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Chargify New Pricing

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Re: Chargify New Pricing

#161

Post by run4yourlives »

gdevore wrote: post #63
schammy wrote: post #40

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…

The problem with charging for actual usage is that most of Chargify's support costs are probably incurred while their customers are setting things up. And that is when they don't have any users. Once you get chargify set up you don't have to touch it too much. Regardless though, this was a bad way to handle the price increase.

Are you suggesting that basic customer lifecycle management is an issue for them? That's not exactly reassuring.

When you determine pricing, you figure this out. Every business has customer acquisition costs.

Re: Chargify New Pricing

#162

Post by rexreed »

ntalbott wrote: post #90

Full disclosure: I run Spreedly, an earlier to market but much less funded competitor to Chargify. Here's the dirty little secret that Spreedly discovered about 18 months ago, and that I'm sure Chargify - like Recurly before them - has now found out for themselves: there are plenty of people who want to start subscription businesses, and out of those, the vast majority will not succeed and will actually end up costin…

So, are you saying that firms like Spreedly which don't have as high costs are not offering PCI Level 1 compliance and poorer support? What are the liabilities for Spreedly and its customers for non-compliance?

Re: Chargify New Pricing

#163

Post by anonp »

dh wrote: post #114

My name is David Hauser (@dh) and I am a founder at Chargify as well as the Grasshopper Group where I have spent the last 7 years serving hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs and helping them to succeed. I want to respond directly here and invite anyone to reach out to me personally on Twitter or email to talk about this or anything else. We made a mistake with how we implemented and communicated a massive price in…

David,

Thank you for emailing us. We have been using chargify for a couple months now and we now have about 700 paying customers. Under the new scheme, it looks like we will need to pay $350 for those 700 accounts. Is my understanding correct? If so, this price change is going to put a very heavy burden on us as it will take us some time to get to 2000 accounts so that the average cost is lowered.

Would you considered a more closely geared pricing model that does not penalize us every-time we successfully grow pass one of the pricing thresholds? For example, please check out Sendgrid's pricing structure, which scales very intuitively. They provide a different type of service and so the exact numbers are not relevant. However, their structure could be a good reference for Chargify.

Re: Chargify New Pricing

#164

Post by sireat »

ntalbott wrote: post #90

Full disclosure: I run Spreedly, an earlier to market but much less funded competitor to Chargify. Here's the dirty little secret that Spreedly discovered about 18 months ago, and that I'm sure Chargify - like Recurly before them - has now found out for themselves: there are plenty of people who want to start subscription businesses, and out of those, the vast majority will not succeed and will actually end up costin…

It seems that a better solution to the dilemma of high up-front costs would be exactly what Chargify does not have: setup fee (+monthly costs, probably lower than existing)

Then by definition, all the old users would be grandfathered in(they are already setup).

Other issue would be changing advertising which emphasizes no setup fees...

Re: Chargify New Pricing

#165

Post by ntalbott »

rexreed wrote: post #162
ntalbott wrote: post #90

Full disclosure: I run Spreedly, an earlier to market but much less funded competitor to Chargify. Here's the dirty little secret that Spreedly discovered about 18 months ago, and that I'm sure Chargify - like Recurly before them - has now found out for themselves: there are plenty of people who want to start subscription businesses, and out of those, the vast majority will not succeed and will actually end up costin…

So, are you saying that firms like Spreedly which don't have as high costs are not offering PCI Level 1 compliance and poorer support? What are the liabilities for Spreedly and its customers for non-compliance?

Spreedly is PCI Level 2 compliant, which while not cheap, is significantly lower cost than Level 1 compliance. There's not additional liability involved by us being Level 2 vs Level 1 - while Level 1 is certainly a nice marketing strategy, the truth is that it's not required until transaction volume reaches a pretty significant level. Once Spreedly reaches that level we'll get it, but by that time we'll also be able to afford it.

In terms of support, what we're doing at Spreedly is focusing on providing excellent email support, and occasionally supplementing that with IM/phone support for critical issues. It's a trade-off that seems to be working well for us and our customers at this point.

Re: Chargify New Pricing

#166

Post by tangelo »

carsonm wrote: post #135
dh wrote: post #114

My name is David Hauser (@dh) and I am a founder at Chargify as well as the Grasshopper Group where I have spent the last 7 years serving hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs and helping them to succeed. I want to respond directly here and invite anyone to reach out to me personally on Twitter or email to talk about this or anything else. We made a mistake with how we implemented and communicated a massive price in…

One of the problems you have is that your reason for pricing doesn't jive with how you're doing it. If it's really a question of support costs, just charge for support at the lower tier(s). Plus let's be honest, once someone is up and humming, support costs for them (provided your service is as solid as you sell it to be) shrink very drastically. I'm all for you making money, we want you to survive as much as you do.…

To sell a product, that takes months to integrate, and change the pricing structure completely without warning is basically insane business practice. At LEAST provide a per user rate for the little guy, and change the t+c to assure customers there will be fair warning and 'not more than x% per annum increase'. A price change for a product like that should be given 6months notice and an incentive to grow into the new structure (ie grow to over 100 customers before we change the price and you'll get 10% off for another 6months.

Re: Chargify New Pricing

#167

Post by frankkysly »

proexploit wrote: post #79

I just joined Chargify Oct. 7th after the AppSumo bundle offered a $200 credit. 4 days later, they've raised their prices. I'm going to scrap the work I've done and go out of my way to use other services. The money isn't an issue. $99/month is fine, but I wouldn't pay it to get started.

Just an FYI they have a free plan as well as a $39 plan.
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