It's cheaper overall so this is good; however removing the option to pay monthly might not be so good. As mentioned in the article not everyone can afford to drop a large sum. I'm on the fence about this change.

I've been a part of the WooThemes club for ages, never letting my subscription lapse because I didn't want to have to re-fork out the $200+ fee in a lump sum, and never actively using their themes with the exception of Canvas.

In all honesty, even though the price for a lump sum ends up being cheaper (which I do appreciate), the quality of design in their catalogue is just not up to snuff compared to many other theme options available. They tell their users who voice their design displeasure that "design is subjective", which is true, but when I or my clients can get base functionality AND modern design at a better rate then that might end up being the route to go.

I do realize that the larger sum that I pay with Woo also goes towards support but, despite what their Customer Happiness report says, I'm less than satisfied waiting 5+ days for a response to support/bug tickets. These tickets are rarely resolved in one answer and then there is the back and forth communication that can last another week+ depending on the ticket scenario.

Additionally they are currently in the process of stripping out functionality from themes. Some of which, according to some users, has disappeared into the void and some that is being placed/going to be placed into plugins/hooks/filters.

Moving functionality into plugins would be great and I would 100% support this if those plugins were better supported/documented. However, their plugins on the WP Plugin Repository are riddled with unanswered support questions and their support ticket options have no section to fill out support for those plugins; so where do the users of these shiny new plugins go for help... they're pretty much left to fend for themselves.

Woo appears to be advocating the use of hooks/filters with their themes for some functionality but the average user isn't likely to know how to do that. At the end of the day this means users are paying more for a theme from Woo that they won't know how to customize because the options aren't easily available and will have to pay additional fees to have someone else configure the theme. This being the case the average user is likely to look elsewhere for a more robust solution. It will also likely make it a bit more difficult for some agencies using Woo's themes to sell customers on purchasing their themes; why would a customer buy something they can't easily tailor to their needs down the line. At this point their themes definitely feel like they're being tailored to the developer side more than the average consumer in terms of ease of use/setup.

All that in mind, I have a free year to decide if I do actually want to renew in 2015 but based on the above the likelihood of that right now is low as I currently can't justify the renewal rate. They'd have to blow my mind with new theme designs and get their act together with their plugins (Testimonials, Features, Projects, etc.) before I'd consider the ATP renewal.

Only time will tell at this point.