Starting today, Ning, the online social network-building platform, is changing their business model. Three new products are launching that will replace the current products, and the company is now charging a monthly fee for their services.

What does this mean?

There is a grace period of one month for you to switch your existing Ning network to one of the new programs. By August 20th, you must select Ning Mini, Ning Plus or Ning Pro.

Here’s a breakdown of the new products:

Ning Mini
Cost: Just $2.95 a month or $19.95 for the full year.
Member limit: 150
Features: Blogs, photos, forum and videos. It also enables Ning’s ‘run your own ads’ advertising.
Customization: Basic customization
Support: Community-based support

Ning Plus
Cost: $19.95 a month or $199.95 for the full year.
Member limit: Unlimited members
Features: Blogs, photos, forum, videos, events, groups, chats, pages and Ning Apps. It also enables Ning’s ‘run your own ads’ advertising, and gives you control over branding and member experience. You can use your own domain and remove Ning links.
Customization: Advanced customization, include CSS, JavaScript and Ning’s language editor.
Support: Help Center support.

Ning Pro
Cost: $49.95 a month or $499.95 for the full year.
Member limit: Unlimited members
Features: Blogs, photos, forum, videos, branded music and video players and upload ability, events, groups, chats, pages and Ning Apps. It also enables Ning’s ‘run your own ads’ advertising, and gives you control over branding and member experience. You can use your own domain and remove Ning links and add bandwidth and storage.
Customization: CSS, JavaScript, Language Editor and API access upgrade.
Support: Premium support.

For more comparisons, you can check out Ning’s comparison page.

What should I do?

You have a month to decide if you want to start paying for your social network. Take a look at your numbers, if you have fewer than 150 members, Ning Mini is a pretty great deal. $20 is a small price to pay to have your own social network, and you’ll be able to transition pretty seamlessly.

If you have more than 150 members, or are planning to, then testing out Ning Plus for a few months isn’t a bad investment. You can see how active your participants are, how crucial the network is to your business and your brand, and if you want to maintain the site.

There are other free social networking site platforms out there, like Mahara or People Aggregator, so if you don’t want to pay to stay with Ning, you can take your business elsewhere. Transitioning sites won’t be the easiest thing to do, but if you give your members enough notice and links, you might be able to retain your numbers.

What you need to do first is some number crunching. Once you know how important your social network site is to your business and your brand, you’ll know if you want to spend $3 a month, $20 a month, $50 or nothing at all. We’ll spend some time looking at the social network site platform options over the next few days, so you can learn more about your options.