

Chargify News: New Pricing - sahillavingia
http://grasshopper.com/email_assets/chargify-bootstrapper.html

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jacquesm
Why not simply do the right thing, instead of watering it down.

Grow some balls and grandfather in the old accounts under the old conditions
without limitation and let them die in peace or grow until they are good
customers.

You don't wipe away a cock-up like this with a band aid solution, you wipe it
away by going the extra mile. And if you can't go the extra mile because you
really have to do this in order to survive (and apparently there was at least
$60 play in there) then you should publish your figures.

Painful, but it will create the understanding required to make the merchants
swallow the bitter pill.

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patio11
You're saying that Chargify should say "We're on the verge of death -- here's
the stats, our current path is clearly not sustainable, we're hemorrhaging
money on our worst customers" to help with their customer retention for a
component which is mission critical? That would not be the tact I would take.
One _whiff_ of instability and the best clients will be out the door, because
downtime costs them actual money. The only people who would stay are the ones
for whom $100 is expensive compared to their ability to charge customers going
down unexpectedly. In other words, terrible customers who you can't base a
business on.

I've mentioned a time or two that one of the benefits of charging more money
is that it scares away pathological customers. A business which wants
telephone support for their credit card processing systems integration and is
not willing to pay $100 is virtually a textbook pathological customer.

(If it needs saying: I am a bootstrapper. I love boostrappers. Many of us are
pathological customers with unreasonable expectations.)

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jacquesm
If you were made a promise it is no longer an unreasonable expectation.

And while bootstrappers may be misers they also know the value of a contract,
even if it is in the form of the terms of service on a website and a price
point they can live with, which they no doubt researched before signing up.

They understand giving timely notice and the reality of life for other
businesses.

A 180 degree course change needs more of an explanation than 'we do this
because we can', that is (far) more damaging than having some egg on your face
for being overly optimistic.

I've messed up in the past, we gave out 'lifetime' subscriptions for $89.95
and we really made good money on them, for about 3 weeks. The way we plugged
the hole way to stop selling them and to announce a sunset clause that said
that if your account had been dormant for more than 12 months it would get
deleted.

Not a peep.

That's how you deal with mistakes like this, not by suddenly tightening the
noose.

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youmon
Price increase from $0 to $39 without a long transition period still does not
work. If this came out at the start of the day, the outcry would've been same
as $99. Feels different with the "change" but don't be fooled.

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jonknee
It's amazing to see this cycle happen again and again--do the people in charge
not think that "our customers will mind a big mandatory price increase without
any warning or added benefit" applies to their baby? The business they're in
gets cheaper with scale, raising prices significantly appears nothing more
than a money grab. If you need to raise prices, do it for new accounts and
make sure to tell your existing customers thanks for helping build your
company and point out that they're now getting a "steal".

~~~
jacquesm
I don't believe it is quite that simple. I think chargify did not do this on
purpose, but rather was confronted with a large amount of hidden costs that
they did not factor in to their planning. Instead of saying 'sorry, we goofed,
how about this' in concert with their users they chose to see if there was
enough stretch.

But some things are just 'not done', rearranging a deal after the fact is very
bad for business, especially if you are in finance, where trust is everything.

After all, you are literally dealing with your customers money and their trust
is the most important single resource you've got.

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vaksel
their list of benefits is laughable

especially "fully coming out of beta in order to serve you better", because
that beta logo really hindered the user experience

~~~
tdupree
Don't forget "and listening to your Uservoice feedback to develop Spreadable".
How could that possibly be listed as a benefit for chargify users affected by
this pricing change?

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bitsm
Yeah, i didn't understand that one at all. Lame.

~~~
jdee
also, its my understanding that PCI is required for anyone who 'transmits'
card data, i.e anyone who uses the chargify API. If you dont have your game
tight you are not PCI compliant and liable for any card data losses,
regardless of chargify being compliant.

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DevX101
This whole debacle doesn't give me a lot of faith in the ethical integrity of
their leadership. This is a straight mafia move. Do you a small favor for free
and then come back later and demand your lifetime loyalty.

That being said, it's arguably an effective business move. Businesses that
came in early have an uphill battle to switch providers -- many will stay out
of complacency.

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jdee
some reliable self-hosted alternatives for people who need to jump quickly.
rails: <http://github.com/maccman/saasy> rails: <http://railskits.com/saas/>
php: <http://www.opengateway.net/>

~~~
DevX101
Anything for django?

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rwhitman
A chargify clone for django would be a huge win

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steveaz98
The plan all along so $39 doesn't seem so bad compared to $99?

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Aqua_Geek
This sounds like an opportunity for new or existing competitors. Personally,
I'd love to see a service that would store my CC numbers as well so I wouldn't
have to fork out ANOTHER $20/mo to Auth.net. I realize that Braintree does
this, but the $75/mo minimum in transaction fees make it a tough choice for
those just starting to get customers.

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MicahWedemeyer
As an existing Chargify customer, I'm actually very, very glad that Auth.net
is the one storing all the data. It gives me the ability to say bye-bye to
Chargify and jump to one of their competitors, which I'm seriously considering
after this debacle.

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fizx
The duration of the grandfathering is unspecified.

~~~
youmon
30 days is what they said in original email: "While this pricing change will
only affect a small number of merchants, you will need to login to your
account and make the appropriate changes within the next 30 days."

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davidedicillo
too bad doesn't help people who were planning to use them but never sign up
(we left the billing system at last)

~~~
jackowayed
But you're not locked in like people who already have had users sign up and
give Chargify their credit card info, so it's much less of a big deal for you.

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JonM
Good point, I'm currently testing their system but can walk away. I'd be
seriously pissed if I was locked in.

~~~
jackowayed
Oh, well if you're testing it to the extent of having written code to work
with it, you can probably email them saying you've already started integrating
with Chargify and want the bootstrapper plan. But that's assuming you still
want to use them.

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krosaen
anyone have any experience with recurly? <http://recurly.com/pricing>

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mikaelgramont
Never heard of them, I thought they had a service to create gif images of
letters. Char-GIF-y.

