
Why Fontdeck is Retiring - dangrossman
http://blog.fontdeck.com/post/133794978966/why-fontdeck-is-retiring
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aaronbrethorst
I pulled this line from their pricing page:

    
    
        Typical price is $7.50/year per font
    

And that, in a sentence, is their real problem: underpriced by at least an
order—if not two—of magnitude.

~~~
pavlov
You have to remember that any typeface you'd want to use probably consists of
several fonts. Usually you have at least regular, bold, italic and bold
italic.

So that's already four fonts: 4*7.50 = $30 / year.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
$30/year = $2.50/month. Good luck trying to run a business on that.

~~~
pavlov
True. In my case, I've been paying for 10 fonts. That's $6.25 / month -- still
peanuts.

If they had doubled the price and changed the billing period to 6 months, I
wouldn't even have noticed because the price is so low.

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dansingerman
There's no mention of them trying to sell it. I wonder if they tried? I'd
imagine anything with 1000s of paying customers would have some interest.

~~~
pavlov
Yeah, kind of weird.

IIRC there are foundries whose fonts are only available on Fontdeck. (I pay
for some fonts on Fontdeck for that reason.)

Wouldn't that exclusivity have market value for someone like Adobe's TypeKit?
But perhaps the contracts with the foundries have a termination clause that
activates if Fontdeck were acquired, so the buyer would have to renegotiate.

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vinceyuan
> _we have thousands of paying customers_

> _Typical price is $7.50 /year per font_

Assume there are 5000 paying customers. The annual income is only $37500. It's
too low. The company is running out of money.

