Comment by Brajeshwar
2 years ago
May be it is just me and I'm sure you have put in good effort to justify the pricing. However, that $10+ makes me think, “Do I really need this? I can stay without this and am I missing anything, perhaps from gaining something outsized?”
If this was like $4.99 /mo with an annual of $49.99, I might have just done it; even if I may not use immediately but to support someone starting out.
Or alternatively, a $9.99 /mo ($99.99 annual) would still be something within a budget that I'm not over-thinking.
My thoughts.
The pricing page shows me $15/month for 800 searches. There's no way that pricing is going to work. Even setting aside the issue of getting people to pay that much, who is going to track their number of searches to make sure they don't go over the limit? And nobody that does 10 searches a day - which is about the limit if you don't want to think about this - is going to pay for a search engine.
This. I opened the pricing page and saw the 2 tiers and immediately closed it when $15/mo wouldn't get me unlimited. I'm not tracking search counts, I have no idea how frequently or how much I search, and ultimately I don't need an extra decision of "is this worth $0.018 to search for?" when I want to search for something. The concept sounds interesting but I'm not so confident in it being that much better that I'd accept that cost decision every time I search.
Unlimited would be different. $15/mo to search as much as I want, it's still insanely steep since I can get so much more for so much less on the internet but at least I wouldn't have to accept a per search cost decision.
Agreed. Pricing needs improvement. Not just in the bang-for-your-buck sense, but the per-search model. Right now I have the following questions:
1. What counts as a search? If I go to page 2 of search results, does that use up another search?
2. If I have to refine my search to get the results I actually want, can I get a refund for all the searches I made that didn't predict how the query would be interpreted?
3. What happens when I meet the limit? Am I charged per-search? Can I just no longer search?
4. If I meet the limit and then go to DDG, or Google or whatever, are you okay with that? What if the results there are good enough that I start wondering whether or not I want to pay $15/month for a search engine? How much is retaining a paying customer worth to you?
5. If I have to start counting my search numbers, I'm very quickly going to learn to search less. And the better I get at searching less, the less need I'll have for a search engine, let alone a paid service. Are you worried about your pricing model pushing people towards non-search engine solutions of exploring the web and/or finding web pages?
As far as I'm concerned: Charge whatever you need to charge to be profitable. This can only work if it's self-sustaining without external influence. A good compromise might be to offer a psychologically attractive price point for less searches, and a slightly higher one for more searches at a round number - 800 is the weirdest number :)
Agreed. There is room for different plans, but we want some search metric to define the pricing.
On a side note, I truly did not want to put up a paywall. But, it is necessary to support our servers.
I find it hard to believe that I, a casual, occasional googler, would demand $10/m of server time.
Not everyone's search needs are the same. I gladly pay for Kagi every month, despite how at least 80% of people would never consider paying for whatever The Google already gives them. If you're fine with ads and limited control over your search results, then use The Google.
Also, there's more to providing a service than just server time.
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Another thread mentioned something like a 30day unlimited trial. That could be a good way to gather metrics on how many searches/day to expect from users, and should help with pricing.
Which part of the service actually costs you more money? Is it the cpu/bandwidth of returning search results, or is it the indexing that happens before then, or the storage/memory?
Maybe instead of charging per # of queries, you could charge per number of sites the user follows/searches? You could always leave something in the ToS about abuse to have an option to stop users who are making an excessive number of searches.
Don’t feel bad for seeking revenue from your customers. This is the correct incentive. Find pricing models that work.