Table of Contents
- How Pricing Worked on CodeCanyon
- What Happened to Envato?
- Then the Traffic Started Disappearing
- The New Revenue Share
- Why We Created Our Own Portal
- Sngine Pricing Has Not Increased
- When Do You Need an Extended License?
- Why We Introduced Subscriptions
- $199 Per Year
- $19.99 Per Month
- What About "Lifetime Updates"?
- Sngine Is Still One of the Most Affordable Options
- "Why Not Just Build It With AI?"
- We Didn't Forget Our Existing Customers
- Unfortunately, Not Everyone Took the Same Approach
- We Are Still Fighting
- The Bottom Line
To understand why Sngine’s pricing has changed, let’s first clear up the full picture.
How Pricing Worked on CodeCanyon
Previously, Sngine was available on CodeCanyon with:
$99 — Regular License
$299 — Extended License
The Extended License was required if you planned to enable payments or monetization on your network. This was not something we created ourselves — it was based on Envato’s licensing terms and their official guidance.
Buyers also received 6 months of support and lifetime updates.
For many years, this model worked very well.
It was a win-win situation for both authors and customers.
Customers could purchase a product once, receive updates for years, and continue using it. Authors could focus on developing and improving their products, while new releases brought new customers and new licenses.
Imagine purchasing a product 10 years ago for $49 and still receiving quality updates today without paying again. From a customer’s perspective, that was an incredible deal.
And from the author’s perspective, continuous development meant continuous opportunities to attract new customers.
So, what changed?
What Happened to Envato?
Starting around 2024, sales on CodeCanyon and many other Envato marketplaces began dropping significantly.
Ask almost any long-term Envato author and you will hear similar stories.
But why?
One major event was the acquisition of Envato by Shutterstock.
On July 22, 2024, Shutterstock announced that it had completed the acquisition of Envato for $245 million in an all-cash transaction.
You can read Shutterstock’s official announcement here:
After that, Envato’s direction changed significantly.
For years, Envato was a major traffic source for authors. Authors could focus on developing and maintaining their products while Envato invested heavily in marketing and advertising to bring customers to the marketplace.
For example, under the previous revenue-share model, if an item sold for $100, Envato could take approximately 20%, leaving the author with around $80 before other applicable deductions.
That made sense.
Envato brought the traffic.
Envato provided the marketplace.
Authors created and maintained the products.
It was a genuine ecosystem where everyone benefited.
Then the Traffic Started Disappearing
One of the biggest problems authors have faced since 2024 is the dramatic decline in marketplace traffic and sales.
Authors who previously sold around 100 licenses per month could suddenly find themselves selling only a handful.
For many authors, sales dropped by 80% or more.
And when there is no traffic, there are no sales.
Here are the current top-selling items on CodeCanyon this week — some are making only 3–5 sales, compared to the 20–30+ sales that top items used to achieve.
At the same time, Envato increasingly focused on its subscription-based business, Envato Elements:
The business model became increasingly centered around subscriptions rather than the traditional marketplace model.
From an author’s perspective, this created a very different environment.
The marketplace was no longer providing the same level of traffic and opportunity that authors had relied on for years, while the cost of selling through the platform was also changing.
The New Revenue Share
Envato has also announced changes to its revenue-share model.
You can read Envato’s official announcement here:
Under the new model, the author’s share can be significantly lower.
For example, on a $100 item, after Envato’s share and buyer fees, an author may receive substantially less than they previously did — and taxes can reduce the final amount even further.
So from an author’s perspective, the situation became:
Less traffic + fewer sales + a much larger share going to the marketplace.
That is no longer the same win-win model that existed before.
And this is the reason we had to make a difficult decision.
Why We Created Our Own Portal
Rather than simply accepting this situation, we decided to build our own platform and sell Sngine under our own terms.
But there was one thing we absolutely did not want to do:
Leave our existing customers behind.
We have been developing Sngine for years, and our customers have been part of that journey.
So we worked on a transition that would allow us to continue developing Sngine while giving existing customers a clear path forward.
Sngine Pricing Has Not Increased
Despite everything that has changed, the core one-time Sngine pricing on the Zamblek website remains:
$99 — Regular License
$299 — Extended License
And there is an important improvement:
Support is now 12 months instead of the previous 6 months.
When Do You Need an Extended License?
The Extended License is required if:
You are an agency and will use Sngine to build a website for one of your customers.
You will run payments or monetization on your network.
In simple terms, if your users will pay you money — for example, through subscriptions, marketplace purchases, commissions, or other monetization features — you need the Extended License.
Again, these licensing requirements came from Envato itself. They were not invented by us.
We will also provide the official Envato explanation regarding this below so you can verify the original licensing terms for yourself.
Why We Introduced Subscriptions
The reality is that the majority of Sngine customers want to run monetized social networks.
For that reason, we introduced a new subscription model:
$199 Per Year
The yearly subscription includes:
All Sngine features
Ongoing updates
Ongoing support
All monetization features
Continued development while the subscription is active
And there is an important point:
If your subscription expires, your website does not stop working.
You can continue running your website with the features available at the time your subscription ended.
You simply stop receiving new updates and support until you renew your subscription.
We also offer 10% off every additional license purchased under the yearly subscription model.
$19.99 Per Month
We understand that paying $199 at once may not be convenient for everyone.
That's why we also introduced a monthly option:
$19.99/month
That means you can access the same subscription benefits without paying the entire yearly amount upfront.
And even at the full monthly price for 12 months, that is still less than purchasing the $299 Extended License once:
$19.99 × 12 = $239.88
Compared with:
$299 Extended License
What About "Lifetime Updates"?
This is another important point we want to address honestly.
The idea of "lifetime updates" sounds great — and for customers, it absolutely is.
But someone has to continuously pay the developers who create those updates.
No serious software company can realistically promise unlimited development forever without a sustainable revenue model.
Developers need to maintain servers, pay employees, fix security vulnerabilities, support new versions, support new browsers and operating systems, implement new technologies, maintain integrations, fix bugs, and continuously develop new features.
Sngine is not a static product.
It has been under continuous development since 2015.
That is more than a decade of development.
So our new subscription model is designed to make Sngine's development sustainable for the long term.
Sngine Is Still One of the Most Affordable Options
Even with the new options, Sngine remains one of the most affordable serious social network platforms available:
$99 — One-time Regular License
$299 — One-time Extended License with all features
$19.99/month — Subscription with all features
$199/year — Subscription with all features
And remember what you are actually getting.
Sngine has been developed since 2015, with thousands of customers and more than 15,000 websites running Sngine.
You are not starting from zero.
You are starting with a proven foundation.
"Why Not Just Build It With AI?"
AI has completely changed software development, and we love that.
AI can help developers build things faster than ever before.
But building a complete, production-ready social network is still a very different challenge from generating a few pages or features with AI.
A serious social network requires:
Authentication
User profiles
Friend and follow systems
Posts and feeds
Comments and reactions
Messaging
Notifications
Groups
Pages
Marketplace functionality
Payments
Subscriptions
Monetization
Media processing
Security
Privacy
Administration
Moderation
APIs
Mobile applications
Performance optimization
Scalability
Continuous maintenance
And that's only part of the picture.
You could certainly use AI to help build a new platform from scratch, but getting anywhere close to the maturity, features, stability, and production experience of a platform that has been developed continuously since 2015 can require a significant amount of time and money.
That's why we believe Sngine can be your starting point and foundation, rather than spending months or years building everything from scratch.
We Didn't Forget Our Existing Customers
This was probably the most important part of our transition.
We could have simply moved away from CodeCanyon and told existing customers to start over.
We didn't.
Instead, we offered existing customers:
50% OFF one-time license renewals, for both Regular and Extended Licenses
An easy migration path from CodeCanyon to the Zamblek platform
Continued support for customers who still had active support
Sngine v4.5 for everyone, including customers whose support had already expired
We wanted our existing customers to have a clear path forward.
Unfortunately, Not Everyone Took the Same Approach
Some authors decided to stop maintaining their products entirely.
For example, one of the well-known social network scripts that was available on CodeCanyon was WoWonder:
https://codecanyon.net/item/wowonder-the-ultimate-php-social-network-platform/13785302
After years without meaningful updates, the product was eventually removed from the marketplace.
Customers who depended on that product were left to find another solution.
We don't want that to happen with Sngine.
We Are Still Fighting
The transition hasn't been easy.
Moving away from a marketplace that has been part of Sngine's history for years is a major decision.
Changing the pricing model is a major decision.
Building our own ecosystem is a major decision.
But we believe it is necessary if we want Sngine to continue growing and receiving serious development for many more years.
Our goal isn't simply to sell more licenses.
Our goal is to build a sustainable ecosystem around Sngine — one where we can continue hiring developers, improving the product, releasing updates, providing support, improving the infrastructure, and building new features without depending on a marketplace whose business model is no longer aligned with ours.
The Bottom Line
The price changes are not simply about "charging more."
They are the result of a completely different marketplace environment.
Envato's traffic has changed.
Envato's business model has changed.
Envato's revenue-share model has changed.
And the economics of maintaining a large software product have changed.
We had two choices:
1. Stop or dramatically reduce development.
2. Build a sustainable model that allows Sngine to continue growing.
We chose the second.
Sngine is still here.
Sngine is still being developed.
Sngine is still receiving updates.
Sngine is still supporting its customers.
And we are working toward a new era for Sngine.
We hope this post has finally cleared up the full picture behind our pricing changes and why we made these decisions.
Thank you to everyone who has supported Sngine since 2015 — and especially to those who are continuing this journey with us.