
SparkPost no longer offering FREE plan to new signups - saluki
Received this email from SparkPost this morning:<p>Hello,<p>If you’ve ever worked with a member of the SparkPost team, you know how strongly we believe in being transparent about how and why we do business. That’s why I’m writing to you.<p>SparkPost is adjusting our service plans today. We’re doing it to better fit how our customers use SparkPost and to simplify the range of plans we offer.<p>As a result, we will no longer offer our “100K free messages&#x2F;month” plan to new customers, and technical support for this plan will end on October 16, 2017. When you signed up, we promised that if we ever changed the terms of our 100K free plan, we would continue to honor the original plan for the life of the account. I would like to reaffirm this promise: while this plan is no longer available to new customers, you are grandfathered into this level of free sending volume.
I think you’ll agree our updated service offerings continue to deliver more value at a lower cost than any alternative. Among the highlights of our new plans are benefits like:<p>Telephone and email support are standard features of every new paid plan.
Paid plans of 150,000 messages or more per month also include a free dedicated IP address.
If you’re considering migrating to a paid account to take advantage of the improved support and other benefits they offer, we’d like to make it really easy for you: we’re offering current free and paying customers a discount for the first three months of paid service on a new plan. Upgrade by September 16, 2017, to take advantage of this discount.<p>You can learn more about these new features and other changes to our service plans on our blog.<p>We’re grateful you’ve put your trust in SparkPost to deliver email to your customers’ inboxes. If you have any questions or concerns about the changes we’re making, please email me directly. I’d very much like to hear from you.<p>Best regards,<p>Phillip Merrick
CEO, SparkPost
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voldemort08
There simply just isn't any value in an email product that doesn't include
support, so this is without a doubt a bait and switch. By ending technical
support, you end up forcing customers to upgrade the second an IP is
blacklisted (usually because of another customer on the same IP) or whatever.
I'd have a lot more respect for SparkPost if they just ended the free plan
altogether instead of using tactics like this.

The strategy here is now clear - price at unsustainable levels to attract new
users and dramatically raise prices (by more than 2x and overages higher than
that!) to drive revenue.

Thanks SparkPost. We'll be looking elsewhere.

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tracysestili
Hi, I work at SparkPost and I want to clarify that we still have a free plan
at 15K/month. This email was sent to existing customers to let them know that
we are honoring that commitment and that everyone on the current plan gets to
retain it if they wish. Here's a link to our developer plan.
[https://www.sparkpost.com/pricing/#developer-
plan](https://www.sparkpost.com/pricing/#developer-plan)

