
Ask HN: Help Price Website Builder - zupa-hu
Hi all!<p>I have a dream of providing a website builder for everyone on the planet. I have a working, robust product, people tell me the results start to look great. So far it has been free but obviously this model doesn&#x27;t scale. I can&#x27;t possibly pay the operating costs for that many websites.<p>I wanted to come up with a pricing that is 1) free for hobby sites, 2) really cheap for professional use, 3) pays the bills. Here is the best I was able to come up with:<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;boomla-theme.boomla.net&#x2F;pricing<p>What do you think? (Time to be ruthless.) Or maybe you can suggest something even better?<p>Cheers,
Tibor
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gus_massa
If patio11 ever read this, he would say:

fake quote> _Raise your price! Raise your price! Raise your price!_

[https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/saas_pric...](https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/saas_pricing)

[https://www.kalzumeus.com/2006/08/14/you-can-probably-
stand-...](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2006/08/14/you-can-probably-stand-to-
charge-more/)

Also, the price structure is too complicated. How much should I pay for an
obscure blog that is hit from time to time with a small HN visit?

Take a look at [https://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/04/03/fantasy-
tarsnap/](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/04/03/fantasy-tarsnap/) HN
discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7523953](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7523953)
801 points | Apr 3, 2014 | 311 comments. But note that cperviva actualy
lowered his price a few days after this post. Not everyone agree with patio11
:).

~~~
zupa-hu
Appreciate the first comment!

Yeah, I know that is patio11's slogen. Interestingly, my users never tell me
this. :D Also, I think having to pay $19/month is prohibitive for way too many
use cases. Like, there are lots of websites on Boomla that are personal, web
based documents. Eg. notes on how to play Bridge, the card game.

Anyways, I'll check out the links you sent again.

> Also, the price structure is too complicated. How much should I pay for an
> obscure blog that is hit from time to time with a small HN visit?

Interesting point. Let's say you get 50k visitors at a 1MB page load size.
Substracting the free tier, that's 50GB data transfer -> $3.6. Visit pricing
would be $49. CPU is probably $0.

If you get to the front page 1x a year, that's on average $4.4/mo. It's very
unlikely that you will be on the front page very often. Do you think that's
reasonable?

I understand your concern is that it's complicated. True, but if it wasn't,
I'd spread the cost of high-traffic websites on everyone. So instead of paying
$1/mo you would have to pay $10/mo. Or I'd have to cancel your account as many
hosting companies do. As a user, I'd rather have my own electricity usage
metered.

Wouldn't you agree?

~~~
gus_massa
Nobody ask to be charged more, but trusting you to put the credit card number
is difficult, so the people that would pay $1 per month and $2 per month is
almost the same.

I have my electricity usage metered, but I have a very good estimation that
the bill next month will be $40 or $50 (The numbers are in US$. Hi from
Argentina!)

The phone bill is more tricky. It´s usualy $10 (It is metered here, including
local calls). But there are a lot of posible events that may increase the bill
a lot. For example calling a mobile phone or calling abroad. I make a few
calls to mobile phones and I very rarely call abroad, but it is scarry that
the bill is essencialy unbounded.

With a webpage, it is more difficult to have a good estimation of the cost
beforehand.

~~~
zupa-hu
Yes, good point. I ended up removing the variable cost.

Hello from Hungary! :)

