Update and Revisions to Pricing Plans
August 19th, 2007 / 47 CommentsFirst off, we would like to apologize to all of our users who feel as though they have been mislead by the recent change in our pricing structure. Although this was certainly never our intention, we recognize that some of you are upset. We also understand that these changes may cost us a portion of our user-base, but we feel they are necessary to maintain the health and development of Vitalist.
The main reason for this change is that the advertisements on the free accounts never seemed quite right to us. We always felt they were too intrusive and detracted from the effectiveness of Vitalist. In the end, we did not feel that the little revenue generated by the ads was worth the negative aspects.
After deliberating over the feedback and emails we have received since announcing the changes, we have decided to modify the structure of the free and basic plans. The free plan is meant to give users enough functionality to be able to decide whether Vitalist is for them and worth upgrading to use. To that extent, we are raising the number of projects (active), contexts, and contacts available in the free plan to 10 each. Also, because the Basic plan ($5/month) is designed to have enough functionality to satisfy the vast majority of our users, we are bumping the number of projects (active), contexts, and contacts to 50 each.
I really appreciate the review and response to the users comments. I still don’t believe the $10/mo charge will result in many new subscribers. Good Luck!!
Is the deal to upgrade to the Premium plan for $5 still availible for the already registered users?
I have been using Vitalist for a couple of weeks, and it is without doubt the best GTD tool I have found. I am currently on the Basic plan at $5 as it fits all my needs, but I still think that $10 is good value.
Well, I really like vitalist and would happily put a few bucks into it, but still I was a little bit scared by the initial announcement. This one is a step forward to the right direction, but paying 5$/month to get limitations is a no-way for me. Come on, I don’t use attachements or contacts, so that would be 60$/year for just managing lists!
How about a cheaper plan for poor people like me who don’t care about attachements or contacts? I’m pretty sure the mass of users who would not give up on vitalist would be worth the measure.
I cannot live any kind of decent organised life without Vitalist - I love it! I do wonder if it is worth $120 per year as I have so many other aps and gagets to consider the cost of running. Lots of programs etc now have an annual usage/maintenance fee rather than a one off purchase fee and I am having to consider very carefully what I sign up for and what the future cost will be - they do add up over the year. I would also want to sign up for the Premium package if the $5 per month offer was still available. Thank you for considering all the comments of your clients - I think your responsiveness is outstanding!
Well I posted critically on the last post, so I’ll post positively on this one. Great to hear you guys are listening to your customers. 10 contexts is much, much more doable and fairer than 5. It’s enough that you can live with it, while all the while thinking “Hmmm…it IS only $5 a month to update…”. And THAT’S where you want your for-free crowd to be at.
You won me back.
All paid customer should have an expectation of security. SSL only for the most expensive plan? Wrong mentality, guys.
$5 per month is still $60 pa, for ever. Assuming a 30 year usage, that’s $1800 - that’s a lot of money.
Thanks, though, for the reassesment - it’s good to know that you listen.
However, I still won’t be committing to upgrade until you give a roadmap of your plans for enhancements over the next year. There’s a lot of functionality missing from Vitalist, and I’ll need to know when you plan to add it before I pay you money as though I’m getting a full service.
Kudos to listening to your users and modifying your plans. I still will not be coming back to Vitalist because giving us 5 more contexts is still not the right thing to do. I agree with one of the last commenters on the announcement post: FREE should be unlimited contexts, projects, contacts and RSS and iCal feeds. That is it. File attachments, storage spaces, collaboration, and other things should be the upgrade. It is still not about the money, it is about respecting your users (which you have taken a stride forward with this announcement) and creating a great product then changing the dynamics of it after a year.
I think alot of people here are being unreasonable. The Vitalist developers need to feed their families too. It’s just like any other shareware app that gives limited functionality until you pay to unlock it.
As long as they still allow current users to take advantage of the $5 premium plan then its a good deal. If you use the service, then subscribe now and get the premium unlimited plan for as long as our subscribed.
I’m happy that you intend the Basic plan to be suitable for “the vast majority” of users and encourage you to stick with that. $5/mo is ok but few people will pay $10.
What I do worry about is that the free plan may be a little too good. I use Vitalist heavily, as my only to-do organizer, and even with no limits on my usage I only have 10 projects and 5 contexts, because that’s what makes most sense for me. So I’m concerned that people who start on Free may never need to upgrade to Basic - which would be bad, since I want you guys to be very successful and keep on providing me with the best product there is for GTD-style organizing (and I’ve used a LOT of them).
@ Brian - yes, they need to make money. But, before I commit to giving them $1800 over the next 30 years, I’d like to know what the development roadmap is. Right now, Vitalist is very nice for something that is free to the user. However, in its current state I would pay the $60 first year’s fees for it as an absolute, once-and-forever payment. I am willing to take that leap of faith and start paying money in return for a promise that it will be good soon, but I want to know what “good” means and when “soon” is.
Um, that’s “In its current state I WOULDN’T pay …”
I commend Vitalist on listening to the voice of their users. I probably could get by on 10 projects, but I intend to subscribe to the Basic plan to support this worthwhile web app.
I don’t want to turn this into a flame war, but I hope none of the web apps in use today are still here in 30 years. That is simply not web-like thinking. If you feel guaranteed that Google or 37signals or any web-focused company, let alone an application, will be here in 30 years, you either know more than all of Wall Street combined or you have unrealistic expectations.
$1800 over 30 years? Are you serious? Have you ever heard of discounting? That sounds like a lot, but $5/month in 20 years is NOTHING today. So that isn’t the best criticism of the new pricing system. In fact, by that argument, going to Starbucks 3 times a week ($3/visit) will cost you $12,960: holy crap, a new car! –> Never buy coffee.
2Nickd: Don’t you think about to calculate all expenses you can do for the next 60 years?
@Mike - yes, that’s $1800 at present values, assuming the monthly cost of Vitalist keeps track with some reasonable measure of inflation.
What’s your point? Or you just want to wave your willy?
@Victor - Sorry, but I don’t understand what you mean.
I agree wholeheartedly with Michael; paying plans should be for things like large attachments etc. Number of projects/context should not be limited. If you want the free plan to be a way to ‘try out’ the software, just offer a free trial of the full deal, not a limited free plan. That doesn’t make sense.
“The main reason for this change is that the advertisements on the free accounts never seemed quite right to us.”
-Rule #1: Do what seems right to your USERS.
Justin: I second that opinion. It’s just too easy to appeal users with a (great, we all agree on that) service that is free and to lock them afterwards with limitations if they don’t pay.
My point is: either 10 projects/contexts and 50 actions is not enough, either $10/month to have “normal” service is too much. I do not even mention the $5 plan because making your users pay to still have context/projects limitations is not respectful at all in my opinion.
@NickD: If you met me in person, would you make such a silly insult? $1800 is not a present value. Assume a risk-free interest rate of 5% (r). Then $60/year for 30 years is…..
$922.35 is today’s dollars. [formula = (60/.05)*(1 - (1/1.05^30))] That assumes you pay $60 once a year. The real PV is lower.
Again, that is 30 years of 24-7 availability!
Ooops. I guess the flame war is starting.
I didn’t do it!
@Mike - no insult, just an observation. Yes, I omitted averaging the net contrubution over the years, so my $1800 PV is actually the PV effectively due in 15 years time. Your calculation omitted to discount the interest rate for inflation.
I still reckon $1800 is a lot of money to pay with no visibility of when the product is going to become genuinely useful.
@NickD
I have to disagree. I find Vitalist to be extremely useful in its current state. If you don’t find it useful now, I don’t think you will ever. The way I look at it, $5/mo is a small price to pay for efficiency.
Well, that’s OK then. Mr Anonymous likes it, so everyone must find it useful, and all development should stop.
This thread is doing a good job in pushing me away from Vitalist, just when I was coming round to making an “on faith” payment for a year to see whetehr the guys can commit to a development plan to make it useful by adding things like task dependencies and a good user interface for adding tasks (regrettably, at the moment they seem to be more interested in adding whizzy things to excite the techies, like an “XML export” and an “API”).
Just wanted to say that I, and I’m sure many others, really appreciate your alterations because of the feedback. It’s a big shift and a welcome one and, although I wish it hadn’t had to happen I am grateful that 10 contexts etc is workable.
I wish you luck with it. Thanks, Will
I’m with NickD on wanting a more comprehensive road map against which to make my “on faith” payment for the coming year. The Feature Requests forum is packed full with a bewildering list of wishes, but we do need Vitalist to sift out the big items that will keep us devotees as customers not turn us into leavers.
cheers
Ned
Well put, Ned. If we can get a roadmap from Vitalist before the deadline for discounted sign-ups, I’ll sign up for a year on faith. Otherwise, I might either sign up for a month, or move to another solution.
@NickD
Quite the reaction. There is a difference between useful and beta. This is not a beta program. I utilize it daily and it has been extremely beneficial. I’ve tried many alternatives and nothing comes close. I look forward to further development that will only enhance a good product. However, if it had no additional development, I still see it better than the rest and well worth the $5/mo.
No, if they are wanting to charge for it, it clearly isn’t a beta programme. I’m pleased that it works for the way you work. It almost works for me - it needs some improvements before it is usable. I want to knwo what the roadmap for development is before I sign-up. That OK by you?
As I’ve said before, I am a Vitalist fan and truly want it to succeed. But, I still don’t think the revised pricing features are right. Example: If I have 10,000 actions does it really make that much difference (cost wise for Vitalist) if I have 50 projects or 100?
My suggestion is to alter Basic to be a $5 per month plan that INCLUDES UNLIMITED projects/contexts/contacts, and EXCLUDES sharing and file attachments. To me, that is a rationale BASIC profile that fits with the real world.
Premium (at $10/month) should be for users of advanced features INCLUDING sharing and file attachments. These are the features that can significantly affect operating costs for Vitalist. Personally, I have occasionally used file attachments to transport something from home to work or vice versa. I like the option a lot, but I need unlimted Projects more. I can find some other way to transport atttachments.
Have a great one!
@MikeDidIt
Fully agree!!
@ Mike
Yes, the mix of features in the tiers hasn’t made much sense to me. I do question, though, whether sharing needs to be a premium tier feature. I don’t plan to use sharing, but AIUI, for sharing to be useful, you have to be paying for at least two accounts, and to make those accounts double the price each as well seems to be an extra escalation, when organisations who use sharing might be expecting a bulk discount.
@whiners
Do you understand the costs of hosting a secure online app? Do you know what goes into developing a multi-tenant environment? Those of you who are too cheap to pay $5 per month, just go. You’re just too ignorant to see the value in this app.
Not whining here, in fact I just bought a year of the premium plan.
The only thing I will mention is I considered looking for another app simply because I was thinking of getting my wife onto whatever TODO app I am using and while she will use it very little and the free plan would generally cover her I would have liked to have the sharing functionality. On balance I prefer to stick with Vitalist and am happy to pay for myself but am thinking that price at $49 per year for premium is probably a little high-side for lighter users that want all the features. I was thinking maybe the free plan should allow sharing with a maximum of one other user, and one of the two has to be premium… something like that. Thats my two-cents.
Well, just to put things into perspective, Toodledo, another very good list-handling app (still prefer Vitalist though) asks $14.95/year for a pro account. In the light of that the $60/$120 of Vitalist seems very, very excessive. My suggestion is that you guys set up more reasonnable prices.
Do you work in marketing, Vincent?
NickD,
I am not connected to Vitalist in any way, other than being a user. I checked out a variety of GTD apps, and this was the best. If you like it, and want it to succeed, you should support it. I sell a hosted business application that is much more expensive than Vitalist, and people pay for it because of the value it brings to them. If Vitalist helps organize your life and makes you more successful as a result, don’t you think $5 per month is reasonable? If not, how much of your labor do you give away for free?
i appreciate the rethinking of the pricing… however, i still believe that MikeDidIt is closer to right… I sell photos in the “microstock” market and i’m becoming a big fan of selling in VOLUME (and i’m selling thousands of photos which i never would have sold at traditional pricing)… which means you earn more money by selling something at a lower price which attracts more and more purchasers than if you price your product more traditionally. I still think that $5/month = $60/year (not the discounted yearly price obviously but even $49 is too much). People buy paper planners at between $10 and $40 a year (franklin planners etc) so in my mind $60 for an electronic version is way overpriced. $15 to $20 a year would get more sales in my mind.
@ Vincent
I checked out a variety of GTD apps, and this was the best.
Agreed.
you should support it
In what way do you believe I am not supporting it? I am one of the most active users in the forums in suggesting new features, reporting bugs, and so on. I have said that I will be buying at least one month’s subscription. All I am asking is that before I commit to a year’s subscription, and, more importantly, commit to increasing the amount of my life stored in Vitalist, I would like to see the roadmap for development over the next few months, so I can find out if the changes I need are ones that are going to be included.
If not, how much of your labor do you give away for free?
Please indicate where you think I have asked someone to give me something for free.
You guys are right, and I’ve found a less expensive, manual solution. I went to OSH and got a roll of twine for $2.68. If I make each finger and toe a “project”, I can tie the twine on my digits and use each piece as an “action” reminder. I have to admit, it looks funny, but it’s cheap, and that’s the point, right? Oh, I also got the OSH guy to give the the roadmap for the twine, and he told me about the stronger hemp based twine that will be coming soon. It’s all very exciting…
Good - hope it works for you. As for me, I’ll be sticking with an online, paid-for solution.
[…] For a while I used MonkeyGTD. Then I switched to Vitalist. I was pretty happy with Vitalist, until they announced a new, restrictive pricing plan. Even though they revised it, I had already changed systems. […]
When does this officially start and where do I pay? Hopefully not paypal, please O God. (My non-profit company pays for my vitalist so not as big an issue to me and is cheaper than the funeral they would feel obligated to pay for if my vitalist went away as I would have to blow my head off).
@jordan fowler
The full change will go into effect soon. We are working on some back-end systems and are waiting until they are finished before we begin limiting the accounts.
Also, we have our own payment system now. So, as an alternative to Paypal, you can set up a credit card subscription directly with us.
My 2 cents: I understand there are development/server costs and so forth. However, I also am a paid user on services like Flickr (which I might add it 29$/year). To me, vitalist is worth about the same, and if there was a yearly package in the same price range, I would purchase it. But $60 a year is too much for something I can either 1) get for free somewhere else, or 2) do myself manually.
My 2 cents.
J