We know this isn’t optimal for everyone, and we apologize for the inconvenience. We’re moving Team Calendars to Premium because we believe it's a great feature for growing customers who need additional Confluence functionality to scale. If you are on an annual subscription plan, you are now on a Confluence Cloud Premium trial until your subscription end-date.

If you need assistance with deactivating team calendars, your Premium trial, or have more questions, you can reach out to support.atlassian.com. Please also refer to our FAQs.

If you still have feedback or questions I'm also happy to speak with you directly (I'm the PM on Confluence Cloud Editions). You can book a slot here.

[Jens]

At the end of the day it is simply bad customer service to take existing functionality and move it into a higher priced tier. It is fair that you want to have a premium version of your product to make more money, but the things you put into premium should be new functionality. It shouldn't be existing functionality that customers already rely on. Because when you do that, you're just increasing prices a lot without giving anything in return.

We have stopped using Team Calendars in our company. It was nice while it lasted, but with the new pricing it is not worth it to us.

[Philip Colmer]

@hilarydub 

"If you still have feedback or questions I'm also happy to speak with you directly (I'm the PM on Confluence Cloud Editions)."

I wanted to do this, and booked a slot with you for this Friday. Then you moved it to Monday 15th. No apology or checking that the new slot worked for me. Nevertheless, I accepted the change. Then you moved it to Tuesday 16th. Again, no apology or checking that *this* slot worked for me. So now I've cancelled the meeting and I'll just write my thoughts in public.

Your CRO, Cameron Deatsch, was recently on the "Business Is Human" podcast. Two key points highlighted from that podcast caught my eye:

• Every time that you remove a barrier between someone who has a problem and their ability to use your product….good things will happen. 
• The more value you provide to your potential customer base upfront, the more it will pay dividends down the road. 

It seems to me that moving Team Calendars to the Premium Plan and, indeed, having the Premium Plan in the first place goes contrary to those points.

Using Confluence on the Premium Plan costs twice as much as the Standard Plan, but what do you get for that?

• Analytics
• Inspect permissions
• Bulk archive pages
• Team Calendars
• External collaboration
• Automation
• Admin key
• Copy space permissions
• Admin insights
• Sandbox
• Release tracks
• IP allowlisting
• Data residency
• Unlimited storage
• 24/7 Premium Support
• Guaranteed Uptime SLA

Of that list, I would say that the vast number are:

a) features that most customers would benefit from having

b) features of the software rather than add-ons that actually cost Atlassian money like unlimited storage or premium support

c) features that used to be available as plugins on Server but aren't on Cloud

We've enjoyed using Confluence Server for the last 8 years. We are, in all likelihood, going to migrate to Confluence Cloud but it isn't a clear-cut decision. I've even got staff asking if we should be looking at Google Sites instead! Our review of our Jira use isn't faring much better - there are growing calls to look at open source alternatives, despite the initial pain we would go through to get there.

The Premium Plan approach goes directly against the two points I've highlighted from the CRO's podcast. Atlassian seriously needs to rethink the Premium Plan approach. By locking off features and other offerings behind a twice-as-much cost barrier, you are alienating your customer base. We may make the decision to migrate to Confluence Cloud but there is absolutely no guarantee that we will stay there, particularly if the list of "stuff" behind the Premium Plan continues to grow, leaving those on the Standard Plan the poorer for it.

[hilarydub]

Hi @Philip Colmer I'm so sorry about the scheduling confusion - I was under the impression you were getting update notes with more details through Calendly when I moved the events (Friday I was out sick, and Monday is a public holiday). I'll coordinate via email if you'd still like to find time to chat.

I hear your frustration, and I know there have been lots of changes lately which compound to make the experience all the more frustrating. We still invest the large majority of our resources into Standard and are constantly adding new Standard features to support all of our customers. While we continue to add Premium features, and occasionally integrate from the marketplace, we have not and will not take value out of Standard - we believe the Standard product is still fantastic on its own and has the functionality to support the large majority of teams. 

[Jens]

Just stop taking existing functionality and moving it into Premium. As I customer it makes zero difference if you take functionality from Standard and move it to Premium, or you buy an addon and move it into Premium. In both cases I no longer have the functionality in my Standard tenant.

That you rub salt in the wound by auto-upgrading us to Premium, requiring us to opt-out of a 100% price increase just makes the matter worse.

I've been hit by this on both Confluence and Jira so it's definitely not a one-time mistake. It looks like a strategy to push Premium down our throats.

I expect a business model like this from Oracle - I didn't expect it from Atlassian.

[Bill Cernansky]

"Ford is excited to announce our new F-150 PREMIUM. The standard F-150 transmission will no longer be able to change gears. It will only operate in first gear and no additional gears can ever be installed. But for just TWICE the price, you can buy our new F-150 PREMIUM that allows for the awesome transmission feature of MULTIPLE GEARS.

We at Ford know these changes come with additional considerations for our customers and appreciate your adaptability as we provide our long-time paying customers that have always kept us in business with an enhanced MULTIPLE GEARS experience they always used to be able to have anyway."

[Bill Cernansky]

We can all enjoy the new calendar-free functionality while we're also enjoying the new markdown-free experience. I'm sure Atlassian is carefully considering what other features they can remove to coerce customers into upgrading to premium. Apparently y'all prefer the stick instead of the carrot.