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"fairly polite" email, eh? That's actually a very reasonable business practice of asking then charging instead of just making a site go dark. The Ghost CEO sh

"fairly polite" email, eh? That's actually a very reasonable business practice of asking then charging instead of just making a site go dark. The Ghost CEO should have taken the higher road and there's no excuse for expunging your site but you were definitely being a dick first. I won't be using Ghost and I would try to avoid having you as a customer as well.

dijit 6y ago
I don’t think the argument was that he wanted the site to go dark. The author wanted them to block out offending features until the account was upgraded with purpose. Maybe an upsell screen overlay when he tried to add another staff member. “To add more staff you need to upgrade your account, upgrade with 1 click here” I don’t agree that it’s “shady” but you can already tell that it would negatively affect conversion to directly inform people of what they’re doing, rather than waiting for them to do it and then automatically upgrading them. If you charge on some unknown, like requests per second, then it’s better to allow the user to set an upper bound on finances anyway.
- masklinn 6y ago
  > I don’t agree that it’s “shady” but you can already tell that it would negatively affect conversion to directly inform people of what they’re doing, rather than waiting for them to do it and then automatically upgrading them. "shady" is an understatement, not an overstatement. "If we auto-upgrade, there will be people who miss it or will be too apathetic or procrastinating to fix it, therefore better conversion rates" is on the bad side of "shady".
- drenvuk 6y ago
  How else am I supposed to read his tweet? He asked what happens if his site goes viral directly after asking for the extra users feature to be blocked. I think it's ridiculous to look for some finely grained charging scheme from a start up.
- masonic 6y ago
  “To add more staff you need to upgrade your account, upgrade with 1 click here” Can a Ghost user comment as to what you are told in the process of adding a rate-exceeding feature? Does it warn you that "this will result in a category upgrade if it persists over 7 days" or whatever?
- DanBC 6y ago
  The author talks about going viral. He also says that these higher plan features should just be disabled. To me that appears to mean that he wants his site to go dark if he goes over traffic limits. Here's what Ghost does if you go over your traffic limits: > Average views per month > Views refer to the number of requests to your site each month. These are tracked much like an analytics 'pageview' - and are incremented with each page or API request. > We never disable sites for traffic spikes, so no need to worry about the front page of Reddit or HN. If you exceed your limit consistently on a 3 month rolling average, we'll just let you know that you need to upgrade. I think this is pretty good? It would be better if they allowed the user to set a hard limit in advance.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    >> We never disable sites for traffic spikes, so no need to worry about the front page of Reddit or HN. If you exceed your limit consistently on a 3 month rolling average, we'll just let you know that you need to upgrade. > I think this is pretty good? It would be better if they allowed the user to set a hard limit in advance. I agree that that's pretty good, although it still leaves you vulnerable to a page that goes viral enough to get triple the number of allowed views. That will block your 3-month rolling average for 3 months, but if your monthly traffic looks like this: Month 1: 50k views Month 2: 50k views Month 3: 400k views - no big deal, sometimes surges happen Month 4: 50k views - you know, you're starting to push your limits... Month 5: 50k views - OK, at this point, we need you to upgrade At that point, the demand to upgrade looks pretty strange.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  > I don’t think the argument was that he wanted the site to go dark. There was an explicit dispute over this. The original email from Ghost was concerned with the number of active staff users, and the customer is definitely right that Ghost just shouldn't allow excess staff users rather than allowing them and then automatically increasing your bill. But the two plans in question don't differ only by the permitted number of active staff users. They also differ by the permitted number of page views per month. And the customer explicitly asked "what happens if I post something that exceeds the number of page views allowed for my plan?". So yes, the question of whether the site should go dark is very much in play.
- wruza 6y ago
  On the other hand, this gives a week or two (if not a month) to seed your site with a bunch of staff members and still be charged for a basic plan, once your site is done. Still you're right that such warnings should not be side-channeled via email, but that can be just a mistake of a product design, not an intended tactic.
- time0ut 6y ago
  Ok, maybe shady implies intent that we couldn't possibly know. The approach is absolutely a dark pattern, intentional or not. Either way, the CEOs response is such a giant red flag that any one who sees it should seriously reconsider doing business with him. He seems genuinely unstable.
MattGaiser 6y ago
Companies can’t win here unless they put a prohibitive number of onboarding questions at the start. Many businesses would complain about the lost business if it didn’t automatically scale to meet demand. Then there are the cost capped users who would rather the site be disabled due to over usage.
- ryanbrunner 6y ago
  I think that's a fair argument for things like external requests made to the site. For the number of admin users you have, there's no reason not to prompt you at the moment you add those admin users that you're going over plan though.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  The problem here was that the user didn't consent to scaling. They thought they were paying one rate, and got an email telling them they were paying another.
  - masonic 6y ago
    the user didn't consent to scaling They didn't have to agree to TOS when onboarding?
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      Hahaha
  - gingerlime 6y ago
    Completely agree. I think it's worse actually. It's not even about scaling. It's about having more staff users on the account. > I was expected to stay on top of them or risk an automatic “upgrade” from $36 to $99 for having an extra staff user on my website? I had forgotten about this, but why not just block me from adding them? So looks like Ghost allows you to add more members freely, does not warn or tell you anything when you do it, but then only tells you that you'll be upgraded automatically via email later? (It's partly a rhetorical question, but I genuinely don't know how it works).
Seasonwreckage 6y ago
Why can't the CEO talk to the client more politely? Even with a kick ass product, most companies call centers take time to assist frustrated and angry clients. If the client is unreasonable, simply send a formal email explaining termination procedures but don't call them assholes. Not everyone can have Twitter clapbacks like Wendy's
- wyclif 6y ago
  I know what you mean here, because the difference is that Wendy's Twitter is obviously humorous. Wendy's throwing shade on McDonald's or Burger King via mic drops, roasts, tongue-in-cheek microaggressions and even savage burns doesn't rise to the level of serious abuse dished out by a CEO of a company to one of its customers.
aaomidi 6y ago
This transaction was never authorized and no proper consent was gathered. Remind me to never use anything you make.
- mrunkel 6y ago
  Not sure you you are addressing, but if it's Ghost, then I'm 99% certain that you agreed to this behavior when you signed up for the service.
  - aaomidi 6y ago
    Yes and that's not informed consent
    - sneak 6y ago
      A mutually agreed contract where both parties have an opportunity to review the terms before agreeing is pretty much the gold standard of informed consent.
      - msh 6y ago
        A one click eula is not a mutually agreed contract for most non lawyer use of that term.
        sneak 6y ago
        I agree. There is, however, a world of difference between a 1-click eula and a paid service agreement, where one has, at the minimum, voluntarily entered payment information to engage in a transaction. Giving someone money is a far higher explicit endorsement/agreement to terms than a one-click eula.
masklinn 6y ago
> That's actually a very reasonable business practice of asking then charging instead of just making a site go dark. They're not asking then charging, they're telling and charging. It's absolutely not a reasonable business practice to just bump you up to a different plan without explicit agreement. Even less so since there's no "going dark" here, as TFA notes this was about adding extra staff users to manage the system, why not block these extra users with a paywall, why let them go through then send a mail indicating the account will automatically get upgraded? But talking about going dark, as TFA asks and got no answer for: what happens if one of your posts suddenly gets popular, does ghost just keep upgrading your plan until you fit within the limits? Can you find yourself with a bill in the thousands through no fault of your own?
- masonic 6y ago
  they're telling and charging No, they're warning and not charging unless the over use exceeds a full week.
mcintyre1994 6y ago
I think it’s reasonable for some of their limits - the obvious one being that they limit views on the lower tier and you’d probably rather be upgraded than have your site go dark. But for things like this number of staff users there’s no reason to let you go ahead and create more accounts on the lower plan. If you want more staff users then upgrade, but until you do you can’t create any more. My guess is they just use the same system to track all the limits without really thinking about how well it works for different ones.
nacs 6y ago
The CEO literally called him an "ahole" in a public Tweet. If anyone is a "dick" it's the CEO. The customer was very polite compared to that.

dijit 6y ago

I don’t think the argument was that he wanted the site to go dark. The author wanted them to block out offending features until the account was upgraded with purpose. Maybe an upsell screen overlay when he tried to add another staff member. “To add more staff you need to upgrade your account, upgrade with 1 click here” I don’t agree that it’s “shady” but you can already tell that it would negatively affect conversion to directly inform people of what they’re doing, rather than waiting for them to do it and then automatically upgrading them. If you charge on some unknown, like requests per second, then it’s better to allow the user to set an upper bound on finances anyway.

masklinn 6y ago
> I don’t agree that it’s “shady” but you can already tell that it would negatively affect conversion to directly inform people of what they’re doing, rather than waiting for them to do it and then automatically upgrading them. "shady" is an understatement, not an overstatement. "If we auto-upgrade, there will be people who miss it or will be too apathetic or procrastinating to fix it, therefore better conversion rates" is on the bad side of "shady".
drenvuk 6y ago
How else am I supposed to read his tweet? He asked what happens if his site goes viral directly after asking for the extra users feature to be blocked. I think it's ridiculous to look for some finely grained charging scheme from a start up.
masonic 6y ago
“To add more staff you need to upgrade your account, upgrade with 1 click here” Can a Ghost user comment as to what you are told in the process of adding a rate-exceeding feature? Does it warn you that "this will result in a category upgrade if it persists over 7 days" or whatever?
DanBC 6y ago
The author talks about going viral. He also says that these higher plan features should just be disabled. To me that appears to mean that he wants his site to go dark if he goes over traffic limits. Here's what Ghost does if you go over your traffic limits: > Average views per month > Views refer to the number of requests to your site each month. These are tracked much like an analytics 'pageview' - and are incremented with each page or API request. > We never disable sites for traffic spikes, so no need to worry about the front page of Reddit or HN. If you exceed your limit consistently on a 3 month rolling average, we'll just let you know that you need to upgrade. I think this is pretty good? It would be better if they allowed the user to set a hard limit in advance.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  >> We never disable sites for traffic spikes, so no need to worry about the front page of Reddit or HN. If you exceed your limit consistently on a 3 month rolling average, we'll just let you know that you need to upgrade. > I think this is pretty good? It would be better if they allowed the user to set a hard limit in advance. I agree that that's pretty good, although it still leaves you vulnerable to a page that goes viral enough to get triple the number of allowed views. That will block your 3-month rolling average for 3 months, but if your monthly traffic looks like this: Month 1: 50k views Month 2: 50k views Month 3: 400k views - no big deal, sometimes surges happen Month 4: 50k views - you know, you're starting to push your limits... Month 5: 50k views - OK, at this point, we need you to upgrade At that point, the demand to upgrade looks pretty strange.
thaumasiotes 6y ago
> I don’t think the argument was that he wanted the site to go dark. There was an explicit dispute over this. The original email from Ghost was concerned with the number of active staff users, and the customer is definitely right that Ghost just shouldn't allow excess staff users rather than allowing them and then automatically increasing your bill. But the two plans in question don't differ only by the permitted number of active staff users. They also differ by the permitted number of page views per month. And the customer explicitly asked "what happens if I post something that exceeds the number of page views allowed for my plan?". So yes, the question of whether the site should go dark is very much in play.
wruza 6y ago
On the other hand, this gives a week or two (if not a month) to seed your site with a bunch of staff members and still be charged for a basic plan, once your site is done. Still you're right that such warnings should not be side-channeled via email, but that can be just a mistake of a product design, not an intended tactic.
time0ut 6y ago
Ok, maybe shady implies intent that we couldn't possibly know. The approach is absolutely a dark pattern, intentional or not. Either way, the CEOs response is such a giant red flag that any one who sees it should seriously reconsider doing business with him. He seems genuinely unstable.

MattGaiser 6y ago

Companies can’t win here unless they put a prohibitive number of onboarding questions at the start. Many businesses would complain about the lost business if it didn’t automatically scale to meet demand. Then there are the cost capped users who would rather the site be disabled due to over usage.

ryanbrunner 6y ago
I think that's a fair argument for things like external requests made to the site. For the number of admin users you have, there's no reason not to prompt you at the moment you add those admin users that you're going over plan though.
StavrosK 6y ago
The problem here was that the user didn't consent to scaling. They thought they were paying one rate, and got an email telling them they were paying another.
- masonic 6y ago
  the user didn't consent to scaling They didn't have to agree to TOS when onboarding?
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    Hahaha
- gingerlime 6y ago
  Completely agree. I think it's worse actually. It's not even about scaling. It's about having more staff users on the account. > I was expected to stay on top of them or risk an automatic “upgrade” from $36 to $99 for having an extra staff user on my website? I had forgotten about this, but why not just block me from adding them? So looks like Ghost allows you to add more members freely, does not warn or tell you anything when you do it, but then only tells you that you'll be upgraded automatically via email later? (It's partly a rhetorical question, but I genuinely don't know how it works).

Seasonwreckage 6y ago

Why can't the CEO talk to the client more politely? Even with a kick ass product, most companies call centers take time to assist frustrated and angry clients. If the client is unreasonable, simply send a formal email explaining termination procedures but don't call them assholes. Not everyone can have Twitter clapbacks like Wendy's

wyclif 6y ago
I know what you mean here, because the difference is that Wendy's Twitter is obviously humorous. Wendy's throwing shade on McDonald's or Burger King via mic drops, roasts, tongue-in-cheek microaggressions and even savage burns doesn't rise to the level of serious abuse dished out by a CEO of a company to one of its customers.

aaomidi 6y ago

This transaction was never authorized and no proper consent was gathered. Remind me to never use anything you make.

mrunkel 6y ago
Not sure you you are addressing, but if it's Ghost, then I'm 99% certain that you agreed to this behavior when you signed up for the service.
- aaomidi 6y ago
  Yes and that's not informed consent
  - sneak 6y ago
    A mutually agreed contract where both parties have an opportunity to review the terms before agreeing is pretty much the gold standard of informed consent.
    - msh 6y ago
      A one click eula is not a mutually agreed contract for most non lawyer use of that term.
      - sneak 6y ago
        I agree. There is, however, a world of difference between a 1-click eula and a paid service agreement, where one has, at the minimum, voluntarily entered payment information to engage in a transaction. Giving someone money is a far higher explicit endorsement/agreement to terms than a one-click eula.

masklinn 6y ago

> That's actually a very reasonable business practice of asking then charging instead of just making a site go dark. They're not asking then charging, they're telling and charging. It's absolutely not a reasonable business practice to just bump you up to a different plan without explicit agreement. Even less so since there's no "going dark" here, as TFA notes this was about adding extra staff users to manage the system, why not block these extra users with a paywall, why let them go through then send a mail indicating the account will automatically get upgraded? But talking about going dark, as TFA asks and got no answer for: what happens if one of your posts suddenly gets popular, does ghost just keep upgrading your plan until you fit within the limits? Can you find yourself with a bill in the thousands through no fault of your own?

masonic 6y ago
they're telling and charging No, they're warning and not charging unless the over use exceeds a full week.

mcintyre1994 6y ago

I think it’s reasonable for some of their limits - the obvious one being that they limit views on the lower tier and you’d probably rather be upgraded than have your site go dark. But for things like this number of staff users there’s no reason to let you go ahead and create more accounts on the lower plan. If you want more staff users then upgrade, but until you do you can’t create any more. My guess is they just use the same system to track all the limits without really thinking about how well it works for different ones.

nacs 6y ago

The CEO literally called him an "ahole" in a public Tweet. If anyone is a "dick" it's the CEO. The customer was very polite compared to that.