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Algolia introduces pay-as-you-go pricing for search

blog.algolia.com

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Re: Algolia introduces pay-as-you-go pricing for search

#61

Post by jlemoine »

jabo wrote: post #35
alooPotato wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We (Streak) are in the same boat. Looks like we'd be paying approx half a million dollars a month on their new pricing which would be ~100x more than we are paying now. Haven't heard from our enterprise rep but starting to get nervous... Sounds like the new pricing is for their ecommerce customers given how much value they provide them, doesn't seem to make sense anymore for SaaS use cases.

Out of curiosity, could you expand on how it doesn't make sense for SaaS use cases?

I am the co-founder of Algolia, we have a dedicated pricing for the SaaS use cases that we call OEM pricing (in a few words pay per GB of usage).

When we have a platform, it is very hard to have a pricing that works perfectly well for all industries and that is simple!

Re: Algolia introduces pay-as-you-go pricing for search

#62

Post by jlemoine »

jhgg wrote: post #24

Why the indirection in the pricing page. Like, if a unit is 1,000 searches/month, why not just put that in the matrix. Free = 10,000 searches/month. Standard = $1 per 1,000 searches. ... Pay as you go: 1,000 - 10,000 searches = Free 11,000 - 100,000 searches = $1.00/ 1,000 searches The whole to unit conversion really just adds a level of indirection that I don't understand. This was further confused by units having d…

(I am the co-founder and CTO of Algolia).

Thanks for your feedback, we have some more work to make our pricing page clear. We need to add a simulator on this page.

The reason of this indirection is that we still have to deal with data/record. It is unfortunately not possible to pay only for searches, you can imagine a use case that push 100GB of data and perform only a few searches. The unit gives access to 1k searches request and 1k records. For the majority of users, they will pay per searches.

For SaaS use case, we have a different pricing where we price per GB with volume discount.

There is a volume discount, so the more units you consume, the cheaper they are. And if you commit to a year, the volume discount applies on your your yearly capacity. This give you a significant discount if you commit to a year. This is how you can have overages. Of course if you stay on a month-to-month play, there is no overages.

Re: Algolia introduces pay-as-you-go pricing for search

#63

Post by jlemoine »

atonse wrote: post #6

We've loved algolia for the 2-3 sites we've used it for. The speed is unbeatable. I wish we could've used it for one of our HIPAA use cases (patient data). I could've rolled out powerful search for an internal site in a day, but instead I'm having to build in postgres full text search and looking longingly at them.

(I am the CTO and Co-founder), we are HIPAA compliant since 2020 and we can support your use case

Re: Algolia introduces pay-as-you-go pricing for search

#64

Post by jlemoine »

kolencherry wrote: post #11
atonse wrote: post #6

We've loved algolia for the 2-3 sites we've used it for. The speed is unbeatable. I wish we could've used it for one of our HIPAA use cases (patient data). I could've rolled out powerful search for an internal site in a day, but instead I'm having to build in postgres full text search and looking longingly at them.

Doesn't Algolia offer BAAs? I thought I had seen it as part of their Enterprise plan.

Yes indeed, it is recent (since 2020)

Re: Algolia introduces pay-as-you-go pricing for search

#65

Post by jlemoine »

AznHisoka wrote: post #29

These guys are probably planning to IPO next year. And when they file the S1 they can claim they had 100% year over year growth (mostly due to price increases).

(I am the CTO and Co-founder). I can reassure you this is not the case, I don't have visibility on when we will do an IPO and we grandfather all existing customers. We always did that and we still have customers today on 2013 pricing! It bring a lot of complexity internally.

We released this new pricing only because we are convinced this is better for customers.

Re: Algolia introduces pay-as-you-go pricing for search

#66

Post by jlemoine »

grouseway wrote: post #28

For comparison, the old free plan used to be 10k records plus 100k searches. That would be $100/month now. I think the new plan makes sense if you're selling to sites with purchase intent, but for searching knowledgebases it seems like it's way too expensive -- the value per search just isn't there. Especially when using instant searching and counting each slightly debounced keystroke as a search.

(I am the CTO and co-founder) This is not exactly true, the previous free plan was 10k records and 100k API calls (counting all indexing operations and all search API call).

We now only count search request and we did a simulation on our existing free plan base, offering 10 units cover all of them.

Btw, we keep offering more quota for opensource projects.

Re: Algolia introduces pay-as-you-go pricing for search

#67

Post by jlemoine »

krasin wrote: post #16
wolco wrote: post #14

A dollar for 1,000 queries. A million queries costs $10000 dollars? For that money there are so many better options.

If a dollar is for 1000 queries, a million queries costs $1000, not $10000.

(I am the CTO and co-founder). It seems like most people missed that we introduced volume discount in the model.

On this example: - 1M queries per month $847 in full pay-as-you-go - 1M queries per month with yearly commitment cost $7200 per year ($600 per month)

Re: Algolia introduces pay-as-you-go pricing for search

#69

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

ysavir wrote: post #38
jabo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, could you expand on how it doesn't make sense for SaaS use cases?

Not the GP, but I figure their point is as follows: If I'm running an e-commerce website, I don't mind pay-per-search since those searches may turn into sales, so the cost is justified. My income scales with search count, and the Algolia price is part of user acquisition costs. If I'm running a SaaS business, the search is a feature for customers who have already paid, so I don't see any further returns from the sear…

Does an e-commerce site search really need anything more than fuzzy matching on item names? It pay not be perfect, but if it provides relevant results 90% of the time, you're paying a big premium for SaaS search that may only net you a small tail end of additional sales.
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