>the $10 per month unlimited search plan was not financially sustainable for us
The correct response to realizing your business model is unsustainable is not to double down on it.
Update to Kagi Search Pricing
181–190 of 239 posts
Re: Update to Kagi Search Pricing
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
LOL they’re just a wrapper around Bing??
No but they do incorporate Google and Bing results in their search. They should probably work towards their own index to lower their costs.
Yeah, ultimately this is what turned me off. Used the beta and loved it for as long as it lasted. When it ended it was hard to migrate elsewhere but I couldn't convince myself it was a good idea to continue investing in a service that was entirely at the mercy of its direct competitors and shows no signs its working to reduce that risk and cost.
Unless they mitigate those risks they will only exist for as long as google or bing wants them to. The only ways they survive are: - Mitigating those risks and costs (e.g., building/using own index, well designed caching could help) - Staying small enough in terms of searches and users to be under the radar for Google and Microsoft - Pray for the mercy of two of the most ruthlessly anticompetitive companies in existence (laughable) - Convincing Google or Microsoft that they are worthwhile to acquire (but this kills the service for me anyways)
Price hiking +150% for the stated reason that my direct competitor increased my costs certainly shows the pressure is on and working as intended. On the off chance that kagi devs or management reads this, PLEASE find a way to isolate yourself from being totally reliant on google,bing,etc. Unless you are going for an acquisition exit from Google or Microsoft, it will kill your company eventually.
Re: Update to Kagi Search Pricing
#183What I don't understand is this idea that searches cost them 1.2 cents each. 1.2 cents is the cost of operating a 4-core, 16-gig, 5-gigabit server on AWS for nearly 5 minutes. If a single search cost Google 1.2 cents, Google would be paying $44 million a day to cover it. I cannot make that math work, and it makes me reticent to believe them and continue paying.
Only thing I can think of, is that they have divided their entire operating costs by number of searches a day, and 1.2 cents is not really the marginal cost of a new search, which is _super_ dishonest.
Re: Update to Kagi Search Pricing
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you see they give extra? With the old pricing, it's unlimited searches for 10$ a month. With the new pricing, you're now limited to 1000 for this price.
They are giving extra when you factor in the donations. The old pricing was losing money. The top poster doesn't seem to think the price should even cover kagi's costs, which is absurd.
> The top poster doesn't seem to think the price should even cover Kagi's costs, which is absurd.
No, they definitely should cover their costs. They're a business.
But, the cost they're charging is too much. I don't care how much it costs you to perform a search, I care how much it costs me.
Re: Update to Kagi Search Pricing
#185Kagi is a bit of a HN darling so I know I'm putting my neck out here, but even after trying the trial, I'm not sure what the value prop is. I would happily pay for a search engine that provided good results, but seeing as it's ostensibly Just Bing under the hood, I'm not sure what I get that I'm not getting from DDG or MetaGer + an ad blocker. Kagi doesn't strike me as a privacy alternative given that all my searches…
I’m a paying customer. I pay mainly as an experiment to figure out what my searches actually cost. If those costs are covered by advertisers that I block, my free search experience is paid for by people who don’t block those ads. I don’t like that thought. I may go back to DDG if the new payment structure is insufficient (I don’t know if I search more than 1.000 times a month). But it is somewhat eye-opening how much…
If you click into your kagi billing, there is a usage dashboard.
I thought I'd be fine with the 700 searches a month.. but my average is 1600.
$300/year for a search engine is probably more than I am willing to pay, especially for an individual subscription.
Re: Update to Kagi Search Pricing
#186The core of a search product is that I want to be able to search. I don't want AI. I don't want a web browser that only works on Mac. I don't want metered searches.
I wouldn't mind spending more money if it helped them develop their own scraping and be a viable alternative to Google in the future. But there's no indication they are making the business choices necessary to do that.
Additionally, they said they would grandfather in old users, which they did not.
I'd been subscribed for a while, but I just canceled my subscription. So disappointed.
Re: Update to Kagi Search Pricing
#187One question I ask myself. Does the dependency to Google and Bing APIs been advertised before today ? Can't remember reading that and was genuinely thinking everything was baked in-house (yes I was naive.)
Yes, it is not something they hide. This has been discussed every time Kagi comes up, so I'd say it's fairly well known, at least in places where Kagi is known.
It is documented plainly in their help text and archive.org has indexed that page as far back as October.
https://web.archive.org/web/20221025065617/https://help.kagi...
Re: Update to Kagi Search Pricing
#188One question I ask myself. Does the dependency to Google and Bing APIs been advertised before today ? Can't remember reading that and was genuinely thinking everything was baked in-house (yes I was naive.)
Yes, it is not something they hide. This has been discussed every time Kagi comes up, so I'd say it's fairly well known, at least in places where Kagi is known. It is documented plainly in their help text and archive.org has indexed that page as far back as October. https://web.archive.org/web/20221025065617/https://help.kagi...
Thank you for your documented answer !
Re: Update to Kagi Search Pricing
#189Kagi is a bit of a HN darling so I know I'm putting my neck out here, but even after trying the trial, I'm not sure what the value prop is. I would happily pay for a search engine that provided good results, but seeing as it's ostensibly Just Bing under the hood, I'm not sure what I get that I'm not getting from DDG or MetaGer + an ad blocker. Kagi doesn't strike me as a privacy alternative given that all my searches…
I've found being able to change the weight of different origins in search is super powerful over time. I've filtered out most of the SEO spam and low-quality websites that plague my searches in other engines at this point, Kagi doesn't serve them to me. I've also pinned high quality resources like MDN so it always shows up at the top of the list if it has relevant content.
Kagi saves my time and gets me to better results faster. At least for now, my time is worth more than Kagi charges. As long as the math keeps working out that way, I'll continue paying for Kagi.
Re: Update to Kagi Search Pricing
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t think you can have both ad-free (e.g. paid) search and anonymous search at the same time. You have to pick one. And you can’t really fault Kagi for providing the one when the other is already “adequately” covered by Google.
cryptocurrency?
Interesting point.
Maybe Kagi could offer a more privacy friendly "fill a wallet with crypto and we'll deduct a certain amount per search" option that doesnt require user billing data.
Im not a current user but would be more likely to test it if available.