I've been using Kagi for about three weeks and the experience has been excellent. I think I reverted to Google maybe twice, and for many searches Kagi has been simply better.
Despite all of this, 10 bucks a month is a tough sell to me. I understand the cost structure, and I am not saying that this product is not something worth paying for, because it is. It feels like the golden age of Google, and that's what I've been looking for.
But there are many other things I could spend 10 bucks a month on, and get much more value from it. I think the problem is that subscriptions as a funding model have such a limited runway for each person, and very quickly you start having to compete against not only other products in the same category (search engines here), but other subscription services. The value you provide not only has to beat Google, but also Netflix, Bitwarden, my email domain and email service, the VPS I'm hosting a few services on and a few other bits and bobs I'm subscribed to. When it comes down to it, I only have so many dollars I can allocate for subscriptions a month, and I don't think Kagi, excellent as it is, will make that cut.
I agree, it's very hard to get me to subscribe to anything, but Kagi managed to do it.
I think the business model can be pretty good, if you are just aiming to build a sustainable business and not a billion dollar venture.
It might be useful for Kagi to look into business/family model that 1Password has. If you have the 1Password business account, you also get the family subscription. One could argue it makes sense for company to pay for Kagi since taking away the ads from the result page makes people more focused on the task and boosts productivity.
Kagi will likely remain a niche product for those who really care about search quality since it will never be able to catch up to google in convenience or integration, etc. That almost by definition limits maximum addressable market to a small fraction of the population. So it makes sense to price it at a premium, or on a per search basis.
Some power users could in fact be money losers for Kagi even at $10 USD/month so moving to usage billing is
probably more likely as it gets greater traction among that crowd.
> The value you provide not only has to beat Google, but also Netflix, Bitwarden...
It's hard to compare the intrinsic value of all services that cost ~10$. Is the ability to search the whole Internet, something you do every single day multiple times, less valuable than watching Netflix shows a few hours every week? Our perceptive is seriously skewed because we've had free (paid with ads+data) web search engines for almost as long as we've had the web. On the other hand, Netflix seems incredibly cheap because for a long time before it, legal access to movies and series was expensive and hard/impossible due to strong copyright laws.
Despite all of this, 10 bucks a month is a tough sell to me. I understand the cost structure, and I am not saying that this product is not something worth paying for, because it is. It feels like the golden age of Google, and that's what I've been looking for.
But there are many other things I could spend 10 bucks a month on, and get much more value from it. I think the problem is that subscriptions as a funding model have such a limited runway for each person, and very quickly you start having to compete against not only other products in the same category (search engines here), but other subscription services. The value you provide not only has to beat Google, but also Netflix, Bitwarden, my email domain and email service, the VPS I'm hosting a few services on and a few other bits and bobs I'm subscribed to. When it comes down to it, I only have so many dollars I can allocate for subscriptions a month, and I don't think Kagi, excellent as it is, will make that cut.