4 ms·

It was certainly hard to choose the pricing model. I tried to explain it in the "Why Credits? Why Not Dollars or Subscriptions?" section here: https://www.creod

by VelNZ 6y ago

It was certainly hard to choose the pricing model. I tried to explain it in the "Why Credits? Why Not Dollars or Subscriptions?" section here: https://www.creodocs.com/support?section=credits https://www.creodocs.com/support?section=credits Ultimately, I don't know who is going to use the platform. It's created in a way that it can be just as useful for a random person who wants to make a few invoices per month, someone who wants to make 10,000 payslips every 2 weeks, and someone who wants to hook it up to their product to pump in data and receive a link to a PDF via the API. The first person would not pay for a subscription, it's just not worth it at their usage level. The second has burst bulk usage which should be discounted. The third has some level of sustained usage over time. Those 3 use cases are covered by the 7 days, 30 days and 2 years pricing structures. If you're a casual user, pay a bit more and don't worry about expiration. If you're a bulk user, you get a discount. Everyone else can treat it like a subscription and get the best of both worlds. I looked to websites that do similar things for ideas, and the closest I could come up with was sites like ShutterStock which also have a credit system where the more you buy the cheaper it is. I believe their credits expire after a fixed period too, but you don't get a discount for how long which is a bit more specific to my product. Thanks for the feedback! How would you prefer to see a service like this priced that wouldn't cause price anxiety? I'd love to hear different ideas since this can be changed.

smoldesu 6y ago
>Credits may seem like a dark pattern of obfuscating cost and adding unnecessary complication. This is certainly not the intention and this section aims to explain why credits are a good system for you and for Creodocs. If something seems like a dark pattern, it is. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the ultimate judge of what is dark/what's not is the end user, and sending them a leaflet about how good it is doesn't do much to assuage their fears. I understand your motivations here, and sympathize with you as a developer: but as a user, I couldn't justify integrating this into my workflow.
- VelNZ 6y ago
  Noted, and I really appreciate the honesty. I'd love to hear your thoughts on alternative pricing models!
  - smoldesu 6y ago
    The number-one item on my wishlist for a product like this is the option to self-host, but I guess I understand if that isn't very financially viable. For the service you're providing, though, I think you could benefit quite a bit from open-sourcing the core technologies and then offering a package with support/automatic hosting/commercial licenses for business use.
    - VelNZ 6y ago
      You're suggesting something similar to what Overleaf did: they're the most popular online LaTeX editor used by many institutions and are now open source. It's certainly worked for them! I'm not strictly opposed to the idea of self-hosting, although it would be far easier to pull out the API + queue + worker elements of the product rather than allowing self-hosting the whole thing. That way you self-host the production side and the document data doesn't leave your servers (which is likely to be a big deal for many businesses), but your templates and API calls are compatible with the online version of Creodocs. I'll try to get some more feedback on the pricing model and think about it myself, since it sounds like it's a bad one now. Thanks again for your feedback!
    - lordfosco 6y ago
      I highly encourage you to check out speedata publisher [1] by the berlin-based developer Patrick Gundlach. He is a well known figure in the TeX community and has created a (open-source [2]/self-hostable) document creation solution on top of LuaTeX. You can simply run that from the command-line and integrate it in your workflow but it also comes with a server integration that provides you with a REST API. Admittedly there is some kind of learning curve (even for LaTeX literate people as he is using an XML/HTML abstraction layer on top of it) - but that also keeps it interesting for users who have never played mich with any TeX-language prior to that date. [1]: https://www.speedata.de/en/ https://www.speedata.de/en/ [2]: https://github.com/speedata/publisher https://github.com/speedata/publisher
- deleted 6y ago
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by VelNZ 6y ago

smoldesu 6y ago

>Credits may seem like a dark pattern of obfuscating cost and adding unnecessary complication. This is certainly not the intention and this section aims to explain why credits are a good system for you and for Creodocs. If something seems like a dark pattern, it is. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the ultimate judge of what is dark/what's not is the end user, and sending them a leaflet about how good it is doesn't do much to assuage their fears. I understand your motivations here, and sympathize with you as a developer: but as a user, I couldn't justify integrating this into my workflow.

VelNZ 6y ago
Noted, and I really appreciate the honesty. I'd love to hear your thoughts on alternative pricing models!
- smoldesu 6y ago
  The number-one item on my wishlist for a product like this is the option to self-host, but I guess I understand if that isn't very financially viable. For the service you're providing, though, I think you could benefit quite a bit from open-sourcing the core technologies and then offering a package with support/automatic hosting/commercial licenses for business use.
  - VelNZ 6y ago
    You're suggesting something similar to what Overleaf did: they're the most popular online LaTeX editor used by many institutions and are now open source. It's certainly worked for them! I'm not strictly opposed to the idea of self-hosting, although it would be far easier to pull out the API + queue + worker elements of the product rather than allowing self-hosting the whole thing. That way you self-host the production side and the document data doesn't leave your servers (which is likely to be a big deal for many businesses), but your templates and API calls are compatible with the online version of Creodocs. I'll try to get some more feedback on the pricing model and think about it myself, since it sounds like it's a bad one now. Thanks again for your feedback!
  - lordfosco 6y ago
    I highly encourage you to check out speedata publisher [1] by the berlin-based developer Patrick Gundlach. He is a well known figure in the TeX community and has created a (open-source [2]/self-hostable) document creation solution on top of LuaTeX. You can simply run that from the command-line and integrate it in your workflow but it also comes with a server integration that provides you with a REST API. Admittedly there is some kind of learning curve (even for LaTeX literate people as he is using an XML/HTML abstraction layer on top of it) - but that also keeps it interesting for users who have never played mich with any TeX-language prior to that date. [1]: https://www.speedata.de/en/ https://www.speedata.de/en/ [2]: https://github.com/speedata/publisher https://github.com/speedata/publisher
deleted 6y ago
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