← Back to context

Comment by vignesh_warar

2 years ago

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.

    • > Also, there's more to providing a service than just server time.

      Exactly. So what's the point of limiting the number of searches to 800? The target market is those that rely heavily on search engines, and they're telling them they don't want their business.

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.