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Chargify New Pricing

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Re: Chargify New Pricing

#31

Post by steveaz98 »

We just launched globalfolders.com using Chargify (on a very slim budget), thinking we could justify their costs once we graduated to a larger plan. This change erases that idea.

It hurts more than just Chargify and their customers, it hurts anyone running such a service as people will be more likely to avoid services that they can't trust to keep their pricing stable (or at least give plenty of advance notice, 6 months to a year).

These kind of changes definitely make me think much harder about outsourcing a service. How can we trust the current pricing? Do we have to change our pricing every time they change theirs? How many customers do we lose based on their bad business decisions?

Chargify knows that people have spent time integrating with their service. They hope that this will give them a percentage of paying customers, knowing full well that they will lose a lot of customers. This is definitely a bad move for Chargify and a good decision for their competitors.

Re: Chargify New Pricing

#32

Post by jacquesm »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #27
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.

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

Not if you do it all across the board, and preferably gradually.

Re: Chargify New Pricing

#33

Post by owkaye »

sv123 wrote: post #6
MicahWedemeyer wrote: post #2

This spooks me a bit. I'm a big fan of Chargify, but for their prices to jump like this and totally remove the free plan is scary. That will make it much less attractive to brand new web apps that don't have a proven business model. With the new pricing scheme your setup cost for accepting credit cards are merchant account, gateway (ie. Authorize.net), and $99/mo for Chargify. For most brand new web apps that's going…

this is disappointing. we were looking forward to starting to use chargify because of the free tier. Now I would be reluctant to even sign up until I was sure I had at least a few paying customers. I don't remember exactly but the free tier seemed pretty generous, maybe cutting that down to under 5-10 customers is free? To at least get people hooked on it without such a big barrier to entry.

Even giving me 5 customers free would encourage me to try them, but they can forget that now -- because I'm not going to commit to anything close to $99 a month unless I actually have hundreds of paying customers. Just my personal point of view, but it feels like they have so much business now that they no longer care about getting any new customers.

Re: Chargify New Pricing

#34

Post by teye »

I find the new pricing chart to be misleading. By listing the free account next to their customer-enabled plans, at first glance I expect it to allow me to serve customers.

http://chargify.com/pricing-and-signup/

Took me a minute to realize I get nothing (except the ability to integrate... SCORE!) by signing up. Smart to drive signups this way, but I think expectations are being set incorrectly.

Re: Chargify New Pricing

#35

Post by owkaye »

speric wrote: post #15

We have about 35 customers in Chargify, and growing steadily, but $99/month will eat almost half our monthly revenue. Really disappointed.

You should get out NOW so you can settle on a different company's services -- one that treats its customers better.

Re: Chargify New Pricing

#36

Post by bobx11 »

I spent the last two days porting our code from paypal web payments pro over to chargify... and then they just jacked up their prices for starter level from 0 to $1,200 a year, and you still have to subscribe to authorize and the customer information manager - so they're just providing the gateway for $100/month. Ruined my afternoon, and probably tomorrow as I look at the other options like recurly.com , spreedly.com , cheddargetter.com , etc.

Re: Chargify New Pricing

#38

Post by bobx11 »

matt1 wrote: post #12

I've been slowly integrating Chargify into my app for the last several weeks and was blown away to read about this just now. One of the big selling points for me was the fact that it was free for up to 50 customers. I thought this was brilliant on their part because neither Recurly or Spreedly offer this. It got you locked into using their service, which is huge. That being said, I bet that 95% of their users are und…

I agree completely - paying $1,200 a year to get started is a bit steep when it comes without notice and after i've been building the integration too.

Re: Chargify New Pricing

#39

Post by apowell »

I was piloting Chargify with about dozen customers to see if I wanted to make it the default platform for all of my customers. Now, definitely not. This bait and switch shows a complete lack of respect for everyone who has invested in the platform.

Chargify, I'm sure you'll be laughing all the way to the bank, but not with my money.

Does anyone sell an installable non-SaaS replacement for Chargify that integrates with Authorize.net CIM?

Re: Chargify New Pricing

#40

Post by schammy »

Did they learn nothing from the Recurly debacle a few months back?

I don't think their pricing is bad but they need a starter plan that's less than $99/month.

Also, why are both Chargify and Recurly doing "bucket" plans with such high starting price points? Why not charge based on actual usage? If you have 500 paying customers you can justify $99/month no problem, but most people are going to take a while to build up to that size of customer base. These people can't start off with a $99/month plan. At least give maybe the first 10 customers for free, or charge on actual usage, e.g. $X per 10 customers or something like that.

One thing's clear at least, if I ever go into the recurring payment business, Chargify and Recurly are both very good examples of what NOT to do to win customer loyalty.

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