Wow, thanks for all the feedback. Several customers have shares some compelling work flows and stories with us. We are excited about how you’re using the product today and we want to continue to be useful to you. As a result, we are making a few additional improvements to our pricing and signup flow.
Push Notifications
We heard from a lot of developers that you depend on the push notifications today to find out about subscription changes. There are ways to find out about these changes without push notifications, but they’re not as ideal for lots of you. As a result, we are including the basic push notifications in the Bootstrap plan for $99/mo. These notifications will alert you to new/closed accounts, and new/upgraded/canceled/expired subscriptions. To receive notifications about individual payments and renewal periods (coming soon), you will still need to subscribe to the Early Stage plan.
Trial Periods
The other updates will be to the trial periods. Developers are willing to trade a 30-day trial period for more time to do the implementation and testing. We want people to try our product and compare it to building it themselves and the competition. We want that transparency. The 30-day trial accomplished the testing phase, but reducing the risk around when you choose to go live is more important to our customers. So, this weekend, we will be updating our signup flow so our service is free to try indefinitely — you can go live on your own schedule and only pay when you’re ready to roll us into production.
Beta Customers
We love all the customers that took a chance on us early on. For the customers that signed up with us before our updated pricing, we will offer you a month of free service after you’re ready to go live. Drop us an email at pricing@recurly.com (pricing null@null recurly NULL.com) if you still have concerns about our pricing and we will give you an extra month of free service.
Thanks again for all of your feedback — you all are critical for shaping this company. Please look for the above changes this weekend. We will be updating the application and signup process shortly.
As always, please feel free to share your thoughts. I will be working thru the weekend to reply to your feedback to date.
Thanks,
Isaac
9 Comments
I still think you’re a tier off there. Push notifications go with hosted payment pages precisely because what’s going on off-site (on your site) isn’t known to our applications. If we have API access we don’t really need push notifications (though they’re useful), we already know what’s happening because we’re initiating all the actions and can poll for changes at the time they become necessary (such as when a user is logging in, to see if their plan has changed).
I’m still waiting to hear how, on the $50 plan, my app could know which users are subscribed and which ones aren’t. With no API and no push notifications, I just don’t see how that’s possible. And if it’s not possible, then what good is the $50 plan to anyone?
I hope anyone considering Recurly looks past this perky, cheery facade (“Wow, thanks for all the feedback… We love all the customers that took a chance on us early on.”) to see a company that’s proved wholly incapable of treating its users with decency.
Regarding the $49/mo plan, there are dozens of companies using the hosted payment pages without any API integration at all. These customers have a product that is typically not a SaaS model. For them, this package is a great deal and offers a lot of value beyond Authorize.NET’s or PayPal’s hosted subscribe page offerings. The Weekend Project plan is meant for customers who want to accept subscriptions yet do not have any developers on staff. They typically link to their signup form and can start accepting subscriptions pretty quickly — it’s a simple process.
For the other two plans, these are now significantly cheaper for the majority of our customers. The fees are capped at $99 or $199 instead of $2,650/mo. It’s a great bargain for the service.
Chargify: Free up to 50 customers, $49 up to 500 customers
Spreedly: $19 + 20 cents per transaction
CheddarGetter: Free up to 20 customers, $39 up to 1000 customers
Recurly: $99 for 0 customers
Sorry, I have no idea what’s going through your mind, and these changes don’t help. I will be asking for you to give me back my customer information as soon as I have time to undo two Recurly integrations (w3counter.com and diffmon.com, 36000 combined users) I spent the past month working on.
“A great bargain for the service.” Smooth delivery of the up-sell.
BTW, there still has been no response to the support tickets I opened on Monday and other tickets by other customers I’m following due to having the same issues. Being kicked in the balls with a business model change aside, how can I stay with you if you’re too small a team to handle some backlash on a blog while also continuing to fix bugs and respond to customers?
@Dave: You’re being a bit unfair to Recurly. “…proved wholly incapable of treating its users with decency.” Seriously? They didn’t have to listen to you. They didn’t have to try to make the subscription plans better. I’m positive they would have been able to do just fine with their original changes (simplicity is key).
@Dan: I like how you mention that you have 36000 users but you don’t mention how many of them are subscribers. If you really had 36000 subscribers, Recurly would be the best pricing:
Chargify: $2499/mo Unlimited customers
Spreedly: Charged per transaction. Let’s just say each of your subscribers paid $1/mo. That’s $36,000/mo * 0.02 = $720/mo. (plus $19/mo fee)
Or you can pay $699 up front and get it for $360/mo … assuming you only charge $1/mo.
CheddarGetter: $169.00/month (10,000) + $0.06 per additional customer/month (26,000 * 0.06 = $1,560). Total: $1,729/mo
Recurly: $49 or $99 or $199 for unlimited customers
“One of these things is not like the others. Which one is different?” (this line is a joke…if you don’t get it: go here (http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/watch?v=ueZ6tvqhk8U))
For somewhat larger business, this is “well, duh!” pricing.
For startups, not so much; but the fact that they now allow you all the time you need for developing sure helps a lot.
Wow. I came back to see if anyone responded to my last comment…. guess not. I’m amazed.