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Chargify New Pricing

chargify.com

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Re: Chargify New Pricing

#21

Post by davidedicillo »

I found out about the change of pricing friday and I was really bummed about it. 50 free users were the perfect amount of user to guarantee some steady income before tackling the expense. It's also true that with a $25/mo you would need 7 clients to at least cover the billing costs (chargify/gateway/merchant acc.). Maybe instead they could have just change the free plan to 10 customers + no support.

I looked at Spreedly, I loved their simplicity, but at the same time I feel they are missing some important features like discount and coupons management.

Re: Chargify New Pricing

#22

Post by MicahWedemeyer »

wheels wrote: post #13
youmon wrote: post #9

Chargify can charge what it wants, but the pricing change was abrupt and BIG. Apps on the ground floor went from FREE to $1200/year. No grandfathering, 30 days to accept. For a service that needs to be integrated, that's a terrible move that shows no respect for startups.

What's worse is that if you're already using them, you basically have no choice in the matter since the alternative is trying to get all of your customers to sign up again, which is basically a non-starter. Note that they also doubled prices for their first tier of paid customers from $600 to $1200.

Well, technically you have all the customer data in your gateway's info manager (like Authorize.net's CIM), but it would still be a real bitch to take that and do anything useful with it. Plus, the clock is ticking on your 30 days to get it migrated to your new setup.

Re: Chargify New Pricing

#23

Post by MicahWedemeyer »

mthomas wrote: post #11

Chargify requires that you setup both a payment gateway and a merchant account. Why would you use them instead of just integrating with the gateway directly?

Chargify handles a lot of the recurring aspect, dealing with expired cards, notifying you if someone doesn't pay, etc, etc

I talk a little about it here: http://peachshake.com/2010/06/15/saas-subscription-billing-o...

It was a great deal for the price, but now...not so much.

Re: Chargify New Pricing

#24

Post by MJR »

It seems very clear that the free pricing was a great incentive for customers to sign up, allowing Chargify to get their business off the ground.

Now that their business is running and they have paying customers, they have little need for keeping the free accounts and helping other businesses get off the ground.

In my opinion, a really poor move and completely opposite of the mindset and spirit of their initial offering.

Re: Chargify New Pricing

#25

Post by podman »

This was very disappointing to read. If their product were rock solid I wouldn't have minded as much but it's far from being a complete solution. Unfortunately, a lot of chargify needs a lot of work. I'm especially unhappy with the metered components as they enforce integer cent prices for the components and only allow integer usages on those components. It's impossible to charge fractional usages. I guess it's time to start writing my own billing system.

Re: Chargify New Pricing

#26

Post by speric »

matt1 wrote: post #20
edanm wrote: post #14

I'm not sure I understand - what does the free developer option give you? Just the ability to integrate with your site (but not actually charge anyone)?

Until today they offered a plan that let you use their service for free until you reached 50 customers. Now there's no free plan that you can use after you've launched your site. And for existing apps that use Chargify and have less than 50 customers, they're going to have to start paying $99/month to keep using the service. Edit : I understand your question now. Yes, the current free plan lets you integrate it into…

I am that boat (existing app that uses Chargify, with < 50 customers). Sucks.

Re: Chargify New Pricing

#27

Post by rgrieselhuber »

jacquesm wrote: post #17

> we do need to migrate everyone to the new pricing You can't change your pricing upwards for existing customers, ever. You can change your price to anything you want for new customers. You can decrease your prices for anybody at any point in time. Something like chargify is the basis for the business models of other parties, if you made a deal in the past you have to honor it, so that your customers can honor the de…

Agreed on pricing upwards for existing customers. Why would you ever punish your earliest customers for taking a risk on you?

> You can decrease your prices for anybody at any point in time.

I've heard this can actually be quite tricky as it makes your existing customers feel like they've been suckered.

Re: Chargify New Pricing

#28

Post by workhorse »

Moral of the story is, it is OK to offer a free plan to gain traction, and then remove it once you have it.

This decision worries me on so many levels.

I am so glad I went with Braintree Payment Solutions instead of Chargify. Chalk up another victory for my gut instinct paying off!

Re: Chargify New Pricing

#29

Post by youmon »

wheels wrote: post #13
youmon wrote: post #9

Chargify can charge what it wants, but the pricing change was abrupt and BIG. Apps on the ground floor went from FREE to $1200/year. No grandfathering, 30 days to accept. For a service that needs to be integrated, that's a terrible move that shows no respect for startups.

What's worse is that if you're already using them, you basically have no choice in the matter since the alternative is trying to get all of your customers to sign up again, which is basically a non-starter. Note that they also doubled prices for their first tier of paid customers from $600 to $1200.

This is the evil next business model: Free "bait and switch". Get businesses to sign up with a service that is free but requires integration. Then start charging. Integration makes it very difficult to switch.
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